Champagne taste on a lemonade budget: How to thrift for your home in high style

Irish Independent

25-04-2025

Thrifting may be the latest trend in interiors, but it describes the age-old practice of buying other people's items for a fraction of the cost of buying new.
Laurel Harry, who lives in Utah, USA, posts about thrifting on Instagram under 'The House that DIY Built'. Her talent is in finding interesting items and integrating them into a stylish interior.
'Are there a lot of thrift stores in Ireland?' she asks, when we talk on the phone. She has three thrift stores right by her house but also travels to out of the way places. 'The smaller and less popular the shops, the better things I find.'
Harry's favourite discoveries include a brass cactus, about 90cm tall. 'It was very cool looking and it lived in our house for a long time – maybe three years – and then I wanted to switch things up and I decided it was time to sell it. I took it to a holiday market at Christmas time, and someone bought it. I was a little sad but I'm not missing it.'
Thrifting has everything going for it – it's enjoyable, sustainable and cheap. It satisfies the urge for novelty in a non-wasteful way. Objects you're tired of, or that no longer match your decorative style, can go right back into the circular economy. The key is knowing when to let go.
'You get that high from the treasure hunting – but my house can't fill it all – now I have room to get more pieces!' Harry says.
Later, she sends me a link to an Instagram reel about the cactus. It shows her taking the cactus on a picnic, bringing it to the playground, and tucking it up in bed (all to the tune of You're My Best Friend by Queen). It's very funny but also makes an important point. Old pieces have personality. They become part of our story and we become part of theirs.
Several of Harry's posts address the interesting theme of making thrift store items less ugly. In this, she's naming the elephant in the room. Inexpensive second-hand items are often hideous. This is why I dislike the smug and often inaccurate term 'pre-loved'. If its former owners loved the thing so much, why did they give it away? Maybe they loathed it.
Like any skilled thrifter, Harry can see the potential in unprepossessing objects. 'I found a brass stand with an ugly crackled glass vase inset. I didn't like the glass – it looked so dated – but it was the simplest thing to reimagine it. I took the glass out and turned the brass piece into a planter. Now it's on my mantelpiece.'
Catherine Carton of Dainty Dress Diaries is a DIY enthusiast and dedicated thrifter. 'I purchased a sofa and a mattress,' she says. 'Everything else in my house is second hand. I paid €50 for my bedframe on Adverts. It was your typical orange pine, but I sanded it back and repainted it.'
ADVERTISEMENT
Learn more
Last weekend, she went to a car boot sale in Balbriggan. 'I heard you had to get there early so I arrived at 7am and it was really busy. That's when you get stuff cheapest.'
Thrifting is time consuming. A day spent in charity shops or car boot sales may yield nothing and there's no guarantee of success. This is why the best thrifters are those who enjoy the process. 'You have to love the thrill of the hunt,' Carton says. 'It's not as instant as going to Ikea. I enjoy a good rummage. That's the nosiness in me.'
Often, she finds herself confronted by an object that she'd like to learn more about: 'I'd always take a picture of it and do an image search on Google. It'll bring up images of that item that might be for sale elsewhere. It's a handy little hack to get a bit more info on an item and you can also find out if someone is over-charging.
"For example, I bought a random cat teapot at a market for 50 cents and discovered it was a Chinese Luck Cat teapot from the 1960s.'
To discover car boot sales, vintage fairs and markets in your area, she recommends Collect Ireland: 'It's a really useful resource!'
'I've always had an eye for turning the unloved into treasure,' says Sarah Twigg Doyle, an interior stylist and designer based in Bray, County Wicklow. 'And I hate the idea of furniture going to skips.'
While skip-diving was once a niche pursuit, she feels the tide is changing. 'Some of the older generation still like having everything new, but that's to do with history and not having had money in the past. The younger generation are ready to embrace thrifting. They're totally on the ball.'
Programmes like The Salvage Squad – a makeover series on Virgin Media Television – feed into the thrifting zeitgeist. Twigg Doyle works on the show as the stylist on reveal days and also behind the scenes. 'I'm buying and sourcing things for the show,' she says. 'It's all about having champagne taste and a lemonade budget!'
Her top tip is to carry a notebook and a measuring tape everywhere you go. If you're looking for something specific, it's prudent to be organised. People go wrong when they fall in love with something, buy it, and then find out it's not the correct size for the space.'
She also cautions against buying something just because it's cheap: 'Think about the quality of a piece. If it's a little bit broken, do you have the skill to fix it? Do you know someone who does? If it's a wooden piece, double check it's not been munched by our woodworm friends.' Twigg Doyle is not afraid of woodworm. 'I know it can be treated and I kind of like the holes, they add to the character of a piece.'
Her favourite finds include a mahogany cabinet, now in her sitting room. 'It was on a zero waste page on Facebook and absolutely free. It was a little bit damaged so I painted it in Annie Sloan's Olive, with gold detail on the scrolling, and sanded it back so it looks like it's always been there.'
Currently in pride of place on the cabinet, a stylish looking lamp once cost her €20 from Pete's Antiques.
'It had an awful shade and flower relief detailing. I'm sure it was someone's idea of beautiful… I used Polyfilla over the detailing to fill in the gaps, and a mixture of sand, bicarbonate of soda and paint to give the texture of rough plaster.' The shade is new and came from Distrikt by Mia in Wicklow. 'For an interior to be successful there has to be a balance – that friction of old and new together.'