EuroLux Antiques Archives - Letters from EuroLux

Ask About Our Antique Furniture With Chat!

If you’ve visited our antiques and home accessories online store recently, you know that EuroLuxHome.com now has a snazzy new Chat function! This means you can send a quick text message through Chat to ask a question about any of the products for sale on our site, or ask if we are going to have a specific type of item in stock soon.

We frequently ship new containers of antiques from France and other parts of Europe, so if you get in touch and we have something suitable on its way, we might be able to give you the first scoop!

When you phone, email or use the Chat function to have a conversation with us, the person at the other end is usually me, Aimee. (Sometimes our many dogs and cats like to lend a helping paw too, but their typing isn’t quite fast enough for Chat yet!)

Greg often joins in on Chat too – he is the technical wizard in our family business, so if you send a Chat message, it’s just as likely to be him replying as me because he loves using Chat! Either way, we will do our best to help you, whether you are asking about one of our new pieces of hand-crafted, antique-inspired furniture or a century-old piece that Greg and I found in an antiques market in Paris and shipped back to the USA.

We pride ourselves on our high level of customer service. We get 100% positive feedback and very high positive marks on all the major sites where we sell, such as eBay and Chairish. We also have the Best of Houzz awards for customer satisfaction and service for several years.

Our goal is to keep to that high standard and improve our customer service even more, making life easier for customers to find the perfect antique furniture for their home, the ideal vintage home accessory or the newly crafted piece of furniture of their dreams, something that will maybe become a family heirloom. So now our website offers Chat!

Customers who have used it tell us that they love the Chat function! Everybody is multi-tasking these days so they can have a conversation with us about a piece while also doing other things. And if we need to leave the phone for a minute to research an answer for them or measure some specific dimension of a piece, they can carry on doing something else with their time till we return to Chat.

The only thing we can’t really do is give appraisals. If you have a piece that you want to sell, then read my blog post How to Sell Antiques and Vintage Items. We usually direct people to Worthpoint.com to find out the value of a piece.

So, whether you phone us on our toll free number: 866-602-9394 or email us or or hop over to the website at EuroLuxHome.com to use the Chat box to ask your question… give in to temptation and get in touch! We’d love to help!

Aimee owns EuroLuxHome.com with her husband and best friend, Greg. Aimee sources amazing antique furniture, vintage lighting, & high-quality reproduction furniture to help her customers decorate their homes in a unique way. She loves her 8 (you read that right) fuzzy children and is renovating a 1920s bungalow in South Carolina. Find us on Facebook or connect with EuroLux on Google+. Or you can sign up here to receive this blog in your inbox.

Vintage Life: The Mystery Behind the Sign

by EuroLux Home

We often tell you stories about the renovation of our 1920s vintage bungalow, but I’ve got a vintage story to tell you today about our buildings on Main Street, Newberry, SC.

In addition to the EuroLux Home gallery at 1409 Main Street (left) we also own 1407 Main Street. This is where Greg fixes computers and cell phones in his business, The Computer Doctor. (The EuroLux gallery is the drop off and pick up point for The Computer Doctor. We’re multi-talented here!)

That building has an upstairs loft which has never been renovated, nor used as anything other than non-air-conditioned storage space. When we purchased the building years ago, we planned to renovate, like our near-neighbors the Millers did in my post about Historic Newberry Main Street.

Here’s the loft. The photo is a bit dark because the windows are boarded up and all of the light bulbs were burnt out. I lugged a ladder up and changed them all but it remains pretty dark. It’s still is a very cool space and it has a neat story.

We intended to convert it into an upstairs loft apartment while expanding our business into the downstairs.
BUT! The best laid plans… We ended up finding our little vintage bungalow that we’re renovating and since it had a yard for the dogs, we decided that would be a better way to go than the loft. We still plan to renovate the loft in the future but for now let me just tell you the great old story about the building.

Back in the 1930s, Main Street in Newberry was a busy place. I shared some old-timey pictures in this Vintage Life blog post. It was the county seat, had the court house, and was the place to go shopping for all the folks that worked at the three cotton mills in town.

There were actually two hardware stores in the same block on Main street, owned by two competing Lominack cousins. Those were Lominack’s Hardware (where EuroLux Home is currently located at 1409 Main Street) and Frank Lominack’s Hardware at 1403 Main Street.

You can still see the numbers on the floor in the EuroLux Home Gallery marking the number of feet for the hardware store’s measurements of rope and chain. (The photo at left shows the 40 feet marker.)

We’ve also left the Lominack Hardware painted sign on the back of the building.

The story that I’ve heard said that the two cousins were always trying to one up each other in order to get more business by offering different products and services.

Frank Lominack’s Hardware decided to open a shooting range in the basement in order to corner the market and draw more folks into his hardware store. So the story goes, in November of 1934 a stray bullet hit the dynamite that was also stored in the basement and blew up the building!

You can see more about it in this old article in the Gastonia Daily Gazette. There was $200,000 of damage. That’s a lot of money today but in 1934 it was a huge amount of money!

We currently own 1405 Main Street and rent it out to our tenant, Expressions, a hair salon.

That previously 2 story building was occupied by a business called Livingston & Son General Merchandise at the time of the explosion. It was so damaged by the explosion that it had to be rebuilt, but the owner decided to only build it as a one-story building.

Our 1407 Main Street building was built after that business had opened, so the interior wall of 1407 Main Street actually shows the original painted advertisement that was on the exterior of the Livingston& Son building’s 2nd story.

That sure was a long explanation, but otherwise you wouldn’t understand how the advertising came to be on the inside wall of our building!

Today things aren’t quite as dramatic in our EuroLux gallery. Even all our cats and dogs play nicely together rather than competing with everyone within our fuzzy family. And I’m very relieved that Greg’s other business in the building is The Computer Doctor… NOT a shooting range!

Things We Love: EuroLux in the News & Talking Business

by EuroLux Home

EuroLux Antiques Newberry South Carolina

We were delighted when The State newspaper in Columbia said we are one of the reasons to visit Newberry! The article Five reasons to spend a summer Friday evening in Newberry suggested trolling for antiques in the number one spot. The journalist said: “Head to EuroLux for fine European and Asian furnishings.” Yay! Of course, if you can’t come and see us in person, you can still visit our EuroLuxAntiques.com online gallery.

Greg and I have also been doing the speaking circuit. We were recently invited to speak at the South Carolina Municipal Association Annual Meeting of all of the mayors in South Carolina. Our session was called Clicks Supporting Bricks. It was about how even small family-run stores and mom-and-pop merchants like us can harness the power of the Internet to run their businesses.

EuroLux Antiques online sales — Greg and Aimee (front left and center) talk about Clicks Supporting Bricks

You can read some of what we said in this article about Clicks Supporting Bricks. We talked about how EuroLux Antiques switched to e-commerce soon after opening our bricks and mortar store 10 years ago, even though fine antiques are one of the hardest things to sell online. As the article says about us: “At one point, they had 2,000 items for sale, and one piece might have 70 accompanying photos to highlight its details and intricate handiwork.”

Now 95% of our sales are via the Internet because we worked hard to build an excellent reputation as a trusted seller of high-quality European antiques. We pride ourselves on our customer service. (If you are nervous about shopping for antiques on the web, read my tips on How to Buy Antique Furniture Online.)

Aimee and Greg (center) talk at USC Moore School of Business

We also spoke to students in the Professional MBA program at the University of South Carolina Moore School of Business about entrepreneurship and what it’s like to own your own business. Dr. Richard Robinson has followed our story for the past 10 years since I wrote the original business plan for EuroLux in his Entrepreneurship class while I was working on my MBA at USC. We have spoken to his students several times throughout the years and I always enjoy encouraging folks to go out and chase their dreams.

Greg and I were at the University’s Columbia site, speaking to groups simultaneously and interactively in the Charlotte, Greenville and Charleston campuses. Some students who were on the road with their jobs in various spots around the country also tuned in live.

While it was very interesting to use the technology to reach so many folks in different locations, I definitely have to say it was a bit unnerving speaking via technology rather than being directly in front of an audience. I didn’t realize how much I depend on the non-verbal cues from an audience to feel comfortable while speaking.

I guess that even though our EuroLux business depends on web technology and Greg and I are very familiar with that, even we still have to get used to other forms of new technology!

Aimee owns EuroLuxHome.com with her husband and best friend, Greg. Aimee sources amazing antique furniture, vintage lighting, & high-quality reproduction furniture to help her customers decorate their homes in a unique way. She loves her 8 (you read that right) fuzzy children and is renovating a 1920s bungalow in South Carolina. Find us on Facebook or connect with Aimee on Google+ Or you can sign up here to receive this blog in your inbox.

Historic Newberry Main Street in the News

by EuroLux Home

EuroLux Antiques Gallery Newberry Main Street

We were delighted to see this TV news story about some friends of ours who just renovated a loft near our gallery on Main Street, Newberry, SC. Barbara and Franklin Miller are a very entrepreneurial couple. They also opened a “pop-up” retail space which featured local artists’ works including Franklin’s beautiful paintings. That “pop-up” venture is finished now but it’s another great example of the type of innovation happening here on Main Street!

In my last blog post celebrating the 10 year anniversary of EuroLux Antiques, I explained how we’d moved to Main Street in Historic Downtown Newberry about a year and a half after we started the business.

I have always been a big supporter of the City of Newberry and we’ve been very happy with our move to Main Street. The City of Newberry is very progressive and super-supportive of local merchants. I’ve served on marketing committees where the City has openly solicited feedback from merchants and engaged in a dialogue in order to listen to our ideas.

The City has also provided free Wi-Fi for the convenience of shoppers downtown, and it organizes quite a few festivals throughout the year. I’ve written before about how much Greg and I enjoy Newberry Oktoberfest. It’s just one of the events that draw people to our area. Visitors soon learn why we’re known as the City of Friendly Folks!

The City’s new initiative to provide a 90% grant for local business and property owners to fix up their buildings is fantastic in my opinion. I believe more than 20 businesses have participated. Their plans have ranged from fresh coats of paint for peeling buildings to beautiful, colorful awnings that brighten up the street.

EuroLux Antiques on Newberry Main Street — Flower boxes outside EuroLux Antiques and The Computer Doctor

The City recently planted trees up and down Main Street and even started a flower box program, where large planters were placed outside of businesses up and down Main Street and filled with seasonal flowers. All we have to do is promise to water them. I’d say that is a great deal!

The City also prints a Shopping and Dining Guide featuring all the downtown merchants, and does extensive radio, television, print and billboard advertising to draw folks from surrounding areas to Downtown. Historic Newberry is simply a wonderful place to do business and a great place to call home!

Our EuroLux Antiques gallery on Main Street doesn’t have an upstairs that we can convert into a loft like the Millers did. However, we also own 1407 Main Street, next door to EuroLux Antiques, where Greg fixes computers and cell phones in his business The Computer Doctor. That building does have an upstairs loft. When we bought the building years ago we planned to renovate, like the Millers did, and convert it into an upstairs loft apartment.

Our Newberry antiques gallery — Squiggy in the window, welcoming people to the gallery!

We ended up finding our little 1920s bungalow that we’re renovating. Since it had a yard for the dogs, we decided it was a better place to live than the loft. We do plan to renovate the loft in the future though as it is a very cool space. There is a neat historic story behind our Newberry Main Street building – I’ll tell you about that another time!

If you plan to visit us in Newberry, SC, you’ll find lots of good information at the City of Newberry’s website, including all the local shops and restaurants, and the places to go antiquing. Come by and say hi!

Aimee owns EuroLuxHome.com with her best friend, Greg. Aimee sources amazing antique furniture, vintage lighting, & high-quality reproduction furniture to help her customers decorate their homes in a unique way. She loves her 8 (you read that right) fuzzy children and is renovating a 1920s bungalow in South Carolina. Find us on Facebook or connect with Aimee on Google+ Or you can sign up here to receive this blog in your inbox.

Things We Love: The First 10 Years of EuroLux Antiques

by EuroLux Home

It’s been fun to look back over the past ten years of EuroLux Antiques as we celebrate our 10th anniversary and remember how far we’ve come. So much has changed – even our name and our location!

We actually started our business as EuroLux Imports – meant to convey that we were importing hand-selected, high-quality luxury goods from Europe. Our logo was a rampant lion with our name in script lettering. The lettering was so fancy you could hardly read it.

We soon found out that most folks understood the word “imports” as synonymous with “reproductions.” We had a serious credibility problem with folks not believing that our pieces were true antiques. So we changed our name to EuroLux Antiques and that seemed to solve the problem. (Now we’re actually considering changing our name to EuroLux Home, to reflect the fact that we have started to sell much more than just antiques!)

We also originally opened our business outside of Newberry on CR Koon Highway in a large metal pole building. Here is a glimpse of the outside and the inside of our original building.

I still remember the day our sign went up, I was so excited! It finally felt real – we really had our own business!

After a year and a half, we decided to move to Historic Downtown Newberry and we purchased our current gallery, a two story building at 1409 Main Street. All of the other antiques shops in Newberry were concentrated on Main Street, so we increased our walk-in traffic. And Downtown Newberry is so cool, we love being part of the neighborhood!

Also, the new gallery was much more convenient for receiving containers of European antiques. In our old space, we had to move everything to the walls so that we could unload directly into the middle of the room. Then the shop was a disaster for a week or more while we sorted everything out. Now we just unload directly into the basement level so that we don’t mess up the gallery!

We also enjoyed moving to Downtown Newberry as we joined a thriving community of other small business owners.

I was honored to serve as President of the Downtown Merchants Association for three years and Greg served as Treasurer too.

There is quite a bit happening in Downtown Newberry these days, but I’ll tell you about that another time. For now, we’re just happy to look back over our first ten years and share our journey with you. Thanks to all our customers who bought antiques from us, and who made it all such fun!

Aimee owns EuroLuxHome.com with her best friend, Greg. Aimee sources amazing antique furniture, vintage lighting, & high-quality reproduction furniture to help her customers decorate their homes in a unique way. She loves her 8 (you read that right) fuzzy children and is renovating a 1920s bungalow in South Carolina. Connect with Aimee on Google+ or you can sign up here to receive this blog in your inbox.

Best of April 2014: National Decorating Month

by EuroLux Home

April was National Decorating Month and I hope that our blog posts helped inspire ideas for your home! Let’s revisit some of our favorite antiques and decor posts from April.

Gray popped up as a hot decor trend for 2014, so in National Decorating Month I wrote a post on Gray Decor in the bedroom & living room. Gray is so adaptable. It works well with natural materials in a rustic country setting and in sophisticated city rooms. It’s great with exotic or heavy textures too, like this Castilian themed Ambella Home bedroom.

Our Madrid dining chairs client spotlight about Heidi’s chic dining room also emphasized the beauty of neutral colors. Heidi has a set of our linen-upholstered Spanish style chairs in her dining room. The pale gray paint on the walls and the light tones of the carpet and chairs give a fresh twist to the room’s traditional Spanish Mission style influence. Heidi’s dining room is perfectly timeless but also perfectly NOW!

Hand-painted ceramics add a colorful touch in National Decorating Month

For a splash of color, you don’t always need a big decorating project. I think it keeps the spirit of National Decorating Month to use smaller accents and creative touches to ring the changes in your home. For example, our client Bunny sent us this photo of her kitchen adorned with old Italian Deruta ceramics she bought from us. See more in our post on the sunny Mediterranean style of hand-painted Vintage Deruta Ceramics.

Antiques deals in National Decorating Month

During National Decorating Month, Greg and I worked hard at spring cleaning and sorting some of our older stock. The good news for you is that we’ve slashed prices by about 40% (or more!) on some beautiful antiques and vintage pieces that are still waiting for a good home. See some of our favorite bargains in our Spring Cleaning Antiques Deals post. Or visit EuroLuxAntiques.com to browse for deals on antique furniture, lighting, clocks, ceramics, and other smaller items.

Finally, we celebrate our 10th anniversary in 2014 and we’re having great fun remembering highlights from our early years. If you want to know what NOT to do when a slab of marble on an Art Deco sideboard breaks just before a major antiques show, read this post on our First Atlantique Antique Show. We had a Laurel and Hardy moment involving the marble, too much glue, and a glass-topped hotel table. It’s funny to look back on, even if it wasn’t so funny at the time!

Thanks for spending National Decorating Month with us. We’ll share more ideas and inspiration about antiques and home decor in May.

Aimee owns EuroLuxHome.com with her husband, Greg. Aimee sources amazing antique furniture, vintage lighting, & high-quality reproduction furniture to help her customers decorate their homes in a unique way. She loves her 8 (you read that right) fuzzy children and is renovating a 1920s bungalow in South Carolina. Connect with Aimee on Google+ or you can sign up here to receive this blog in your inbox.

Things We Love: Our First Atlantique Antique Show

by EuroLux Home

We’re celebrating our 10th anniversary here at EuroLux Antiques and today I’m remembering one of our “Laurel and Hardy moments” at our first Atlantique antique show. It is always fun to look back – to celebrate our successes and laugh at our follies – on our long journey that brought us to where we are today.

As I mentioned last month, we started the business by traveling to antique shows before we actually opened our Gallery. Our very first antique show in Atlanta was a disaster, but we certainly learned from our mistakes, and our next show in Charlotte was smooth sailing.

We did a few more shows in Atlanta and Charlotte before we decided to venture up north to the great big Atlantique antique show in Atlantic City, NJ, in March 2005. It was New Jersey’s largest and longest running indoor antique show with more than 500 vendors.

It was known as “the big one” among antique dealers that we met at the time and everyone said we just had to do it. We listened to the stories that old-timers like to tell newbies about wealthy customers sweeping in to the Atlantique antique show and buying up everything in a dealer’s booth. It sounded wonderful to us!

So Greg and I bought a 28-foot trailer and loaded it full of antique furniture and away we went, heading north on I-95. We arrived at the Atlantic City Convention Center and were impressed at how well they coordinated the load-in of more than 500 dealers – the sheer volume of antique inventory stretched several football fields!

While we were unloading a beautiful Art Deco Sideboard with three big pieces of marble, one of the pieces of marble tumbled out of its packaging and broke in half. Oh no!

Always resourceful, we went out to Lowe’s and bought supplies to repair the marble overnight in our hotel room. It was a very clean break, so we were able to glue and clamp it and set it aside to dry.

All seemed well until the next morning, when we realized that we had accidentally glued a big piece of the marble to the glass top table of our hotel room! Oh no again! Now what? (Are you laughing at us? No – we didn’t think about how the glue would ooze out of the bottom and adhere to the table! I told you we were green beans!)

We debated whether it was better to break the glass top or just abandon the marble – neither option was ideal. What to do, what to do? The Atlantique antique show was starting soon!

Our cabinet at Atlantique antique show — One of our cabinets at Atlantique

Greg decided to take a flathead screwdriver and see if he could gently pry it up without damaging either the glass top or the marble. Fingers and toes crossed and hold your breath! And suddenly, after a few minutes of careful wiggling, we heard a “ssssllllluuuurrrppp” – Greg had released the marble from the glass! What relief! We grabbed the marble and headed off the show, grateful at our dumb luck.

In the end, the Atlantique antique show went well and we did sell quite a few pieces and met some interesting folks too. But nine years later, we still laugh about how we glued that marble to that hotel room table!

Do you have any great stories to share of antique shows you attended? Tell us about them in the space below!

Best of March 2014: Antiques and Decor

by EuroLux Home

Before I share our favorite antiques and decor posts from the last month, don’t forget that you can still get 10% off everything at EuroLuxAntiques.com (plus our always-free shipping) through March 31, 2014. Just enter the coupon code: AntiqueTrail at checkout. Or mention the Antique Trail if you come to our Newberry, SC, gallery.

As I said in my Antique Trail post, the March discount on all our antiques and decor accents, from furniture to lighting, is to celebrate the fact that EuroLux Antiques is on the South Carolina Antique Trail. Our store is on the online trail map and on maps at visitor centers and antique shows. Let’s revisit our other favorite antiques and decor posts from March.

In our series of client spotlights, Aly and Bruce in Oregon shared photos of their home with the unusual Late Qing Dynasty Chinese cabinet they bought from us. We also heard the romantic story behind the purchase. Aly found the antique Chinese cabinet on our website and showed it to Bruce. He decided to surprise her and ordered it on the sly! The antique elm display cabinet from the Shanxi Province dates to 1900 and it looks wonderful in Aly and Bruce’s home. “The piece is extraordinarily beautiful and fits perfectly right where I planned to put it,” said Aly. See more in our Antique Chinese Cabinet spotlight post.

The latest interior design trends for 2014 say that blue decor is tipped for the top this year. The bolder and more intense, the better! Deep navy and saturated turquoise are especially in vogue. See some inspiring ways to add blue antiques and decor into your home in my True Blue Decor post.

As usual in the weeks approaching Easter, we are getting a lot of inquiries from people about our antique religious treasures. Customers are also preparing for spring Confirmations and First Communions. My post on antique religious treasures shows why the devotional wear on objects from standing crosses to holy water fonts and Jesus Christ and Madonna statues makes them even more beautiful.

Finally, as Greg and I are celebrating our 10th anniversary of EuroLux Antiques this year, we’ve been remembering our early years in the business. We’ve had so much fun but we can’t help but look back and laugh at some of our mistakes too. For example, we really didn’t know what to expect when we arrived at our first antique show in Atlanta, GA, in 2004. Rolling up in the wee hours of the morning in our rented U-Haul truck packed tight with antiques and decor accents, we soon discovered that we were just not quick enough at unpacking and reassembling our antique furniture to keep up with the frenzied buyers running from dealer to dealer. It was like some crazy TV game show!

Read the full antique show story and how we ended up late at night, hours after the show ended, just us and a long-suffering security guard waiting for us to get ourselves out of there! I can just imagine him sighing with relief when we finally exited after midnight: “EuroLux has left the building!”You can see all of our March blog posts at this link, and I look forward to sharing more about antiques and decor with you as we head into April.

Aimee owns EuroLuxHome.com with her best friend, Greg. Aimee sources amazing antique furniture, vintage lighting, & high-quality reproduction furniture to help her customers decorate their homes in a unique way. She loves her 8 (you read that right) fuzzy children and is renovating a 1920s bungalow in South Carolina. Connect with Aimee on Google+ or you can sign up here to receive this blog in your inbox.

Things We Love: Antique Shows & Laughs from Our First 10 Years

by EuroLux Home

As we mentioned in our 10 Years of European Antique Furniture blog post last month, Greg and I are celebrating our 10th anniversary at EuroLux Antiques this year. It is hard to believe so many years have flown by! We’ve had so much fun over the years, and we can’t help but look back and laugh at some of our mistakes too. We thought you might enjoy chuckling at some of our follies along the way.

After we launched EuroLux Antiques and brought in our first container of amazing antique and vintage furniture from France and Belgium, we started out selling at antique shows. In the summer of 2004, our very first antique show was the Scott Antique Market in Atlanta, Georgia. What a bunch of green beans we were!

We arrived in the wee hours of the morning at our designated spot with our rented U-Haul truck slam full. Remember how I mentioned in the last post that we had to rebuild all of the antique furniture out of about a million pieces after our container arrived from Europe, and that we really weren’t very good at it yet? Well, we had the brilliant idea that if we took all the pieces apart again, we could pack more on the truck. But we didn’t realize that most of the potential buyers would be standing there while we unloaded the truck!

We discovered that frenzied interior designers who are running from one truck to the next don’t come back to see you hours later, after you’ve figured out how to put everything together again. There we were with our piles of pieces, watching as the other dealers around us sold armoire after armoire. I swear they were rolling their eyes at our mess. One of our armoires stayed in bits through the whole weekend of the antique show because we couldn’t figure out how to put it back together!

I will say the booth looked great though. John had designed the space ahead of time to show where each piece would go. I spent hours putting out box after box of decorative items, known as “smalls” in antique lingo. John, Kathy, Greg and I all had matching shirts with EuroLux Antiques embroidered logos too.

With Greg, wearing our first matching logo shirts

While we did sell a piece or two that weekend, it wasn’t the blow-out for which we had hoped. This meant that the only way everything was going to fit back in our U-Haul truck was to take it all apart again. Of course, we had taken our time over the week before the show to strategically pack the truck one piece at a time. We hadn’t considered that we’d only have a couple hours to load all of it back on the truck and clear out of the building at the end of the antique show.

All of the other dealers, shaking their heads at our “newbie” mistakes, were long gone by the time we finally got it all loaded again. The poor security guard had to wait until after midnight for us to get our mess together and finally get out of the building.

We needed Minkey to help us pack up our first antique show — I wish we’d had Minkey there to help pack up from our first antique show. We needed a packing wizard cat and he loves digging in!

So although our first antique show wasn’t a smashing success, at least we had done it! We picked ourselves up and learned from our mistakes. Our next show, a month later, was the International Collectibles and Antiques Show at the Metrolina Expo in Charlotte, North Carolina. We had a great show and sold a bunch of furniture. We were on our way and so excited about it.

And then came the Atlantique show in Atlantic City, New Jersey, but that is a story for another blog post! Do you like to go to antique shows in your neck of the woods? Tell us about your favorite antique show in the comments below!

Aimee owns EuroLuxHome.com with her best friend, Greg. Aimee sources amazing antique furniture, vintage lighting, & high-quality reproduction furniture to help her customers decorate their homes in a unique way. She loves her 8 (you read that right) fuzzy children and is renovating a 1920s bungalow in South Carolina. Connect with Aimee on Google+ or you can sign up here to receive this blog in your inbox.

Best of January 2014: Romantic Decor, Rococo, Art Deco, and More!

by EuroLux Home

Our January blog posts covered subjects from romantic decor to fancy pet furniture for the furry members of the family, to a client who loves Art Deco furniture. We’ve had a wonderful start to the new year and hope you have too! Let’s revisit some of our favorite posts from the first month of what we hope will be a beautiful 2014.

We started by looking back at our top 12 antiques and decor blog posts of 2013. We’re lucky that many clients send photos of the antique furniture or home decor accents they’ve bought from us, showing the pieces in their new home. (Like this gorgeous Victorian restoration dining room shared by our client Sal S. in New York.) Those client spotlights are always popular, but other top posts of 2013 included home decor inspirations, travel ideas for antiques lovers, and tips on caring for antiques.

Then we looked forward to the opening of the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home Museum in Dyess, Arkansas in 2014 – especially because the museum bought this antique table from EuroLuxAntiques.com! The heavily-carved 1890 table is just like one the Cash family had in their home during Johnny Cash’s childhood, according to the music legend’s siblings.

We started getting in the mood for Valentine’s Day by talking about romantic bedroom decor. You could fall in love with many of the design ideas in that post to create romantic decor in other rooms too.

Talking of romantic decor, it’s hard to beat Rococo furniture and home accents to add a very pretty note to a room. Our client Gail L. in Colorado proved the point in our spotlight on the vintage rococo chandelier in her dining room. The photos in that post show that Gail has created a beautiful and welcoming space. I love the way she creates a slightly theatrical mood with what looks like a heavy curtain draped across the entrance to the dining room. It’s so inviting, don’t we all want to peek behind that curtain?

Our long-time customer Betty S. in Florida enjoys Art Deco pieces, as you can see in this photo:

Betty bought this Art Deco buffet from us for her cool 1958 home. She later added the Art Deco clock flanked by two dogs that you see on top of the buffet. (Betty’s real-life pooch obviously approves!) The post on Betty’s Art Deco decor shows the clock in close-up and tells you more about this dear client and another clock she bought from us too.

As dogs have starred in two photos in this post so far (they always steal the spotlight, don’t they?) we might as well end this month’s round-up with the antique style pet furniture I found for your dogs and cats. Whether your taste is for Renaissance style, Louis XVl romantic decor, Arts & Crafts or Mid-Century Modern, you can bet I’ve sniffed out matching furniture for your four-legged friends! Most are from specialist pet furniture retailers, but we’ve got a few new pieces of pet furniture on the horizon too.

In our January Beauty at Home bookshelf we shared three new books that certainly help put the romance into your decor, whilst our travel piece on Biltmore House and Gardens might provide inspiration for a romantic weekend away. With that, it’s farewell to January but if you would like me to write on any home decor or antique furniture subjects in February… I always take requests! Tell us in the comments box below.

Aimee owns EuroLuxHome.com with her best friend, Greg. Aimee sources amazing antique furniture, vintage lighting, & high-quality reproduction furniture to help her customers decorate their homes in a unique way. She loves her 8 (you read that right) fuzzy children and is renovating a 1920s bungalow in South Carolina. Connect with Aimee on Google+ or you can sign up here to receive this blog in your inbox.