Remember how your grandmother’s kitchen looked when you were little?
Remember that footstool you used to stand on when you were sneaking cookies from the jar before dinner? Remember how warm and cozy it all was, and how her house always smelled like baking cookies? Doesn’t it make you feel all fuzzy inside even now to remember?
OK, maybe you didn’t have that idyllic experience. Maybe your grandma was a little weird, and there were more cats than cookies going on in that house. Either way, that’s the idea behind recycling old antique furniture into useable items: You take a piece with history and breathe new life into it. The history continues.
This is what is known as “shabby chic,” the wildly popular style that encompasses quite a lot of DIY culture. Shabby chic is supposed to evoke the feeling of antiquity, of familiar and well-loved objects that have been passed down through generations. It doesn’t matter if you knew the previous owner or not. The idea is the same at a flea market as it is in your great aunt Martha’s house.
One of the reasons why I’m so in love with shabby chic is because of its beautiful imperfections, and no, that’s not an oxymoron. I find an old mirror with some of the original woodwork showing through the paint to be more beautiful than a similar piece gilded with shiny metals.
It’s simple, it’s elegant and unpretentious, and it’s accessible to everyone with a paint can and a hammer. Shabby chic doesn’t scream, “I have money!” to people who walk into your apartment. It’s more intellectual than if you walked into Ikea and bought the latest Hemnes dresser. It’s simply creative.
When deciding the theme for my wedding, I agonized for a long time if I should have a beach-themed wedding like I had originally planned for California, or whether I should have a rustic, shabby chic wedding fitting for Missouri.
Since we decided to have the wedding in Missouri, I mourned the idea of paying tribute to my homeland because, let’s be honest, a beach party in the middle of a field is just weird. I toyed with the idea of doing a country, shabby chic wedding in a barn somewhere because that wouldn’t be as confusing, but the miracle of shabby chic for weddings is that it’s extremely versatile.
What I’m toying with right now is having a rancho-style shabby chic theme, modeled after my dream venue and favorite place to visit as a child, Rancho Los Cerritos. California isn’t just a coastline; the inland has its own rich history, complete with enough knickknacks and antiques to make any shabby chic lover swoon.
If you decide to do shabby chic in your apartment, don’t think that you’re limited to just one style. Your room doesn’t have to be all vintage Paris or vintage Missouri or whatever it is that you were envisioning. I bet your grandmother didn’t have all of her stuff organized like that. Shabby chic is sometimes best when it’s an eclectic mix of different locations, time periods and collections.
I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find comfort in chaos. I have extra freedom to be imperfect. Shabby chic in any form gives you so much wiggle room to get messy. Life is sometimes smudgy fingerprints and bent corners, no matter how hard you try to keep a shiny veneer.
I have too many people at school and in my wedding planning that expect me to be perfect. When I come home, I just want to be myself. Just like grandma always told me.
