Family Room One Room Challenge, Week 2: Sourcing Art and Frames

If you are new to my blog, welcome! I’m Sanda Stojakovic and I’m the creator of My Design Playbook. A year ago my husband and I bought a 1970 Colonial house that needed many updates but we were so excited about this purchase that we knew we could turn this house into our home. Ever since we started on this journey to modernize our house I realized that we really enjoy this type of work and it quickly turned into something we love doing together. Follow along as we renovate our family room over the next few weeks for the Spring 2020 One Room Challenge and mark your calendar for the final reveal on June 25th!

Fall 2019 ORC can be found here.

If you missed Week 1 of my one room challenge, I shared that I will be updating our family living room into Parisian inspired chic apartment. What that means to me is lots of wall moulding and modern/contemporary art with pops of gold accents. Majority of my week was spent sourcing art pieces that would complement the design aesthetic I have chosen. There are a couple of lessons that I have learned along the way that led me to scoring some great art pieces which I will share in this post.

WHERE TO SOURCE FOR AFFORDABLE ORIGINAL ART

Given our current situation where a lot of stores are closed due to Covid-19, I felt that it was important to get creative and start finding items I need for renovation early and without relying on stores reopening to get what I needed. When I started shopping online, I discovered that many items on my list such as rugs and light fixtures were also sold out without any kind of indication as to when they would be in stock again. I found that it would probably be the easiest to scout for Art online because surely I could find at least prints that are not sold out. The more I search, the more I realized that I would really like to have some original pieces of art but the price of these originals was in the thousands. My research for affordable original art pieces led me to Facebook Marketplace and Ebay with Facebook marketplace being the place where I had the most success scoring great works of art. All Art pieces found were purchased without contact via porch pickup.

The first art piece I found was an original abstract signed piece by T. Graham that still had the price tag attached of $669 which I got for $20. Yes you are reading this correctly and no I’m not missing another zero.

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The next painting I sourced on Facebook marketplace is also an abstract piece signed by an artist named Roth. This piece is an oversized framed painting that would sell for probably a couple of hundred dollar in a gallery somewhere. I go this one for a similar price as the above painting.

The only parts of this painting that I’m questioning is the red brush strokes. Red is not a color I incorporated into my color scheme but I feel there is not that much red present where I would need to consider incorporating the color throughout the room. This art piece below has a little red which I think will complement the new piece really well.

One of my favorite finds of the week, also via Facebook marketplace is not a painting. It is this antique gold frame. A solid frame like this goes for hundreds of dollar but I got this one way less than $50. I really love finding frames because they give me freedom to choose the painting I want to incorporate.

I have found many more painting and frames on Facebook marketplace that I’m not listing here because they are not going to be added to the family room I’m updating for the ORC. Since I have had so much success sourcing a lot art, I thought I would share some things I have learned throughout this process that I hope helps you what you are searching for.

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM SHOPPING ON FACEBOOK MARKETPLACE

While searching for items on Facebook Marketplace I learned a few things that made me more successful this time around than I have been all the other times I have tried. I guess it takes months of practice in my case to figure some of this out.

Lesson #1: Check frequently.

Great items on marketplace get sold extremely fast. There has been instances where a new item I have been looking gets listed and within an hour the seller has multiple offers. It’s important to check frequently so that you are the first person to see the item and make an offer.

Lesson #2: If you love the item, make a FULL offer.

While we all are trying to get the best deal, we have to remember two things: sellers sometimes will have a hard time letting go of their item and most likely seller will have multiple offers. Offering full price will ensure that you are chosen as the person they will sell their item to. Obviously you want to offer full price if you really think it is worth the full price but in my experience majority of the time it is and any time I have offered less than full price, I realized I didn’t love it as much as I though I did. Which leads me to the next lesson.

Lesson #3: Don’t buy anything you don’t love.

This is sometimes easier said than done. If you are browsing and you see an item you were not looking but you are considering buying, it helps to ask yourself, what you love about it. I also ask myself if I would purchase the same item at the store if the item was selling for full price. This questions really makes me think about how much I really like the item and if the answer is yes, then I make a full price offer.

Lesson #4: Set a pickup date as soon as possible.

A lot of sellers want someone who can pick up the item quickly, giving preference to buyers who promise to pick item up the same day. While this is not true in all case, as I have received message of sellers telling me the item I’m interested is being picked up by someone the following day, I have noticed that I have more success in buying an item if I mention that I’m available to pick up the same day.

Well that’s a wrap for week two. Thanks for stopping by and cheering me on this fun journey. Next week I will be tackling wall moulding designs so stay tuned and don’t forget to check out other ORC room makeovers here.

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See you next week!

Sanda