Country Decorating Ideas

Ilona’s ingenuity is in evidence throughout the house. Best of all, the price tag is right. “Most everything you see in our house didn’t cost much,” recalls Ilona. “I found most of it for a song.” She turned a Goodwill glass vase with “nice lines” into a stunning shell vase using only a little glue and her great eye. She also whitewashed a trio of brass chandeliers to give them a screenstar

sophisticated look, and then added prisms and ribbons for an unexpected touch.
Ilona’s favorite pastime is poring over books and magazines, looking for ideas: “I look at something and say, ‘That’s me,’ or ‘That’s not me!’”
When Norm added 8 feet to their dining and living rooms not long ago, and installed a pair of pillars in the passageway between the adjoining rooms, the extra space gave Ilona more room to finesse her collections and her look. The remodel also made space for a two-plank-top farm table the couple had been using to display antiques in their shop, State Street Antiques, before it closed. “Nobody ever noticed it there,” says Ilona, “because it was always covered with stuff.” The day they were moving it out, Ilona told Norm it was a “keeper,” she says. “It’s really gorgeous with all that old blue and black paint, and it easily seats 12!”
“We like used stuff,” admits Ilona. “The more used, the better I like it.” For her, every household through which an item has passed before it reached her own makes it that much richer in heritage. “It must have had many lives,” she says, with a smile that just has happiness written all over it.

HOLD EVERYTHING
When an antique porcelain soup tureen broke,
Ilona topped off this greenware bowl with its lid.
“I just can’t bear to throw out treasures, even when they’re broken,”
she says. So, she used the bottom of the tureen
as a planter and covered the break with moss.

click on
photos
to enlarge

"We like used stuff," admits Ilona.
"The more used,
the better I like it."

BLUE ON BLUE
Ilona found this turquoise cupboard at a flea market sale. The candelabrum was a local find and the pineapple—done in “faux concrete”—is a remnant from her former shop.

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