I have been doing this most of my life due to circumstance! My mom and dad grew up in the depression, with furniture from their parents coming of age during the teens and 20's. Then when the 'rents were just starting out in their own dwellings, they had mid century modern stuff, in reaction to the victorian and art nouveau stuff they grew up with. Then when my parents got more financially comfortable, my mom went heavily into the victorian style, the style of HER grandmother. So I ended up with all the art nouveau, art deco and mid century cast offs from my folks who were sick of them. Now, my house is full of stuff from MY grandmothers and my folks early stuff. Then, when I started out on my own, I got influence heavily by IKEA, and I do like the Danish modern style. There's no one all encompassing look to all of these styles so of course the right pieces can be mixed and matched. Well made and tastefully designed furniture of any era can be reworked. I have to laugh and laugh at the tacky re-interpretations going on nowdays of the 60's styles I grew up with, I guess that was kinda late mid century modern. What was tacky back then is still just as tacky, even tackier. But what was classic back then still works. Good lines and good materials can be worked with, and fabrics can be updated and re-interpreted. But it does take a certain eye to recognize an old tattered gem that can be reworked. And knowing what's good and what's chaff. I have to laugh thinking about growing up with old Eames wire mesh chairs rotting in the garage and thinking they were the ugliest things going. Mom finally resurected them and painted over the rust and now they are hip hot antiques! Now that they've been placed in a more fitting setting I like them a lot. But I still couldn't tolerate a whole house full of chrome! Here is a link that might be useful: Eames wire chairs

Great, thanks! Aprilneverends, though I do love that armoire it is a bit too big for the room...I knew that as soon as we moved in. It doesn't leave much room between the end of the bed and the front of it to get to the left side of the bed. The dresser we're looking at is about 6 inches smaller in depth which will really help with moving around in the room. So I think it's for the best for me and the armoire to part ways and it can go to someone else who will love it as well hopefully.

I could echo a lot of what everyone wrote. Especially allison's list of things that have remained the same. The only difference is that I'm not as keen on fall colors. I love blue and white in fabrics as well as transferware, yellow (especially for walls), and have been adding more green and red/coral in recent years. My taste has been pretty consistent over the years (I'm in my mid-50s). I started off like shivece, following my parents' style with the comfortable couch, classic chairs, Persian rugs, but ended up going off in a more English country direction. Plus my parents were never interested in antiques, unfortunately. In high school I started buying shelter magazines and tearing out pages which I kept in a binder which I took to college with me lol. I remember swooning over and dreaming about floral Sanderson curtains back then. I've always loved the English country look, well-worn and well-loved full of interesting and meaningful things. Since high school and college, I've pretty much refined and distilled my tastes. I'm much less tempted by decorating "tangents" now that I'm more certain and confident in my tastes. The major change I think has been a change in preference from blowsy, chintz-y florals to more restrained florals and block prints. I have to be careful all the time to remember to vary the size of prints because I'm naturally drawn to smaller prints. In my late 20s, I had first a rental and then a co-op apartment in NYC, where I was born and raised, and a good job and was able to start buying some good furniture to the vintage pieces I'd bought. A few antiques, a good sofa, some nice reproduction pieces from Baker. At the time, Macy's and Altman's had beautiful furniture departments (with antique, new, and reproduction items), and ABC Carpet & Home wasn't trendy and overpriced. Things came to a screeching halt in terms of decorating style a few years later when I married and moved to a farm in rural western Canada. This was before the internet, and the only place to buy furniture that wasn't a six-hour roundtrip was Sears. My husband had bought the farm with a sad little farmhouse just before we met (terrible timing). He had painted everything a cold hospital white (he thought it looked clean), painted the baseboards a cool light grey because he thought it was practical (this was in the early 90s so he was ahead of the curve lol), in the kitchen a horrible white, grey, and mauve-y pink sheet vinyl flooring, and in the rest of the house, cheap grey wall-to-wall carpeting. The only furniture he had was, echoes of czarinalex, a horrible 70s sofa -- orange, mustard, and dark brown acrylic plaid -- and matching swivel/rocking arm chair. The place looked better with my furniture (the sofa got exiled to the basement, and the chair stayed with a sheet over it because it was VERY comfortable and made a great nursing chair for three kids in five years), though I could never get my Persian rug to stop "creeping" in the living room over the wall to wall carpet. We did repaint the walls, but all of the flooring stayed until it wore out and could be replaced; plus we knew we wanted to build a new house and wanted to save our money for that instead of replacing what was, as my grandparents would have said, "serviceable". I did manage to find some gems here and there -- like the large Chinese blue and white fishbowl planters I found at a garage sale (which I keep ferns in). And then the internet arrived, and I was able to read and learn more, including at GardenWeb and blogs (for the love of a home, Ben Pentreath, etc) and find stores and shops online, esp Etsy and Ebay. About nine years ago my parents died and left a NYC apartment full of stuff like oriental rugs and Kindel and Henkel Harris furniture, and a vacation house in the Caribbean with a few things. Through some hard work and creativity, we were able to bring back a number of things, and planned around them for the new house we finished building last year. It's not always easy to hang tight when a favorite all of a sudden becomes trendy. Though living in the back of beyond, sometimes it's helpful when certain things -- like ikat, suzani, block prints, blue and white porcelain/ceramics -- become popular because then they end up at places like Anthropologie, Pottery Barn, and Winners/TJ Maxx where I have access to them : ) . Especially when the trend is truly over and done with, and the markdowns are huge lol. allison, my parents were firm believers in your rule #1 and I've tried to follow it but sometimes it can be hard, especially living here when I'm never sure what I might be able to find/source.

I've replaced part of my original toggle switches with the more modern looking decorator/rocker switches. The original switches, outlets, and wall plates were almond colored. The new switches I've installed are white. I have not started replacing outlets yet. I believe I have 27 outlets to change. I could save money on replacement of outlets by installing the older Residential Duplex Outlets style instead of Residential Decorator Outlets. But, I would rather not do this if it would look odd. Interested in opinions.