Ah, the junk...
I'm a bit of an antique snob. If I walk into an antique store and the room smells of furniture polish - as the kids would say - I'm out! It's not the smooth sheen of an antique table, or the swaying luster of an old chandelier that beckons me. It's the rough. It's the ragged. It's the chipped and hopeless. If I have to get on my hands and knees in a back room of the tackiest looking thrift shop on the block, I will do it to find my treasure. My eye is drawn to the unusual and obsolete.
Maybe it was my childhood growing up in the second oldest house in Berlin. There were nooks and crannies in that house on state Route 62 that I was determined to dig into. The tiny attic door that led behind and beyond every curve in the house. Between the wooden pieces of the hand railing and post where I once found old coins. I even liked to dig between the old pieces of concrete outside the back porch door. Kind of like an archaeologist. I grew up surrounded by antique furnishings. Old wooden bowls, drop-leaf tables that my grandpa once carried on his back from an auction, pictures that hung from the walls with people from the past. What did their histories carry? Who were they? I still don't know, but without them, my love for the old and careworn never would have flourished.
As I grew up and married, my styles shifted into what I love today. Even now it changes over time, styles drifting and morphing into my own thing. It always has a base though. I may love silvery modern kitsch, but only if it's resting firmly on that old chipped table that we purchased at an old Millersburg department store that was going out of business. Like in life, we need a solid base, rough and gouged though it may be, that will stand the test of time.
My hubby, though he won't admit it as readily, loves junk too. He leans slightly more modern than I, but on most décor, we are spot on. Maybe that's why I have an old table from the defunct Michael's department store in Millersburg as my sink base. George cut out two circles for the sinks, and there you go – a double wide two-sinked wonder. I love it.
I've recently discovered a new website called Pinterest. For us junk junkies, it's a paradise of pictures to be found and tacked to our virtual pinboards. In reality, it's just a big old bulletin board to save, in cyberspace, what we love. Check it out at pinterest.com/missy_herrera