I’m so excited to share my cottage influenced antique haul deals with you today! I love incorporating rustic, farm style cottage elements into my home, so I’m also going to show you how I styled my newly found treasures!

I love thrifting, and recently I’ve been going more to antique stores looking for deals. Contrary to what I’ve always thought, not everything at an antique store is expensive. It can absolutely be a place for an awesome inexpensive score!

Just like thrifting at actual thrift stores, you have to do some digging to find the good deals, but they are totally there!

And, if you are willing to ask about an item and make an offer, the venders are often willing to come down in price.

I have a great example of this with one of the pieces i found recently! It was such an incredible find and I got it cheap!

This time I stopped at a few roadside antique stores on our way home from our vacation in Branson, MO and they turned out to be really great shops!

Let’s dive into my cottage influenced antique haul and how I styled the treasures I found!

Antique Galvanized Metal Minnow Bucket

I was excited to find this little beauty! I have great memories of saining for minnows in the creek with my dad and my grandpa on hot summer days, so I love it for the memories it brings me.

Galvanized metal minnow bucket sitting on dark table with blue hydrangeas laying in front

I’ve seen my friend style an antique minnow bucket by filling it with faux florals (tips on how to score cheap faux florals here) and I thought it looked so gorgeous and summery!

I love the neutral hue of the galvanized metal and it looks absolutely gorgeous against the weathered wood of the bench I found.

I’ve been looking for a galvanized vessel to display florals for quite some time. The reason being that they are not easily broken. I have four little boys and anything within reach will absolutely be messed with, possibly thrown, and therefor broken. UNLESS, it’s rather indestructible as galvanized metal tends to be.

After all, one must be strategic when decorating in a house full of sword fighters and wrestlers. 😉

I found this bucket for $12 which I consider to be a very good price for an antique item. I found this bucket in a fairy unorganized and messy booth. If you’re willing to enter into a booth like that it can sometimes be the place to score items at reasonable prices.

Primitive Chippy Green Wood Box

primitive green wood box sitting on a table with the lid open

This was such a fun find!

As I talked about in my Styling Thrifted Decor Series Part 1, knowing your color palette is essential to having a successful thrifting trip. Knowing your color palette makes you feel confident that an item you are drawn to will fit into your home. This then allows to decide to buy it without guilt.

We have personally been through times of very little income and I can still struggle with feeling guilty over “unnecessary” purchases. It really helps me to avoid that guilty feelings by knowing with confidence that the item is going to fit in my home and add to the beauty, not detract.

This little green box has the perfect muted hue of green and it provides some storage, which is nice. Even though I didn’t have a place for it in mind when I bought it, I knew it would add just the right kind of charm to my space in just the right hue of green, so I bought it without guilt!

I found this little antique deal in a very nicely organized and styled booth for $12. Sometimes you will find booths that price things very reasonably and those are the booths to hit every time!

Cottage influenced Pedestal Dish

ceramic pedestal dish sitting on a table

This dish was found at the same pretty booth as the green vintage box. It was one of those pieces that spoke to me right away and was too pretty to leave there. Plus, It was only $11!

My vision when I purchased this was to use it as a soap dish in my main guest bathroom and it works beautifully! Scroll down to see it styled!

Tall Weathered Woven Basket

This was in a booth in which everything was 50% off, so I scored this beauty for $6!

tall woven antique basket sitting on a table

I have always loved loved the look of a collected feel around the fireplace. It’s so cottgey to me.

Historically, the fireplace would have been the heart of the home and the home of many kitchen and home essentials. In historical films, the fireplace is always surrounded with pots and pans, old crocks and tools.

I like the idea of recreating this look and I’ve been playing around with adding stacked baskets and crocks surrounding my fireplace.

The shape of this basket was perfect! I knew I had one at home just slightly larger than this one, and as it turns out, they stack beautifully. And just look at that rustic texture!

a vintage woven basket texture shown up close

Primitive Raw Wood Bench – perfect for the cottage influenced antique look

This was the score worth waiting for! I had to do a little haggling to get it, but man it was worth it.

primitive wood bench photographed from above

I have had my eye out for a piece like this for quite a while now, so when I was walking into an antique shop and saw this sitting outside in the corner, it stopped me in my tracks.

Don’t be afraid to ask about unmarked pieces!

The bench had no price and also had a large cast iron press of some sort sitting on top of it. However, I thought nothing of the press and went inside to ask the owner if that piece had a price.

As it turns out, that cast iron press was attached to the bench making it a much larger item would certainly not fit in my post vacation mini van.

The shop owner told me that the vender had just dropped it off and there was no price. Thankfully, he gave him a call and we asked what he wanted for the piece.

Don’t be afraid to make an offer!

I made it clear that all I wanted was the bench. The vendor said that if my husband and I could get the cast iron press off he would sell me the bench alone. He said make me an offer so I said with a big question mark “$20”?

He accepted, so long as we could get the press off and buy just the bench and we did just that!

The owner of the store then later showed me a similar primitive work bench. It was in a little bit nicer shape, but not nearly as raw and beautiful in my eyes as my bench. To my amazement, that bench was $200! The owner said I got quite the deal and should be very pleased with myself.

I am! 😊

I couldn’t be happier with the little bench and I love knowing the story behind it as well.

Apparently, the press was a lard press operated by a crank handle. It was fastened to one end of the bench leaving enough room on the other side for the worker to sit and crank, pressing out and harvesting lard.

rustic wooden bench with a green box and minnow bucket sitting on top

It’s a sturdy, hard working little bench that has seen many days and changes in history.

I love it’s raw beauty so much and it adds the perfect touch of rustic, cottage influenced charm to our home!

Styling My Cottage Influenced Antique Haul

Styling these beautiful pieces was so much fun! In fact, I ended up playing around with where I wanted them in my home at 10 o’ clock at night because I just couldn’t wait until the next day.

Styling the bench, minnow bucket, and green box

A cottage influenced antique haul styled in a home with a primitive bench, a minnow bucket with hydrangeas inside on the bench, and a green wood box underneath the bench

I gave the primitive bench a prominent feature in my home. I truly love it so much! My hope is that the rustic raw wood style of the bench would set a tone for the rest of the space, and guess what?

It totally did! Featuring the bench in my living room finally helped my scattered vision for my living room come together. Seeing the bench in that space helped me realize which direction I want to take with the room.

I placed the bench against a little wall that you see as soon as you walk into my home.

The green antique box I centered directly underneath the bench.

Then I added the antique minnow bucket on top of the bench a one end. I styled the bucket with few faux hydrangeas. I chose blue hydrangeas (which i had on hand from an estate sale) because they play off of the blue found in the print hanging above the bench so well.

Next, I added a framed print to the wall and hung it above the bench. I used two recent estate sale finds to create this cottage influenced wall art.

Both finds are featured in my recent blog post –12 Vintage Estate Steals to Look For.

cottage influenced brass wall sconce and a vintage frame with a monet print hanging underneath

I used a page from my Monet book of framable art prints that I got for one dollar at an estate sale. Then I emptied a vintage frame of it’s original art, and filled it with one of the framable Monet prints.

I’m so pleased with how it all turned out! I love the rustic, yet elegant beauty of this space!

a cottage influenced antique haul styled with a rustic wood bench, and minnow bucket with flowers inside on top, and a green box underneath, and women in white dress holding a tea cup

Styling the cottage influenced pedestal dish

For this sweet little dish, I thought it would perfect in my half bathroom that is also our guest bathroom.

cottage style ceramic pedestal dish holding two little round bars of soap

I filled it with a few hotel soap bars I had saved. I think it looks so charming in my bathroom and adds a beautiful cottage touch!

Styling the tall weathered woven basket

I love the look of this basket stacked with my others. It creates that collected cottage feel that I had in mind.

cottage influenced basket collection next to a fireplace

Adding this basket worked well because it’s weathered tone coordinated with the other baskets I already owned. It’s size was perfect too!

It sits stacked with the other baskets, as if waiting to aid in bringing in the harvest from the market garden.

Thank you so much for joining me as I shared my cottage influenced antique haul and how I styled my finds!

blurred women with a white tea cup walking through a cottage influenced decorated home

I truly love hunting for vintage finds that speak to me and it brings me so much joy to get to share them all with you! It’s so fun to have a little community of people who appreciate vintage decorating just as much as I do!

Thank you for sharing in the joy friend!

Do you have an antique store find that you absolutely love?

I would so enjoy hearing about it in the comments!

Have a lovely day!