Cottage Industry

As a child, Jeri Cunningham did not have a lot of possessions, so she found creative ways to use and recycle the few things she had.

Today she uses that same ingenuity to decorate an 80-year-old Craftsman bungalow in Orange that blooms both indoors and out. Cunningham has decorated the cottage in a whimsical style by finding inventive uses for linens, pottery, embroidery samplers, dishes, baskets and other items she loves.

“I’m not a cookie-cutter person,” Cunningham says. “I wanted to make it mine.”

She did so in typical frugal fashion, rescuing many things that others might have discarded or stuffed in a linen closet.

“What can I do with this?” she’d ask herself.

She turned vintage linen tablecloths and lace piano runners into window treatments, worn wooden chairs with missing seat cushions into planters, and an old clothesline into a garden trellis that now supports a massive morning glory.

Room by room and flower bed by flower bed, she created a sunny yellow cottage that has been featured in Romantic Homes and other interior decorating magazines.

So many people began asking where she got her ideas that she started a decorating business called Geraldine’s Attic, conducting tours and seminars on gardening and cottage decor.

“The idea is that people can find things in their attic or garage and use them in their home or garden,” she says.

Cunningham moved into the cottage eight years ago and began decorating it with things that cost little or nothing. She created garden vignettes using discards and garage sale finds.

“You need to create a focal point inside and out,” she says.

When, for instance, a neighbor decided to tear down an old playhouse, Cunningham moved it into her yard piece by piece, then had it painted with the hollyhocks she loves.

She filled old metal wash basins with ivy. She took a sledgehammer and busted up a concrete slab (“I’m not a cement person”) and turned the broken chunks into steppingstones.

She rescued a piece of wrought-iron fence from a demolished house and used it as a decorative garden stake that adorns a bed overflowing with blooming perennials. She made planters out of children’s rocking chairs, wagons, wheelbarrows, ice cream makers, tin pails and baskets.

“You can use anything that holds dirt,” she says. “A basket might not last forever in the yard, but who cares if it was going to be thrown out anyway? You don’t have to spend a lot of money. You can use what you have.”

She used the same recycling techniques to decorate the cottage’s interior.

Cunningham collects samplers, those hand-stitched linens embroidered with inspirational sayings or the alphabet, but instead of storing them in a closet she framed them and used them to decorate the walls of her living room.

She likes baskets, so she suspended an assortment of them from a piece of lattice that conveniently hides a hole in the ceiling of her sun room. Her vintage linens adorn every room in the cottage.

She often uses outdoor things inside and indoor things outside. She filled one room with weathered trellises, birdhouses, potted plants and watering cans and dubbed it her garden room. She put up worn shutters inside--not outside--the windows.

“You need to become a collector of things that reflect who you are,” she says.

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A free spirit, Cunningham doesn’t care if things don’t match.

In the living room she combined a wicker couch with a dark wood end table, an antique carved wood desk and other eclectic furnishings.

She also likes to mix and match her dishes. She has six different sets of china. When she holds a tea or luncheon, she serves guests on assorted plates and teacups, along with vintage linen--”never paper!”--napkins.

Cunningham practices do-it-yourself decorating.

She painted plain, inexpensive lampshades with leafy motifs and hung them upside down in place of pricier ceiling lamps. To make linen window treatments, she tacked cloths to the frames so she can change them at whim, putting up Christmas tablecloths during the holidays and florals for spring and summer.

She stenciled the walls with ivy and flowers because it’s an inexpensive way to decorate and can be covered with paint when she tires of the look. She painted a faux stone path on the floor of her garden room, along with the saying “Earth Laughs in Flowers” on a ceiling plank.

“Paint gives you a quick change,” she says. “People are afraid to express themselves in their homes. I’m not one to put up neutral anything.”

She shows clients how they can greatly change the look of a room just by moving the furniture they already own instead of adding new pieces.

“I’ll move stuff around, and it’s like having new stuff,” she says. “I’m not one to throw everything out and start over.”

Cunningham loves sharing her decorating ideas with visitors, but she encourages them to search their own hearts, and closets, to find their own look.

“You need to discover that for yourself.”

Cunningham will conduct a gardening seminar Oct. 4 through the Anaheim Parks and Recreation department. $20. For more information, call (714) 563-6013.