Primitive in Progress

Gather ideas from a prolific DIYer who has spent decades cultivating an authentic countrified atmosphere in her Georgia home with a focus on natural surfaces, salvaged wood and handcrafted reproductions.

Decades of hands-on decorating experience provide a Georgia resident with the tools needed to give her home rustic appeal via handcrafted reproductions and salvaged goods.

Lea Jones knows primitives. A country-design enthusiast and longtime collector of vintage wares, the retired schoolteacher—now an online seller of authentic and reproduction primitives—has been a fan of the homespun style for more than three decades. Lea recalls frequently rearranging her bedroom furniture when she was a young girl, and her affinity for home decor has continued to grow ever since. So when Lea and her husband, Jimmy, commissioned the building of their ranch-style home in Eatonton, Georgia, in 1983, the couple chose to take on the interior design themselves. “On the outside, it looked done,” Lea says. “But it actually took four months to finish the inside.”

While the interior of the 1,800-squarefoot home has gone through various design iterations over the years, Lea eventually settled on primitive as her preferred aesthetic, and she willingly experiments with a variety of materials and techniques to achieve that style. “I have painted, wallpapered, painted over wallpaper, wallpapered over wallpaper—you name it!” she says. “I am a ‘do-it-yourselfer’ and am still trying to achieve a more primitive look. It’s a work in progress.”

A keen admirer of natural, unfinished wood surfaces and salvaged pieces, Lea loves collecting old shutters and doors, and she incorporates

them whenever she can. “I like to place them in the windows, in corners and even in the bathroom to use as a towel rack,” she notes.

Other favorite goods include firkins, nail kegs, wooden mashers, and dough bowls in all shapes, sizes and colors. One of her most impressive finds, an oversize Hungarian dough bowl with handles, leans against a dining room wall next to a pie safe filled to the brim with natural wood buckets and boxes. “I love old, grungy, beat-up things,” Lea says. “I like things to be imperfect and used, so you can wonder who had their hands on something and where it came from.”

Lea’s natural wood pieces blend well into her overall color scheme, which consists largely of monochromatic toneon-tone shades of antique white and cream, punctuated by dramatic reds and other rich hues. Stand-alone pantries, benches and cupboards make up a large part of Lea’s furnishings. Smaller collectibles, including bottles, tins, boxes, linens, and other primitive bric-a-brac, are displayed in hanging cupboards and on shelves—many of which Lea, a skilled woodworker, builds herself. “I can make things with wood,” Lea says. “Just don’t give me a needle and thread—I’m not a seamstress by any means!” Besides crafting items for her own home, Lea sells her handmade wares via her Facebook page, Purely Primitives.

While some retirees consider downsizing, Lea has no intention of minimizing or purging her collections. “I still like to collect, so I am not there yet,” she says. “I might never get there.” And why would she? With a thriving online business and a home that has proven to be a perfect outlet for creativity, this productive DIYer is busier than ever, and she simply relishes the joy that comes with feeding her passion for primitives.

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Lea’s knack for combining like items in tightly grouped displays has maximum impact in this dining room corner, where she arranges rustic wooden buckets, boxes and dough bowls of various sizes along the shelves of an open-door pie safe. To make the pie safe seem more substantial, she caps it with stacked firkins and an antique butter churn. She layers tea-stained linens over the doors to soften the hard surfaces in the display.

“My husband and I built the 9-foot-long dining room farm table,” says Lea, who complements the piece with mixed-and-matched chairs acquired from her mother and grandmother. Other stand-alone pieces, including a distressed pie safe and a stepback cupboard, line one wall, creating a warm and inviting ambience. A hanging buttery, above-window shelf and taller pie safe enable Lea to display her favorite items, including buckets, crocks, boxes and firkins.