thrifted living room

The living room slash boyfriend's studio is still looking a little sparse, but we've made it livable-in. Actually it's rather cosy considering it was totally empty when we moved in 5 weeks ago.

Well, that's not entirely true - the nondescript linoleum was here. And it's staying, though ideally we'd change it to something more natural...

We furnished our whole apartment with thrifted, mostly 50's - 70's era furniture and accessories - under 250€. The living room takes up a big portion of that money spent. I think we've done very well; it can be expensive over here even second hand.

The sofa which converts into a double guest bed has its original claret coloured brocade upholstery in perfect condition and has very clean lines. It also has a trunk-like storage area underneath the seat. We spotted it in the Red Cross half-price furniture sale and wanted it right away.

We picked up two handmade velvet cushions too in a super olive green which looks great against the muted dark red.

The off-white cotton rug was given to us for free. It covers a big chunk of the lino floor and ties together and lifts all those wooden tones and the darkish colours.

That teak fruit bowl holding our 5-a-day was a lucky find - I pulled it out from under a big pile of baby clothes. It has a good period shape and I really like the way it looks like an extension of the table surface.

The two-tone coffee table has a nice modernist shape too. It has a rather large surface area which is lovely and it has a rather bashed up look with lots of round teacup stains and such. We are thinking to sand and re-varnish it next spring.

This twin standing lamp is a very common one of its time, nothing special, but I had a table version of it in orange as a child which is long gone, so it's nice to have come across this.

Then onto my boyfriend's space. Excuse the jungle of cables, we are yet to figure out how to magic them out of sight.
The desk is a great big old office sort, equipped with lots of drawers with different functions. It's stamped underneath by the maker which doesn't seem to exist any more, but I found out that they were based in Lahti near Helsinki.

He also got himself a really nice anglepoise lamp in a pillar box red. These are quite common too, I see them a lot in various conditions in local flea markets - but this one has a super vintage Jaffa sticker sporting its previous owner's name too. Which we love.

This Italian patio chair was bought from the recycling centre, it's one of a pair. There were 4 of them there, but one had a big hole in the seat. I can't believe someone got rid of the whole set because one of them broke! Well, lucky for us - we got two comfy bouncy chairs to sit on for almost no money at all.

I'm really liking this find of mine which is a white plastic watering can Made in Finland. It has a very characteristic shape - which I wouldn't call elegant but I have a lot of nostalgia attached to objects from the soviet/70's era, so to me it's lovely!
It has a bumpy surface texture and has a measure cast into the back even though it's not possible to see the water level through the opaque plastic...

<edit 13/01/2013 Well, I thought this was vintage 70's but no! I've just discovered it on the shelves of one of the biggest supermarket chains locally...it fooled me with it's shape, which still looks very 70's to me, and I still like it just as much - I guess this water can might have one thing common with ants; if the design works why change or evolve?>

The little ASKO table below is another favourite find - lovely clean lines and a nice light wood veneer, called 'funkkis' over here because it's functional. It has a nice big drawer where we keep all those random things that we use often - torch, phone chargers, keys, that sort of stuff.
ASKO is a Finnish furniture design chain and is still in business today.

The Swedish machine embroidered linen cloth is also thrifted - reminds me of Transylvanian embroideries a little.