The 10 Best Design Blog Posts You May Have Missed

June 24 marked my blogging anniversary — I have been blogging every Saturday now for 1 year! That’s 58 original long-form posts, along with 8 stories for New Hampshire Magazine, 3 stories for Around Concord Magazine and a couple of guest posts. Not to mention, my design work has gotten really busy thanks to my lovely clients!

I couldn’t be more thrilled! My 8 years in PR and marketing have definitely been a help in being able to brainstorm and pitch stories and write on a deadline. I also hugely credit my 10th grade English teacher, who was a fiend about demanding good writing. I never would have thought I could put that training to use doing something I really loved!

The Saturday Blog hasn’t become huge in any way, but I have a nice list of subscribers now and decent monthly stats (though still small peanuts compared to what advertisers want to see 😉 ). It’s my belief that blogs that are big began when blogging was really taking off 5-10 years ago. I began this blog to get my opinions out there, share some lessons learned, and hopefully interest new design clients. So far, I’m pretty satisfied with the results, and if you are reading this, I hope you are, too!

That being said, I’ve written some pretty meaty posts this year that you may have missed if you jumped on this bandwagon in more recent months! Some of these are still getting good traction, others have been forgotten (maybe I didn’t do the SEO optimization right or something back then), but I think these have some gold nuggets of info that you won’t want to miss — especially if you (like me!) have champagne taste but a beer budget when it comes to decorating your home. Stick around to the end for next week’s teaser — you won’t find my topic anywhere else, so you’ll definitely want to know about it.

Enjoy!

So Granny Chic: High Quality Brown Furniture is Always En “Vogue”

One of the biggest quality-adding, cost-saving measures you can take in your own home is adding in some Baby Boomer Brown — brown furniture that is. The Boomers are down-sizing, and they’re having a hard time even giving this stuff away. In this post, I have fabulous examples of how to incorporate these pieces without aging your home, and I even have the brands of furniture you should be looking for.

How Far Would You Go for Cheap Upholstery?

Reupholstering furniture can cost a small fortune, almost as much as buying new. In this post I explore a little known option for reupholstery that will make you feel like you’ve gotten a steal — you just may have to go to prison to get it.

Auction Steals & Deals Pt. II: How to Find, Bid, and Buy from the Block

Move over mega eBay, Etsy, and antique sellers, because I’m revealing your source! Auctions. Can you believe this chandelier sold for $400?!?! Yep, could’ve been yours. This post is my how-to guide, and includes some of my go-to auction sources.

4 Fresh Ways to Use Your Parents’ Formal Dining Room Set

Ok, this post has been pretty popular, but if you missed it, it’s worth reading — especially if you’re balking at taking your parents formal brown furniture.

Cost Comparison: Big Box vs. the Decorator

Don’t know where designers get all those cool trade-only things? Think you can’t afford a unique home? If you can afford the stuff in the Big Box catalogs that come to your mailbox, you probably can. In this post, I take a room page from a well-known home furnishings catalog, use the same budget, and create a unique room using trade-only sources at my wholesale prices. I even work in a design fee.

Custom Couture: 2 Amazing Etsy Sources for Bespoke Lampshades

Sure, Irving & Morrisson, along with a number of other British vendors that don’t export, have stunning lampshades, but can you afford them? I can’t. But now I have a place to go to get the same look while giving work to 2 fantastic artisans at prices most of the middle class can afford.

Let Your Light Shine (Or, How to Create a Lighting Plan that Flows without Boring Yourself to Death)

This post was a part of last fall’s ORC, but there are some good rules of thumb for creating an open floor plan lighting scheme that is anything but matchy-matchy.

The Myth of Mega Framing Sales: “M” vs. Main Street

Another post from my ORC time, but I include a big myth-buster about those huge framing discount coupons you get in the mail. Give the folks on Main Street a chance and read this behind-the-scenes post.

Why Your Gray Room Turned Blue (or Green or Purple) and How to Fix It

Will the real Revere Pewter please stand up?

Big post about understanding paint formulations and the undertones they create and how all sorts of things — lighting, reflectivity, etc. — affect the color. If you’re considering painting a room a neutral color, or if you’ve already messed up, read this.

The Knotty Pine Problem: 3 Alternatives to Painting It All

This post has also been pretty popular because of people Google searching ideas to making their pine paneling problems go away. I love it because it’s lake cottage time again, and New Hampshire lake cottages make me very, very happy.

Did you catch all those posts already, or did I show you something new? I hope I piqued your interest in searching my archives!

Next week, I’m back with an AMAZING vintage chandelier source that I’ve never seen mentioned anywhere else on any other blog (except by me, once, and very obliquely). They don’t sell on eBay, Etsy, Chairish or 1st Dibs, so unless you’re a Google searching fiend, you won’t know about them. Now, thanks to my recent family vacation, I’ve actually been able to visit the source and see the vastness of the available merchandise.

It’s one you won’t want to miss. See you next Saturday!

-Amy