Cottage on a Shoestring

I was talking on the phone this morning with my friend A, who lives in Pennsylvania. (Hello, A!) She told me that she has been enjoying the stories here about the cottage, and she really loves reading about the "treasures" we've found for Mayberry.

When we were thinking of investing in a little lake cottage, I knew that we could furnish it without spending a lot of money. Except for the mattresses (bought new at a discount mattress store) I was certain that I could find mostly everything else at local yard sales, moving sales, resale and consignment stores, and antique stores. (Lots of bargains at the small antique shops, contrary to popular belief.)

Most of the kitchen items for Mayberry came right out of my kitchen here. Extra dishes, bowls, glassware, cooking items. I found an entire set of flatware at our friend J's antique shop, which didn't cost me anything because I traded two vintage beaded purses for the silverware set. Our friends L and S gave us their old set of pots and pans, because they had just bought a new set for their kitchen. That "old" set they gave us for the cottage looks great and cooks perfectly fine.

Our neighbor ML had given us her "old" upholstered club chair with a matching ottoman, which is now the most comfortable reading spot in the living room of Mayberry. ML also gave me an antique writing desk, which now holds the guest book, also in the cottage living room.

The vintage wicker furniture that's at Mayberry came right out of our screen-porch here, and I replaced it with some of the outdoor furniture that I had in the yard. The wicker chairs look much better in the living room of the cottage than they did on the screen-porch here. I'm sure my cats miss the large wicker chairs here on their porch, but they're sleeping just fine on the smaller cushions of the lawn-furniture-turned-porch-furniture.

I found so many odds and ends for the cottage at the yard sales... brass lamps, small end tables, decorative nautical items, pictures and mirrors for the walls, the list is just endless.... and the cost for everything was very minimal. Yard sale prices for all of it. And even the few things that we've found so far at the antique shops up in town by the lake--- the kitchen table and chairs, the mirror for the living room... all were more than reasonably priced because we bought from antique dealers who had marked down their inventory for quick sales.

The most we spent, so far, was for the three major appliances-- the fridge, the washer, and the dryer. Even at that, we went to Lowe's and found a marked-down discontinued washing machine (less than $200), and a fridge without an ice-maker and all those other bells & whistles (for less than $500). We had to buy a gas dryer because the cottage doesn't have the hook-up for an electric one, but I bought a bottom-of-the-line gas dryer for less than $350. My original plan was to just buy the fridge and wait for the washer/dryer, but when we found them at good prices, I thought that would be the easy way to go, rather than bringing back the dirty laundry to do here, then having to bring it back up to the cottage with us.

The key with taking care of two houses is to keep organized, keep lists, and keep everything neat. It's much easier to keep a neat house clean than to clean up a messy house, as my Aunt Dolly would say. Maybe that's why I'm so neat...... I heard Aunt Dolly saying that for all the years of my New York life.

I've already been to the dollar store this week, to find things on my list that we needed for Mayberry--- rubber spatulas for the kitchen, coffee mugs, paper napkins, a water dish for Gracie that I can keep on the back porch. The stuff is already packed and ready to go and hidden in a corner of my sitting room. No last-minute packing frenzy here.

There are more yard sales this week, so I'll be going to those, and hopefully finding more treasures for Mayberry. That's been a lot of fun..... not knowing what we'll find from week to week. And I've been keeping my promise--- the cottage is casual and lake-y, not fussy and frilly. Sort of shabby-chic, with more emphasis on the shabby, not the chic.