The Beauty of New and the Joys of Old.

Since entering the world of home ownership, both Tim and I have been able to think of little else but how blessed we are. We are incredibly overwhelmed by this gift of a home and have been trying to enjoy the adventure of buying the needed appliances and furnishings. I say "trying" because it is not natural for either of us to spend money. We have lived on a very tight budget since getting married and have always tried to be frugal with our purchases. This whole "go to Sears and buy a new fridge" deal is new territory.

The idea of "buying new" is also tough to wrap my brain around because I have always been happy to fix up old things. Actually, I LOVE to fix up old things. So, though we are blessed to have so wonderful new things in our new home, I am thrilled about a few of the old things we are working on fixing up as well.

Here is last weekends project...

My in-laws have had a pile of old wood in their back yard since they built their home 20 years ago. The wood pieces varied in size and were left over from the beautiful beams they used to decorate their house. Tim and I have had our eye on the wood for a few years now and always imagined using the wood for a reclaimed coffee table like this lovely piece from Restoration Hardware:

After thinking it through, however, we decided a rough wood coffee table was an unsafe option for small children and that at this point in our lives, the stuffed ottoman was still the way to go.

We began to dream up new ideas for the cool, weathered wood and settled on making a headboard for our new bedroom. Though we saw a few ideas that were inspiring, we had our own vision for what we wanted and began working on it this past weekend. 

First my very talented husband and father-in-law cut the boards and arranged them into 2x4s. 

Sawyer helped draw up the plans :).

 

Then they put in the big black bolts, first- to hold up the beams, and second- to make it look cool.

We thought we were done once the bolts were in but then my father-in-law brought out these beauties from his shed...

My in-laws bought these antique door hinges at a garage sale over 25 years ago. We cleaned them up, painted them,  roughed them up again and set them on the headboard to see what they would look like...

Now we have the option of making the headboard look like an old door. We haven't bolted the hinges on yet because we ran out of the right sized bolts. What do you think??? Should we go plain and just have the wooden planks or do we add the bolts and make our own door-like headboard?

Either way, I am in love with this headboard and thankful to my husband and father-in-law for putting it together. 

Here is the bedspread from Anthropologie that I think would pair well with the headboard:

Of course I would never pay the $300 dollars to purchase this beauty so here is the affordable alternative from West Elm that I am seriously considering: 

What do you think???