When looking for a chic yet cheap way to decorate your home, think retro. To transform your family room into a cool pad, start with the basics: album covers and a funky rug.







First, stop by a local hardware store and pick up a heavy-duty staple gun (about $20.00) and get a full box of staples. Then, stop by the local Salvation Army, Goodwill and other thrift stores to browse the record collections and gather a variety of records from the sixties and seventies. While you are there, look at the used area rugs. Search for large rugs with sixties colors and motifs such as daisies, mushrooms, owls, paisleys, tulips, poppies, butterflies or an abstract design. The colors of the rug will be the color scheme for your artwork and wall hangings. Mine is in the retro shades of yellow and chartreuse with a daisy design. Keep in mind it may take several trips, but you'll know the perfect rug when you see it. Estate and garage sales are great places to look as well.

Getting Started

Ready to start? Spread the rug out on the floor and slip the vinyl records out of their covers and store them away. Load the stapler, and drag in a step stool. Cover your ceiling album cover by album cover until it is a collage of 60's and 70's music and culture. Congratulations, your ceiling and floor are now cool. Can you dig it?

Now it's time to furnish your pad. Matching 60's style wood and vinyl armchairs are a nice touch and an easy find. I picked up a set in black vinyl at an estate sale for $20.00 each. For the perfect touch I added two matching leopard skin pillows from a local discount store.

Sixties style light wood coffee and end tables are pretty easy to come by for about $20.00 a piece. Brightly colored plastic tables and bookcases are a retro must. Match them to the main color of your rug. My rug has a yellow theme, so I found plastic yellow tables nesting together at Goodwill for only $5.00.

Long, sleek, three-headed floor lamps are a good garage sale find for about $2.00 each. I have two — one yellow and one black. Funky pillows are retro necessities; keep your eyes peeled for cool possibilities. Any contemporary style sofa will work with retro if you have the right throw pillows; the odder the pillows are, the better they fit in with your decor.

But if you are on the hunt for a true retro sofa, look for bright vinyl. I once found two matching full size sofas in yellow vinyl, piled with matching vinyl pillows. The pillows were red on one side and yellow on the other. I currently have a very long, orange vinyl sofa. All three sofas were fifty dollars each and were found at thrift stores and estate sales.

These bright colored sofas of the sixties were actually made to imitate pieces of plastic. At the time, plastic was not refined enough with other substances to allow for the weight of several people on a sofa. So they constructed wooden furniture and wrapped it with vinyl to make it look like a plastic sofa. Since then, plastic has been improved so it has some flexibility and can sustain a good amount of weight.

Because so much vinyl was used in their making, these pieces can be costly to reupholster. Even if you are going for a comfortable, kid-proof look, try to keep the upholstery in good condition. These sofas are getting harder to find and their construction usually consists of a lot of costly upholstery work.

Accessories

Once you have a sofa, acquire a wide, contemporary, chrome and leather or chrome and vinyl chair. Twenty to fifty dollars is a fair price for a comfortable chair with a one-of-a-kind look.

For lighting, I use table lamps. One has a burlap shade and a bright orange porcelain base. The other lamp's base is yellow with raised cattails and flowers and the macramé lampshade is in natural hemp with oblong brown beads. You can pick up a macramé owl wall hanging in your color scheme, and get a set of inexpensive 60's or 70's artwork in the same color pattern. I found a three-piece abstract picture set by McCaine in yellow and chartreuse enhanced by yellow painted frames.

 Another example of great sixties art is a framed, black-light poster. Surprisingly, the more beat up the frame, the better it appears. Small tears in the poster are no problem, somehow they look right.

A favorite find of mine is two square floor pillows made of light brown, shag carpet. Piled one on top each other, they make for a roomy and comfortable foot cushion. Add more accessories here and there, such as a large sixties style ashtray, a peace sign candle or abstract mushroom candles. Paper flowers are a must. Fill up one of those free restaurant glasses for hurricanes or whalebones with different colored sand. Add ceramic figurines of owls and thin Siamese cats, and don't forget the plastic daisies.

A Cool Pad

Home decorating is a creative craft. It is taking an object millions of people have and using it in a way that makes it look as if it was made just for you. Your space is your own, so stamp it with your unique taste. After you're done decorating, share your space. Everyone digs a cool pad.