Tag Archives: antique

How to Decorate Your Home Bar

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If your home has a little home bar you want to it too look official – like a place that is reserved for entertaining. You don’t want it to look like a second guess or a place to throw mail, paper and other clutter. Also, if your bar is well put together you will be more inclined to use it.

Bars come in many different styles, shapes and sizes. Some are free-standing, some are pushed against the wall and others are simply walls with holes that ct like room dividers.

No matter what style your home bar is the real key is to give it a theme. That way you can tell it from one room to the next. Popular themes are Old Wild West, Rustic Prairie, German Beer Pub, Sixties Mod, English Pub, Space Age (think Stanly Kubrick 2001), James Bond Sportsbar, Carribean bar.

Make sure that you have nice BarStools that people can comfortably sit at when they visit your bar. A bar rail is also a nice touch. If you purchase your Bar Stools online make sure you pick up a  barstools.com discount code from a site like  DiscountStorm.com to save some money.

 

 

If you are a collector you can use the bar to display anything – like antique cars, dolls, or sports team memorabilia. One of the biggest touches you can give a bar has to do with kitsch. Decorate it with campy antiques for a unique effect.

You might also want to think about the color of your bar. You can use a bar to mix, match with or balance out with other colors in the room. If you really are into decorating you can make the bar the focal point of a room A bar that is red and black and glittering with mirrors is likely to get everyone’s attention immediately.

You can also create all kinds of dramatic effects around your bars. You can add recessed lighting or Christmas lights. You can also add old fashioned Tiffany lights or novelty lights to give it a special glow. You could also consider adding a disco ball, feathered diode centerpieces and clocks with moving images. Lava lamps also add nice lighting and kitschy effects to bars as well. A dimmer switch on your bar prevents it from glittering too brightly when you would rather not draw a lot of attention to it.

If you have an ugly looking bar you can reface it with bamboo sticks to make it look like a Hawaiian bar. Some people have even inset full aquariums in the body of their bar to make it more interesting.

How to Decorate With Antique Lamps

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There is nothing that adds more elegance and automatic ambience to a room’s décor than an antique lamp. They are fantastic objects to have in a dining room or living room because they not only make a personal statement about you but because they are great conversation pieces. There is nothing like a 1930s big chandelier with large drops of ice hanging from it to help break the ice with your dinner companions.

One of the most interesting antique lamp fads that is around lately is the passion for chandeliers made out of deer antlers. These date back as far as the 1890s and straight through to today. They were standard lamp fixtures in medieval times in Europe (as they do have a bit of a pagan flair to them) but they are also considered to be part of American and Canadian furniture kitsch.

However keep in mind that when you buy one of these deer chandeliers that it is not always that politically correct. Some unscrupulous dealers are selling this type of thing on eBay as being made out of found antlers when what they have done is take the antlers off of live deer. This is a big ecological no-no. You are safest to look in antique shops and for chandeliers that look like they have been found on the ground. These antlers will not have sawed off ends. If they do have sawed off ends you might start the wrong type of conversation at your dinner party especially if you have invited any conservationists.

Yet another very popular type of kitsch antique lamp that is being manufactured right now is the “Sexy Leg Lamp.” This is the lamp that was featured in the movie “The Christmas Story.” It consists of a plastic molded ladies leg wearing a black high heel and it is topped with a shade that looks like a burlesque dancer’s skirt. If you have one of these in your home, your guests are sure to point out that “you have the same lamp that Ralphie’s Dad does.”

A kind of lamp that is getting harder and harder to find but used to be a common sight on top of television sets all over the world is the classic ceramic black panther that is topped with a shade made from paper pressed with glitter.

Perhaps the most popular of the antique lamps are the lava lamps. It is getting harder and harder nowadays to find a real lava lamp from the fifties or sixties. The knock offs that can be had for twenty dollars and be bought in a hardware store are simply not as nice as the ones you find on eBay or in antique shops. This is because the newer replicas tend to be a lot smaller then the original lava lamps that were sometimes tall enough to reach your knee. They also often contain glitter instead of the “lava” and their design is not as nice. If you manage to find a real lava lamp from the fifties then the design from the Atomic Age is certain to become a conversation starter.