Prop Hire: Shops, Designers, Events etc

I once asked my friends if they'd ever held things that gave them a spooky sense of history. Ancient pots with three-thousand-year-old thumbprints in the clay, said one. Antique keys, another. Clay pipes. Dancing shoes from WWII. Roman coins I found in a field. Old bus tickets in second-hand books. Everyone agreed that what these small things did was strangely intimate; they gave them the sense, as they picked them up and turned them in their fingers, of another person, an unknown person a long time ago, who had held that object in their hands. You don't know anything about them, but you feel the other person's there, one friend told me. It's like all the years between you and them disappear. Like you become them, somehow.
Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

If you are hunting for prop for hire for shops, themed parties, the film, theatre & events industries try our selection of collectibles.

Have we got what you want? Take a look, or just email   AntiquesArts@hotmail.com   

Down Under The Designer Files 

The paintings, the books, the pictures on the wall, the kind of desk or the things placed on that desk all subtly build a back-story. 
The furniture is the star 

Some of the talking pieces and memorabilia are likely to become the ‘window shopper show stopper’ prop that completes the sale or a selected collectible piece might set the scene in the photo shoot and tell that story. These props tell a little of ‘our’ story as we love to preserve the antipodean and bohemian styles and imagination of yesterdays ...

Preloved pieces that find their images in magazines, on TV, on stage and at the movies….

 Courtesy of Eye of 👁 the Collectors 

More than a piece of furniture: it is sometimes as if these old pianos have souls The Conversation

Vogue: VL50: Australia’s top 50 interior designers, architects, product designers and artists

Interiors on a plate: rise of the online homeware curators

Designers who create off-the-shelf ‘looks’ at all price points are 

rapidly gaining traction on social media

Sitting at home during lockdown in January 2021, with a newborn baby, Laura Jackson was, like many others, scrolling on her phone looking for homewares. After hours of searching, she found a rug, a ceramic mug and a tasteful print, all from different sellers on different websites, and started wondering if there was a quicker way to buy. 

She realised there were luxury fashion ecommerce platforms “where a whole team of buyers think about every single product to bring their customers the best of the different brands out there,” she says. “I wanted to create a beautiful, well-curated marketplace for homewares.” 

Known to her 153,000 Instagram followers for her love of interiors, Jackson is regularly contacted on social media about where to buy items, from lampshades to serving platters as well as working on collections for high-street brands including Habitat, where a co-collaboration with the brand and her friend Alice Levine sold out in three hours.

 “I know I’m really good at finding brands, recommending them and essentially selling them; I love the discovery,” she says. Along with her brother-in-law Daniel Crow, formerly a senior buyer at the online lifestyle brand END, she launched Glassette in November 2021, with about 120 brands ranging in price from £7 striped candles to a £3,100 embroidered daybed. “In a noisy marketplace, we extract the best and offer a level of curation,” she says. 

The choice is now so overwhelming, you can go down a lampshade rabbit hole that lasts for hours She is one of a number of figures from fashion and social media using their following and aesthetic to curate and sell homewares from obscure sources around the world — a service previously only available to those with a budget for an interior designer. 

Their new popularity is because “there is such a thing as too much choice,” according to Kate Watson-Smyth, founder of the curated shopping platform Design Storey. Lucinda Chambers, former fashion director of British Vogue and co-founder of lifestyle etailer Collagerie, agrees: “The choice is now so overwhelming, you can have 10 tabs open on your computer and go down a lampshade rabbit hole that lasts for hours”.

Meanwhile, fashion buyer Pauline Vincent launched her digital homewares platform La Romaine Editions last June because, despite the online choice, “I was still wondering where I could find the homeware I actually wanted to buy.”

Part of the broad appeal of the online curators is their mix of high-low price points: it is something the fashion world is comfortable with, but has been slower to catch on in interiors.

 At Collagerie, where fashion picks include £965 Bea Bongiasca floral earrings, a £48.95 denim jumpsuit and New Balance trainers, customers can also buy a £4.99 H&M soap dish and a £1,210 pouffe. 

On Design Storey there are £6 shaker pegs from Etsy, while La Romaine Editions features a €300 mouthblown glass candlestick by the designer Boris de Beijer and a set of four hand-painted plates priced at a more accessible €72. Lisa White, director of lifestyle and interiors at the trend forecasters WGSN, says this grouping of cheaper objects with luxury items makes them seem “relevant and desirable no matter what they cost.” 

It is, White says, the air of curation by a trusted tastemaker that gives the items credence. While their tastes and the types of buyers they appeal to differ, what the curators have in common are large social media followings and a desirable aesthetic consumers want to emulate. 

“Customers are looking for people-led brands,” Crow says. Chambers agrees: “We saw that there was a particular need for a trusted authority that could see everything that’s out there, and bring a really curated, tasteful edit.” 

As such, the curators’ backstories are important; consumers want to know the person behind the brand. While Chambers’ co-founder Serena Hood also came from Vogue, the two of them together bringing an established following, Watson-Smyth has run the Mad About The House blog and podcast for many years and has 273,000 Instagram followers.

Jackson is known as a television presenter, but also for running a supper club, co-authoring a cookbook, and more recently, for her love of interiors on social media. She uses her east London home as a backdrop for her purchases and work by British craftspeople. The decorative artist Tess Newall, for example, painted a bespoke mural in her daughter’s nursery; furniture maker Fred Rigby designed their dining table.

Just as she has done for her home, Jackson has a hand in designing some of the ranges on Glassette, suggesting new colourways or shapes. Similarly, La Romaine Editions and Design Storey work with makers to design exclusive limited run collections for their audiences, adding an air of exclusivity to their curatorial role. 

A collaboration between Glassette and small brand The Vintage List before Christmas sold out a 220-unit run of glasses in under a fortnight. “There is an appetite for that limited edition drop,” Crow says. “It creates an energy and speed to purchase.” 

The fact that customers are racing to buy limited-edition glasses reflects our growing interest in homewares. Globally, the homewares market grew about 5 per cent during 2016-21 to a current market value of about $175bn, according to market research firm Fact. MR. That is set to rise further to more than $200bn by 2023, it estimates. 

In the UK, consumers will spend an estimated £14.2bn on homewares this year, according to analytics company GlobalData, up from £11bn in 2015. Chambers has also seen a shift in consumer focus from fashion to interiors. It doesn’t surprise her: “taste runs across everything from the clothes you wear to the way you decorate your home,” she says. To meet demand — and the drop in fashion sales during the pandemic — a number of fashion brands pivoted into the sector.

 The designer Henry Holland switched clothes for ceramics; historic British department store Fenwicks launched its first in-house homeware brand last November, and online fashion retailer Matches.com has seen its homeware category grow 35 per cent for SS22.

Along with a swell of new kitchen-table businesses, it has created an increasingly crowded retail environment, but one that allows the curator model to thrive. Glassette has not only attracted customers, but also investors, raising £1.2mn in its first seed-funding round. Increased interest in homewares has boosted sales turnover at Collagerie 600 per cent since the first lockdown, totalling £3.12mn since launch, according to Hood.

 Of course, the model of curating what we buy is not new: department stores have been around for more than a century, and independent bricks and mortar stores do the same. Vincent says she was inspired by the “multi-brand concept” at stores such as her former employer, Galeries Lafayette.

 But the way we shop has changed: 63 per cent of UK consumers bought their homewares online in March 2021, according to YouGov, up from 48 per cent in March 2020. Yet, for Vincent, a fashion sensibility was exactly what was missing from the way interior products were being presented online.

 “I saw there was already a white minimalist style, and also a bohemian style, but there was something missing — something more contemporary and inspired by fashion,” she says. Vincent edits her selection of products (mostly French designers and makers) around a theme, such as flowers, to encourage her customers to pair pieces together, something White of WSGN says, “brings meaning to the objects by telling visual stories”. 

The fashion world’s mix of high-low price points has been slower to catch on in interiors This storytelling is how the online curators lure customers to the virtual checkout. 

As well as engaging their audience through highly stylised Instagram feeds, the online stores are presented like glossy magazines, with interviews with designers and other tastemakers from different disciplines, such as the digital entrepreneur Abisola Omole talking on Glassette about how to create a comfortable home, while designer Tory Burch selects her favourite products over on Collagerie. Interior designer Sophie Ashby launched an online retail platform, Sister, in October 2020. 

Her quarterly digital journal, which reaches more than 2,000 subscribers and features interviews, recipes and early access to new products, seeks to engage her audience, as well as, she says, “curate and contextualise” items such a s £60 marble eggs or a £1,850 bouclé swivel chair.

For Jackson, a keen storyteller, featuring a wide range of brands, collaborations and influencers serves to broaden the appeal and reach. She particularly wants to target more men — perhaps with a future collaboration with a technical outdoor-apparel brand. 

“There has traditionally been a type of person who is ‘into’ interiors,” she says. “One of the reasons we started Glassette was to target audiences that fashion and homewares traditionally have ignored. That way, we can continue to grow.” 

Follow @FTProperty on Twitter or @ft_houseandhome on Instagram to find out about our latest stories first

TIPS: Buff your taps, rehang your doors: experts on the one bit of DIY advice you need to know

Tips - Buff your taps, rehang your doors: experts on the one bit of DIY advice you need to know

Professional tips from a carpenter, a plumber, a stylist, a garden designer and more

Paint everything the same colour

White skirting shows marks and scuffs. Instead, paint walls and woodwork the same colour, even ceilings if you’re feeling bold. With enough light it gives the room a rich depth, with fewer lines and edges breaking up the space, making for a more streamlined look. This creates a cosy feel in smaller areas, and with no contrasts to distract the eye, it creates a connected look in larger spaces. It can also emphasise the architectural detailing of a room and allow furnishings, pictures and decorative items to sing. We paint the walls in an emulsion and woodwork in an eggshell or a satin finish.
Painter Sarah Cockings;purebrilliantpainting.com

Don’t hang art

I have been increasingly propping up artworks rather than hanging them. I have one propped up on the mantelpiece, another on a bookshelf, even a framed painting on top of the fridge. I’ve also built very narrow shelves with a little lip on them so artworks can be propped up on them. I like the informality.
Albert Hill, co-founder of The Modern House and Inigo; themodernhouse.com

Rehang your doors

The number of people who live with doors that don’t shut properly is surprising. It’s easy to replace a like-for-like door latch: if your hinges are loose, remove the door and stuff the existing screw holes in the frame with wood glue and matchsticks to help the screws fit tightly in the holes. Hammer the matchsticks in and the ends will snap off. Once dry, rehang the door and the screws will grip better. With the hinges more tightly screwed in, the door will fit better. I would also advise investing in a relatively powerful battery drill: you’ll be surprised how often it will come in handy.
Philippa Skinner, carpenter;pskinnercarpentry.weebly.com

Change your lightbulbs

Change all your lightbulbs to LED. It’s fairly simple to do and has huge benefits in terms of bills and being greener and safer. A standard 60W halogen bulb costs about 3p an hour to run, whereas a standard LED 5W bulb costs about 0.0025p an hour. They are safer because they don’t get as hot, so there’s less chance of a fire. Also, buy automatic PIR (passive infrared) battery-operated lights and place them in the fuse board so if the power trips out you still have light. They’re motion-sensor and stick-on, so easy to use – try Argos’s Vigilamp LED sensor light, for £18.
Laurence Lane, electrician; lane-electrical.com

Have one joyful thing in every room

Rather than worrying about trends, have something in every room that makes you happy and reminds you of good times, whether that’s photographs, books, things you’ve been given or things you’ve picked up on your travels. I had pictures printed off my phone on to fridge magnets – memories of the kids and holidays we’ve been on. Little things like this make a big difference.
Emily Wheeler, stylist and founder of Furnishing Futures, a charity that furnishes the homes of domestic abuse survivors; emilywheeler.co.uk

Locate your stopcock

Ensure you know where your stopcock is and check your water toby (the outside stop valve) in the street is clear. If it’s blocked, fill in a form on your local water board website and they will clear it. You need to be able to switch your water off should a pipe burst. If you can’t switch it off in the house, the toby is the next best thing but often they get filled with grit and silt. I switch off my water before going on holiday, having been to jobs where people came back to Niagara Falls. Get a Surestop stopcock – it switches the water off at the touch of a button.
Master plumber and lecturer Jimmy Hendry; inverness.uhi.ac.uk

Buff your taps

First, clean taps, sinks and shiny areas thoroughly with soap and water, then sanitise with a kitchen spray or limescale remover and dry with a simple microfibre cloth – then buff to a shine with furniture polish. Not only will this make them shiny and leave them smelling nice, it will also leave a slight film, which will prevent limescale and soap scum buildups.
Cleaners Lynsey Joseph and Sam Brady;sparklingsisters.co.uk

Start tiling in the middle

To ensure your tiling – in a bathroom or kitchen – is as symmetrical as possible, the last tiles on both ends of the wall should be a good size, rather than having to be cut very small, which looks messy. Measure the whole area vertically and horizontally to pinpoint your centre. Then, for brick bond tiles, sometimes known as metro tiles (the ones that look like bricks), measure a tile and mark its centre, use that mark against the centre point on the wall, then move the tile across, marking and including a 2mm gap each time (for the grout joint) to see where your tiles will finish. If the last tile will be a sliver of a cut, measure from the middle again, but place the edge of the tile against the centre point on the wall and you should finish with a better size piece of tile at the edge. For herringbone or chevron tiles, which sit at a 45 degree angle, the centre point is half the width of the tile rather than half the length. Use a laser to keep things level.
Tiler Tony Felgate; @tf_tiling

Make furniture eye-catching

For every three pieces of furniture, make sure one is quirky or has an iconic design. It doesn’t need to be an expensive designer piece: it can be an armchair with a bright colour or fabric, a vintage chest of drawers or even a good quality replica chair. The trick is to bring character not only through decorative items but also with functional furniture.
Architect and curator Gonzalo Herrero Delicado; gonzaloherrero.eu

Consider the brightness of your lights

There are many different “temperatures” of white light, and differences are jarring to the eye – use the same colour-temperature lightbulbs throughout a room. Warmer white is more relaxing, while cooler whites enhance productivity. 6000K is similar to daylight at midday, while 2000K is a warm yellow/orange similar to sunset, firelight or candlelight. I recommend extra-warm white (2700K) for living and bedrooms, warm white (3000K) for kitchens and natural/cool white (4000K) for home offices.
Lighting designer and electrician Eleanor Bell; eleanorbell.co.uk

Bring plants closer in

Try to achieve a sense of being among plants by bringing them closer to your house. If you have a patio that meets a lawn, create a bed along the join so you see plants from the house, not just patio and grass. Herbs are brilliant: you can appreciate the scent, they’re easy to grab for cooking and are mostly evergreen. In small spaces use height: plant climbers such as Verbena bonariensis or fennel in pots. They’re also see-through so they don’t block precious views.
Jane Porter, gardener and gold medal winner at Chelsea flower show 2022; @plantyjane

Plant for colour, scent and hope

A few simple things bring healing and happiness. First, colour – choose plants that have restful and calming colours (mauve and white salvia) and lift the spirits (yellow yarrow, nasturtiums and marigolds). Use fragrance: plant herbs such as rosemary, mint and thyme, as well as sweet peas and shrubs including lilac and daphne. Start things in autumn to give signs of hope through winter: crocus, daffodils, tulips, primroses and later pansies. Create a comfortable place to sit quietly and look at the sky and the colours of the flowers, listen to the birds, breathe and relax.”
Vicar Fr Steve Hall of St Mary’s therapeutic garden, London; lewishamparish.com/garden

Trust your bugs

I haven’t used a single pesticide in five years, and our flowers, fruit, herbs and veg grow in abundance. Left alone, in time a garden’s ecosystem balances out to look after itself, as I’ve proved in our courtyard in London and allotment in Yorkshire. Aphids are food for ladybirds and hoverflies, which are in turn food for small birds. Slugs and snails feed frogs, toads and the amber list song thrush, which smashes snail shells on stones and patios. In smaller spaces, grow slug- resistant plants such as brunnera, as well as flowers like astrantia. Vulnerable veg are best grown away from hedges and walls where slugs and snails hide. 
Landscape designer Jack Wallington; jackwallington.com  

 Tips …

Antiques antics — why are young people buying old stuff?

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so as long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.” 
~ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

As Is in 2022: Pre-loved Ikea goods will be available for sale on a new online marketplace

Antiques antics — why are young people buying old stuff?

Antiques antics — why are young people buying old stuff? Millennials are forsaking flat-packs for second-hand furniture and prices are skyrocketing

This past June, I tried to rationalise driving nine hours north to the US state of Maine to buy a bed. There was a man there willing to part with an antique spindle double bed for a reasonable price, and I wanted one with a singular passion. I’ve long coveted a spindle bed, also called a Jenny Lind bed. But in the past year, they’ve become chic. Spindle beds, spindle shelves and a whole host of early-American antique styles are now beloved by a new generation of designers and enthusiasts trying to bring a farmhouse energy to modern interiors.

 Antiques dealers say that five years ago they couldn’t give these antiques away, and they were a bargain to buy. An old, turned wood bed would retail for about $150 on Craigslist, the classified ads website, because of irregular sizing and the tedious updates required to make it usable. Now a person cannot buy spindle furniture within 100 miles of New York City for love nor money. Or, at least, without a ton of money. If I drove to Maine, I reasoned, it would still be cheaper to pay for petrol and a hotel than to buy a bed in Brooklyn.

The cost of antiques has skyrocketed in the past few years as their popularity has grown. Nostalgia is in, and so are post-pandemic homes that feel cosy and comforting, mixing old furniture into modern design. Some call it an “old money aesthetic”, a national reaction, of sorts, to the easy, epidemic minimalist aesthetic seeded by premade-but-not-cheap design outfits such as West Elm and Crate & Barrel. 

Nostalgia is alive and well at Brimfield Antique Flea Market in Massachusetts, the US’s largest outdoor flea market © Megan Haley for the FT “Our family thinks we’re nuts for the stuff we buy [to sell],” says Timur Williford, an antiques dealer in the Netherlands who exports furniture to the US. “They think it’s garbage, it’s old-fashioned. They see no value in it, until they bring it [to the US market].” 

Despite a decade of generational mythology that millennials are not interested in stuff so much as experiences, the rising prices of second-hand furnishings is driven by demand from environmentally and budget-conscious younger consumers.

 “We have a lot of designers come in, and stylists,” says Lori Guyer, the owner and designer of White Flower Farmhouse, a shop on the North Fork of Long Island that stocks both new and vintage homewares. But recent business has been heaviest from “a whole new younger generation of customer, people in their late twenties and mid-thirties”. “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and all of a sudden we can barely keep the vintage pieces in stock,” Guyer says.

When I moved to Brooklyn, New York, from London this summer, in my possession I had one mattress, one small area rug, two plant pots, a ladle and 41,362 books. After eight years of relative transience, I had done my time with cardboard Ikea dressers. 

The world didn’t need more flat-pack bookshelves destined for landfill. I made a decision (part budgetary, part ethical, mostly aesthetic) to try to only buy second-hand furniture. Pinterest fed my vision with images of eclectic living rooms I never suspected my own might fall short of.

During a 72-hour window spent with a concerning addiction to Craigslist, I was able to procure a charming couch and free chintz chairs. But soon my search radius spread as wide as Maine to try and find furniture within my budget. 

Chairs you would recognise from your middle-school classroom are apparently now collectibles in Brooklyn and resell for more than $1,500 for a set of four. Bentwood chairs, likely salvaged from out-of-luck bistros, retail on Brooklyn Craigslist for more than $150 per chair. Cheap plastic Formica diner tables — more than $500 for a four-seater — have gone from being disposable to retro and covetable.

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The Chelsea ‘flea’ and me: memories of the famous New York market

Furniture resale websites such as Chairish and 1stDibs turned up the volume on the price surge, dealers say. While before it took an experienced eye to value an item, curated resale websites have made it simple for anyone to check what something could sell for. 

Craigslist postings frequently feature screenshots of comparable items on Chairish listed for staggering sums, to emphasise the discount you are getting on someone’s still-overpriced castaways. Second-hand furniture has always been defined by a seductive mythology of the possibility of stumbling upon treasure.

 Websites that make it easy to check the maximum sale price make it more difficult for both dealers and buyers to find diamonds in the junk heap. Intent on my goal to furnish my apartment without bankruptcy, I decided to go to the source.

The Brimfield Antique Flea Market in Massachusetts was shuttered for almost two years due to the pandemic. America’s “oldest outdoor flea market”, it is a week-long event held three times a year and attracts thousands of antiques dealers from all over the world. 

Antique shows, auctions and flea markets are crucial for the wholesale dealers that supply second-hand shops and designers. Lockdowns meant many disappeared overnight. The supply of antiques ran low as demand from homebound shoppers and designers increased. Dealers turned to Instagram and Etsy to stay afloat.

The return of the Brimfield Antique Flea Market in earnest this July is an important touchstone for the tight-knit community of dealers who make their living through antiques. 

“It was like a family reunion,” says Josh Zollinhofer of dealer Junk Merchant. “People gathered again. Finally, it was a bit of normalcy.” The mornings at Brimfield start at 5:30am, though for some intrepid shoppers with headlamps, it is even earlier. 

The market sprawls out over numerous farm fields larger than football pitches, along a single stretch of road in rural New England. Lanes of vendors wind and meander. It is rumoured dealers make a chunk of their profit from purchased items that disoriented customers cannot find their way back to at the end of the day.

I arrived at the market with my mother and a shopping list that included a dining room table, chinoiserie plant pots, end tables and “general wonders”. Despite its pastoral feel, Brimfield is also sensory overload of the highest order. Fields open at different hours of the day, to keep the offerings fresh and the crowds moving.

 I walked through the fields taking in an unfathomable variety of stuff. Casting an eye over tent after tent, I tried to separate the gems from the junk at speed.

Flea-market hunting requires a laser focus for spotting needed items, while trying to remain open-minded to amazing things it was impossible to know existed. I thought I was doing this well until pictures from the day showed how many awesome finds were right in front of my face that I never noticed. 

Making hundreds of mini mental assessments per minute is exhausting work. It is important to bring someone with you. Someone to act as another set of eyes, to show discoveries off to and to remind you to measure the old Quaker meeting house table you’re suddenly overcome with desire for.

Researching (obsessively searching for) vintage pieces before the market helped identify when a price felt like a bargain on the day. It also meant that I frequently whispered to my mom, “Do you know how much that would resell for back in Brooklyn?!” 

The temptation of becoming a dealer myself was great, but spare boot space was not. I tried to listen to my gut. If I felt I would be in physical pain to walk away and risk loss to someone else, such as in the case of an exuberant toleware chandelier of a daisy bouquet, and an old portrait repainted as a “secret mermaid”, I bought it.

 If I could wait, I tried to walk away. Trends come and go in antiques; that is the game. Dealers must source items cheaply that they anticipate will heat up. They then price popular items to meet demand, while trying not to price them so high that they will be unable to shift their wares before the trend passes.

  

At Brimfield, green Depression-era jadeite glassware was everywhere, commanding top dollar from shoppers. Coloured Pyrex glass, basically free a decade ago, is so expensive as a hip collectible that a co-ordinating set of mixing bowls cost more than $100. 

The crowd this July was both much larger than the summer market usually attracts, and much younger, dealers say. “The antiques revival, it’s a lot of fun stuff,” says Pearl, a Brimfield dealer who was selling Pyrex and mid-century glassware, suddenly hugely popular with younger customers.

 “And it’s really thanks to your generation.” I couldn’t help myself. I found a bright pink Pyrex casserole dish for a semi-reasonable price and got right on the bandwagon.

Price is a delicate balance for dealers. Pyrex has almost priced itself out of its own customer base, dealers say, hitting the upper threshold of what young customers are willing and able to pay, and risking the end of the vibrant trend. Social media has amplified this cycle for dealers. The speed of trends “is absolutely crazy,” says Zollinhofer from Junk Merchant. Images of interiors spread widely online and create dominant aesthetics in record time. Design-conscious consumers pay top dollar to stay on trend, driving up prices. 

While longtime dealers say trends used to ebb and flow slowly, over the course of maybe 15 years, “now a trend lasts a third of that, if that,” according to Zollinhofer. Humans are predisposed to covet thy neighbour’s spindle bookshelves and rattan coffee tables. “Happy for antiques dealers, sad for myself,” one interior designer says. “Antiques are a quicksand path straight to the bottom,” one dealer said to a friend. He was talking about the lifestyle, but I felt in that moment he was talking to me. By the second day and second 5am wake-up, I had not found a table for my fantasy of hosting dinner parties, and I was bereft. 

There had been a few, but they had either been wildly out of my price range or wildly out of proportion to my little apartment. But then, as if by magic, there one was. It was rougher and darker than I had been hoping for. It had been an oyster shucking table, the dealer told me, in the same family for generations. It had history. Someone else was interested in it, too.

 I had reservations. It wasn’t basically free, which was the price I had been hoping for. But not daring to walk out of eyesight of the table lest it be snatched away, I realised it was the one. There was romance, I thought, in being able to tell all its future admirers that it had been an oyster shucking table. After a polite, painful negotiation, it was mine. My mom and I got fancy french fries for lunch, split a beer and celebrated our victory to the tune of the live folk band. 

The soaring highs of a flea-market score are matched only by the crushing lows of having to schlep that item to its eventual home. I think it was the moment, 10 hours and a long drive later, sweaty and crying with frustration in the staircase of my fourth-floor walk-up because my romantic farmhouse table wouldn’t fit through the apartment door, that it really hit me: Ikea has a point.

When my romantic farmhouse table wouldn’t fit through the door, it hit me: Ikea has a point There is a specific joy in buying new furniture delivered to your door — the colour options, fixed prices and mud-less showrooms. I understand why people buy it. Wayfair, matching sets from Pottery Barn — all of it. 

By the fourth time I tried to hang my daisy bouquet chandelier and get all the bulbs to work, I was at the end of my rope. The dealer had told me it would be easy. Not all stories dealers tell you are God’s honest truth, it turns out. Why can’t my apartment just be done, I lamented to my father-cum-handyman as he left for the third time, intending to return a week later with yet another rare lamp part for my blasted chandelier. 

Why had I been so foolish as to think I could do all of this second-hand? I had run out of the will to go on. “Ah. That’s just life,” my dad said, turning around. “If everything is done, you’re dead.”  It has been painful to learn to live in the incompleteness of it. To accept that my apartment does not look exactly like my Pinterest vision. Second-hand furniture by definition doesn’t always match, and the line between cosy and cacophonous is a fine one. Making mistakes is part of the process.

 I spent too much money on things I should have walked away from. I got into a competitive bidding war on eBay and bought a wood lamp with two galloping horses that I determined was the hokiest lamp in the world. But successes have a way of softening your memory. With the right burlap shade, the lamp feels chic and unique. It is now the focal point of my living room. 

Second-hand furniture can be addictive not just because of the thrill of the now hard-to-find bargain, but because of the story. I love my home and its slightly granny-chic vibe. It feels like me. I found each of these items one by one, and loved them enough to drag them here. 

When friends come over and admire my weathered old table, I can tell them about its oyster shucking history. And then I will tell them about how I will grow old in this apartment because I can never face moving it ever again. 

Madison Darbyshire is the FT’s US investment reporter Follow @FTProperty on Twitter or @ft_houseandhome on Instagram to find out about our latest stories first

Gino Volpato Architect