Thrifty Nest

Check out the colorful and thrifty home of artist Carolyn Burgess aka squirrelpearl. Here is what she had to say about her home:

We live in East Nashville, TN in a little brick Tudor style house for about 5 years. We are both native to the area, grew up in suburbs outside of Nashville. We have been working to restore our house and make it our own since the first day of ownership! We started knocking out walls and tearing off the siding that covered the stucco on the exterior...so much fun to do demo!!

Our house was built in 1940 and has arched doorways and a brick arched side patio, so when we wanted to open up our kitchen to the dining room - we wanted to mimic that arch to try to keep the house as close to period true as we could. We also retro renovated the kitchen by removing the mdf type cheapo cabinets that were installed by a previous owner, and replaced them with vintage Youngstown metal cabinets that we had stripped and powdercoated. They are from the 1950's, so they aren't what would have been original to the house, but they are close! We also removed the cheapo kitchen tile floor and refinished the hardwoods beneath this year. We love it now!



We love hitting estate sales and the local flea market (went just this morning!) for all of our little treasures. We love finding weird knick knacks and things that aren't run of the mill. I lean more towards 50s and 60s, my husband leans more towards 70s. We try to find a balance, but also have some new modern items so that it doesn't feel like a time warp when you walk in the front door!

We typically don't spend a lot of money on any of our purchases, but do spend a good amount of time out there "hunting", it is a sickness, I swear! Do you have it too? We have a basement full of odd chairs and stuff, that occasionally I'll think, "I have the perfect thing for that spot!" and it will have been in our basement for two years, not yet knowing it's purpose!

I get a lot of questions about our new (to us) yellow couch- it was free, but in it's current state, no one would've wanted to sit on it! We had it reupholstered and made it our own, we love it and the matching chairs so much now!! It is made by Adrian Pearsall for Craft Associates, his work was similar to Vladimir Kagan, which I see you found a side table-- jealous!! ;-)

check out her "Before and Afters" folder on flickr:
www.flickr.com/photos/imacookoo/sets/72157623365104751/

Be sure to check out her Etsy shop www.etsy.com/shop/squirrelpearl