Furnishing your home with vintage and antiques doesn’t have to be expensive, although it can be if you want it to! If you’re like me and just want practical pieces that will look good, last, and will bring you joy, at prices similar to that of the big home decor chainstores, vintage is the way to go. My own vintage shop is proof of that!
Plus, when you buy from a vintage or antique store, you’re supporting a small, locally owned business and ensuring your furnishings don’t come from a sweat shop. You can also collect your piece on the day you pay for it rather than waiting for weeks to get it shipped from the tires warehouse or from China. Unless your having it custom painted of course. Doesn’t that feel better than ordering something from a large faceless corporation?
So let’s get started. Here’s why I love vintage so much and why you should too-
Vintage is chic
Every room can benefit with a vintage or antique statement piece, something that will never go out of style and gives the room a focal point - an antique sideboard for the TV in the living room, an amazing Timber bed in the bedroom, or a vintage desk in the study.
If you don’t mind a little wear-and-tear, or if you prefer a little rustic charm, old and vintage furniture is perfect to furnish your home or to give your home a new look.
For those who prefer a more modern, streamlined look, midcentury pieces from the 1950s and 60s may be right. Or perhaps vintage industrial is more your thing. You can also update old timber pieces with paint. Shabby chic is great, but you can also paint in solid colours for a more modern look. You can mix all of these and throw in some modern pieces, and you'll be creating a unique home that is also better for the environment than most modern interiors.
Vintage is unique
Vintage furniture allows you to create a unique, one of a kind home that expresses your personality, instead of it looking like everyone else’s. Do you really want a home that looks like a display home or a page out of a Kmart catalogue?
Your home should be as original as you are. Find things you love, and fill your home with them. Yes a flat-pack white laminate bookshelf is cheap and easy (if you like putting that stuff together) and looks ok filled with books, but what about a solid pine bookshelf you’ve hand painted yourself in a color you love, or an antique timber shelf that one graced a doctors office.
Vintage can mean finding secondhand bargains or antique treasures, taking time to find pieces you love that will weave together a story of your life.
Vintage is Nostalgic
One of the things that got me into vintage in the first place is nostalgia and family connections. Vintage is a way of keeping memories alive. I like to think of what stories an antique or vintage piece could tell. I love the fact that an item has lived a life with people before me, and will live another life after me.
Many of my customers get excited when they see something in the shop that reminds them of the grandparents, or of their childhood. Rotary telephones are a classic, and most people have no trouble remembering their childhood telephone numbers - and love to stand there and dial each digit.
Vintage is Durable
Vintage Furniture lasts. It has lasted. It’s usually made of durable materials like timber, chrome, brass and marble. That’s why it’s still around.
I love timber furniture, and buy buying vintage timber furniture I don’t have to feel bad about chopping down trees. Have you ever noticed how heavy vintage furniture can be? It’s because its not hiding cheap particle board or plastic beneath laminate or fake timber finishes. Most of my vintage timber furniture at present is from the 1930’s and 40s. That means it was made from trees cut down nearly 100 years ago. You just can’t get timber like that any more - slow growth large old forest timber. Most of it was harvested sustainably and in the case of antique furniture, by hand. It was carefully milled and dried, and designed to withstand changes in temperature and moisture.
Most flat packed furniture, and a lot of modern furniture, is made of engineered, or man made timber, covered with laminate or a timber veneer, the veneer is a thin slice of actual timber, and laminate is either Plain white or black, or sometimes a timber look plastic covering. Some modern Veneered furniture looks good and solid, until you look carefully. Veneers have been around for hundreds of years, but antique and vintage furniture has veneers put over other solid timber, or sometimes plywood, while modern furniture has the veneer over less solid man made timbers.
Vintage equals Value
Solid timber furniture can be sanded back and refinished when scratched, or a table leg is chewed by the puppy. Wonky chair legs can be rescrewed or glued and clamped. If we get sick of the yellow pine or dark Indonesian stain we can paint it. Then we can paint it again. Flat packed chip board furniture is designed to last two to five years. As Max Elbourne said about laminate furniture on the ABCs ‘War on waste” program, “It’s designed to fall apart as soon as you walk out of the shop’
Vintage used Healthy materials
Vintage and antique furniture, made of real solid materials like hand cut timber, with traditional methods of dowel joins, hand forged nails, woven fabrics and natural stuffings of fabric fibre or horse hair, that don’t leach harmful chemicals into the air. And when it comes time to refinishing or up-cycling there are lots of safe, VOC free products to choose from.
Vintage was Better made
Not only was furniture of the past made of better materials, it was better designed and just better made than much of the fast Furniture produced today.
Antiques were generally made with skill by highly trained craftsmen, and were designed to last and be handed from generation to generation. Newer vintage furniture was still built in small, often family owned workshops. The furniture was often built for the local market, using locally harvested timber, and designed and finished in. A way that suited the local environment. For instance, here in North Queensland I get vintage timber tables, often made from local silky oak or Mackay cedar, that are built will spacers underneath that allow the timber to swell slightly during the humid summer.
Even home made furniture was often well made, and has something of a rustic charm to it. We’ve had some depression era pieces from the 1930s made of timber packing boxes and old kerosene tins that are still functional (and lovely).
Vintage appreciates in value
Antique and vintage items do not lose their value the same way modern items do.
Once you take home your average new piece of furniture out of the store, just like a new car, it suddenly falls into the category of "second-hand" and loses tremendous value, usually half.
Antique and vintage items however have a value that is retained due to their materials, craftsmanship and their limited numbers.
That being said, market tastes do fluctuate and you shouldn't expect to make a huge profit on selling your pieces. The trick to retaining or gaining value on your antiques is knowing the appetites of the markets and when the time is to sell, buy or just enjoy. For example, currently wardrobes are very hard to sell, but I think once people realise how much timber is in a wardrobe, and how easy they are to convert to pantries or shelves, the price will go up again.
Vintage is Green
Vintage pieces are the most environmentally responsible choice for home decorating because they’re 100% post-consumer content.
Plus, when you buy an antique or vintage item from a small store, you’re supporting a locally owned business and ensuring your furnishings don’t come from a sweat shop. How socially responsible!
In a nutshell
Vintage is chic, unique, nostalgic, durable, equals value, used better materials, was better made, appreciates in value and is green. That’s why we love it!