Vintage, Antique, Retro, Nostalgia | Hour 1

There's a lot of decorating on people's minds, and so we're staying in that decorating flow, the decor flow this weekend. Not Christmas decorating, not holiday, just decor. Yesterday, our previous podcast episode, we discussed furniture furniture buying, and I talked to you about the right way to go about buying furniture. Today, we're going to talk about demystifying, antiquing and vintage and retro.

What the hell do these words mean and what are you looking for and what should you expect Everything that falls under the umbrella of what I call nostalgic design, antique, vintage, retro, and so on and so forth. That is where we're going today. It's going to be a lot of fun. Stay with me, and you're going to learn quite a bit today because I'm always handing out the pearls, always just giving you the pearls of wisdom that are useful to you when you go about to trying to make

your home something truly extraordinary. And of course we're going to be taking your calls as we always do it. When it comes to calls, goes without saying that you get to set the agenda. I'm talking retro, vintage and antiquing today. You can call me about anything that's got you scratching your head about your home, construction issue, design problem, landscape into your exterior, anything at all DIY concerns, anything

that's got you in a quandary. Give me a call, we'll put our heads together and we'll figure it out. Here's the number eight three three two. Ask Dean A three three. The numeral two ask Dean A three three to ask Dean. The phone lines are open now. Producer Matt standing by ready to take your calls. He'll tell you everything you need to know. Pop you into the queue and you can listen to the show while you wait. There you go, all right. Speaking of producer Matt, let

me introduce the rest of our awesome team. Elmer is on the board. Good morning, sir, Good morning Jane. Hey, I'm good, all right. Hey O. I believe Elma and I were having a very deep conversation just about life, life before the show started. So we're both in that. We're both in that place where it's like, you know, yeah, the show goes on. Here we are, we're getting it done. Producer Matt, like I said, standing by to take your calls nowhere near a microphone right now. But he's off

doing what he does and doing it well. Eileen Gonzalez at the news desk, Good morning, Eileen, Good morning Dean. How's it going. It's good, It's good. I'd be lying if I if I told you that I wasn't a little tired this morning. But I think it's just I think it's adrenaline letdown is what it is, more than anything else. You know. We got away for a few

days here in the middle of the week. We went up to one of our favorite places in California here and just jumped in the car and went up with some friends to Central Coastal California, you know, like Passel Roblos and and more O Bay and just that while Area Loso Sos and we went up to Cumbria. I always use I grew up calling it Cambria, and now I feel like I'm like Thurston half when I say Cumbria. But I was told that that's the proper way to pronounce it. So all right, anyway, it's so cool up

there right now. It was very festive. And then we came home and yesterday was sort of relaxing after the show and so and then all of a sudden, I start getting tired, and I'm like, oh, well, maybe it's just the letdown after the trip. Or sometimes you need a vacation after a vacation nic, you know what, to unwind it home. Damn right, my friend, there it is

right there. So that's what today is. Today. When we're done with the show, it will be a vacation after our vacation, and then tomorrow a vacation after our vacation's vacation. I'm just gonna keep it rolling anyway, Eileen. Awesome as always to have you here, sitting across the table from me. Sitting across the table from me, sitting across the table

from me. Oh, just staring up in this space. My better half, the co owner, co founder of House Whisper, my co designer, my best friend in all the world, Tina is here.

and nostalgic. How do you when you go for this kind of decor and you're looking for pieces like this, how do you tell the difference between the two. What are the line, where are the lines. I like my mom's definition of vintage and antique, and she's absolutely one hundred percent right. Her definition is vintage is, you know, somewhat affordable, and antique is unbelievably expensive. And so when something gets labeled antique, just know that, you know, you

got you gotta write a big check for it. And she's right about that. She's right. However, there there actually are within the industry some a little bit harder lines of definition between the two. And here it is, right. And by the way, when you hear me say this, don't ever let anybody call you an antique again, all right, never. Never. Antique within the decorating and designed industry is something that's one hundred years old or older. All right. You got

to hit the hundred year mark for something to be antique. Okay, so there you go. And obviously you know when something is approaching it, then you know these are somewhat arbitrary and uh, and things get a little fuzzy, you know, around the boundary, around the threshold from one to the other. But generally speaking, antique is one hundred year old or old, which means I am not antique. However, unfortunately, yes, I

am vintage, because everybody's vintage. I'm assuming. I'm assuming there are no teenagers listening to the show, or not many, and so although we have a lot of young adults who listen to the show. But guess what vintage. Okay, it's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt some of you. Vintage in most definitions, right, there's some debate about it, but in most definitions, vintage is anything twenty years old to ninety nine, twenty to ninety nine. What do you say, No,

I didn't make it up, Tina, your vintage. I know your vintage.

and out of it. And so that's what I'm saying. You get twenty years in between the thing, it starts to lean towards the vintage side of things. So I'm guaranteed everybody who's listening right now is probably vintage as far as people go. Here's the thing that is surprising to a lot of folks. Retro. Okay, retro is a tricky one, and I'll tell you why, because most things that are retro, in fact, technically retro is actually new.

Something that is retro is by definition a new product, a new thing that is styled to point back to a previous era. Okay, so here's the thing. So you go to you if you're out, you know, looking for a pair of nineteen seventies genes, you have two choices. You can get yourself to a thrift store right and maybe find a pair of use the word properly vintage nineteen seventies genes, meaning yeah, made in the seventies and

still in good enough shape to wear. Or you can dial up one of ten thousand clothing websites online that make retro nineteen seventies ish esque genes and they're brand new. They're brand new, but they look like you know that thing. So that's the idea. And when it comes to home elements furnishings especially, a perfect example this would be appliances companies like Smeg. No I did not cough something up. That's the name of a retro appliance company, Smeg. They're brilliant,

they're beautiful. They make an entire line of appliances that look very mid century, nineteen fifties esque in the colors, the shapes, Socide, but they're brand new, brand new, high tech. Smeg also Big Chill, Big Chill, especially for refrigerators, obviously by the name of the company. So these are not old appliances. These are brand new appliances that would have

looked perfectly brand new in a nineteen fifties kitchen. So antique one hundred years old or older, vintage twenty to ninety nine years old, and retro actually new but styled to point back to a previous era. Now, all three of theseies fall under one umbrella of nostalgic design, nostalgia, and we're going to talk a little bit about that right after.

what does that sound? And I'm looking up and like there's a drone. Who's who's doing that drone? You know, you feel so violated when they're grone hovering over your yard, right, So it took me a couple of days to figure out, but I kind of noticed the timing and the pattern

of it, and I realized I walked around. We we have a kind of a corner house, so I walked her out front around the corner and here is a guy from California Edison, uh, operating that drone and UH and I to him and he's like, oh yeah, he said. I said, you guys didn't send out notice about this. He's like, no, we didn't, but technically, you know, we're allowed to have the airspace over the the easement over

the power lines. He's like, but you know, with all the recent fires all over southern California, cal Edison is inspecting their power lines and especially the residential ones to make sure that there aren't trees growing over and touching lines and any and they're using drones. They start out by using helicopters, but they're now using drones. So you might be in a neighborhood where you see drones all of a sudden for two or three days and you're like,

what is going on there? And for us, it was Edison just inspecting power lines, which I thought, all right, that's you know, that's fine. I'd rather actually have a drone doing its thing than maybe a helicopter over my house for an hour. So there you go. It's possible. It's all I'm saying. It's possible or aliens. It's one of the two.

I promised I would talk to you about nostalgia, because nostalgic design or nostalgia is really the umbrella category for everything that is a period design, everything that is a theme of the past, okay, which is most architecture and most design. Because there's only a very slim category of current contemporary, and I don't really buy it's only contemporary. I don't. I don't buy into futuristic design because that's

just not true. Nobody's designing futuristic design because as far as we know, no architects are designers are time traveling into the future, and we all know how futuristic design turns out. It's kind of you know, if we were to believe futuristic design when we were all kids, then right about now, we would all be wearing those silver shiny suits because that's how all people in the future dressed.

So yeah, it's contemporary design that means today, what we're doing with today, and then everything including modern modernist is now this period, you know, locked mid century of the twentieth century. So anyway, nostalgia drives all of this, antiques, vintage items, retro design. The word nostalgia, if you didn't know, means a sentimental yearning for the past that evokes feelings of pleasure with occasional notes sounds like I'm sizzling a dish,

pleasure with occasional notes of sad. It's true. In fact, the word itself, the word nostalgias, derived from ancient Greek, the word nostos meaning return and like in time and algos meaning pain okay, And it was first coined and started being used even though it has Greek origins, in

the design world about three hundred years ago. So this idea of nostalgia, it is those fond memories nostalgia is a powerful human emotion, right, and it can be Yeah, it can be unhealthy if you get lost in the past, if you get trapped in the past. But nostalgia usually, and it's surprisingly that there have been major studies done on nostalgia, nostalgia usually produces really healthy benefits, psychological and emotionally healthy benefits. Excuse me. It creates a determined hopefulness

about creating the future. And you would think why looking back, because it's kind of that like, we did it once, we can do this again kind of thing. It creates motivation to resolve interpersonal issues and rekindle relationships and reconnect with old friends and reprioritize important things. Nostalgia in design and decor can be a way of clarifying and embracing personal values rooted in lessons of the past. And I'm

not talking about I'm not talking about political stuff. I'm not talking about like, well, yeah, you know that's the way when things work great, That's not what I'm talking about. But I am talking about looking back at things from the past, things like craftsmanship, passion, patience, simplicity, a simpler life, right, a higher quality of life, contentment, engagement, wisdom, whatever you want to call it, that kind of they don't make them like they used to, So guess what, we're going

to start that again right now. And then the whole idea of like those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat, and so nostalgia has locked up inside of it, all of that kind of stuff, all of these personal values that you can declare through design and decor that you know, these things are important to me,

These things are important to me. Therefore, these are the items that we have, the pieces or the facets of our home that harken back to a time when dot dot dot and then you just fill in the blank from your own personal story. So they're way again as all things of designing and defining a personal story. Okay, and I think this. I think any design theme rooted in the past brings emotional comfort, the comfort of being a kind of a known quantity, right because the future

is unknown, the present is confusing. The past, you know, we like the past because it feels more settled. It's past, it's it's knowable, it's comforting, and it's dependable because it doesn't have any more surprises for us. Right there, it is, right, And so there is a sense of rootedness to that, like I like this because guess what, I'm sort of just embracing the idea that some things aren't gonna change, some things are just set the way they are, and

I like it this way. So that is what is driving And now that felt a little bit, you know ethereal that all that, But you got to understand when we're reaching for this massive, massive section of design and decor, antiques, vintage items, retro items, got to understand what lies at the root of it all, and it is nostalgia. It is the nostalgic effect that these elements have upon our human brains and upon human beings that we are all right. So now the question is what do you do with

an antique or a vintage item? Right, I'm not talking about retro because we know it's brand new, But if you're shopping for vintage or antique, then you're going to find those things in various states, various conditions, various states of repair or disrepair or preservation. And the lesson is going to be what we do two antique inventioned items vintage items depends on what we plan to do with them. Okay, what we do to them has everything to do with

what we plan to do with them. And there's about five categories of things that you might do with them. We'll talk about it all.

after our next break. So gifts a call now. Producer Matt standing by anything you want to talk about regarding your home design, construction, DIY, inside, outside, all around, anything at all that's got you scratching your head, give me a call. We'll put our heads together, we'll figure it out. We will all right back to antique, vintage, retro, nostalgic design.

Kind of trying to demystify this for you today, for those of you, and I know there are a lot of you who are thinking in terms of, yeah, that's kind of my bag and I've always wanted to acquire these items, find places for them, integrate them well into our home, all of that. So now the question is

what do you do to these items? Because, as I said right before the break, you know, you go out shopping for antiques and vintage items, and this is probably more likely that you find a vintage item in disrepair than an antique, because the longer something hangs around and is handed around from person to person, the more antique it gets, the higher the chance is that somebody along the way has restored it, or preserved it or what

have you. A lot of vintage stuff that's just it's showing its age, showing weathering, may be broken in part, may be in need of refinishing, all of that kind of stuff. So the question is do you just treat it all the same? Is that going to be the plan? And my answer to that is no, what you do to an antique or a vintage item depends on what you plan to do with them. Okay, now what does

that mean? Well, there are let's say five or six I'm gonna look at my notes here, I think, yeah, six, I've got six categories of things that you generally do with it. Okay, so we're going to preserve an antique or a vintage item, if it's already in the shape that we want it to be in, Tina, catch me on this. We're going to restore it. Okay, that's a whole nother category. Now we're going to bring it back, Okay.

Restoration means that our aim is to bring it back as close to its new state as possible, or we're gonna remodel it, Okay, depending on you know, whether or not we are how we plan to use it. So there's three things that we do too. Antique advenage items, preserve, restore or remodel them depending on three things we plan to do with them, and that would be we're gonna

display them, We're going to reuse them. Okay. Now, if you're going to reuse, meaning you're gonna put it back into service, Okay, that's a whole another as you can imagine. You know, that's a whole nother ballgame. Right. So, here is a vintage or an antique foot driven singer sewing machine, right, beautiful black, right, it's got all And if the plan is to display it, then maybe you choose to leave it in its state of aged decay as it were, or maybe you want to really restore it to its

beauty superficially. So maybe you're gonna, you know, do your best to just clean it all of the bare stainless steel parts. You just get them looking shiny and new, and you're gonna do your best with the paint work, maybe even a little bit of touch up if necessary. But if you're not planning to reuse it, then you don't have to get into the mechanism and worry about whether the mechanism is functional or not, or whether it's slipping, or you know, whether the fabric foot is grabbing properly

or all of that. That's a whole other level. So it's one level to display an item, it's another level of demand if you plan to reuse an item, or it's a whole another approach to the item if you plan to repurpose it, okay, And I would say that the vast majority, well, I would say from my experience, the majority of antique and vintage pieces get a repurposed okay. Next to that, they would be displayed and the smallest category would be fully restored and reused. And what do

I mean by repurpose? Repurposing is very simple to understand repurposing means, well, I'll give you an example. We have a ten gallon galvanized milk can in our home. Okay, it's one of those milk cans, you know. It stands like twenty four inches tall, and it harkens back to yester year of from a dairy. I mean, this is not a thing you keep in your fridge. This is the big milk hands coming straight from the dairy. And the reason is our daughter in law's family used to

own the dairy. They're from Fremont, Ohio, and their family heritage, her dad's family heritage was the you know, the owners and operators of Linders Dairy. And so what Tina and I did We found an old online. We found an old example of Linder's dairy labels, and we recreated the label. Bought, you know, a ten gallon milk can and put the label on the milk can. And now the milk can holds a potted plant on top of it. Right, it's not holding milk. It is repurposed to be on display

and also doing another thing. And so that's repurposing.

Dean Sharp the House Whisper on KFI. This has been Home with Dean Sharp the House Whisper. Tune into the live broadcast on KFI Am six forty every Saturday morning from six to eight Pacific time and every Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app