By Sara Anne Donnelly
Photos by Jaymi Poor
From our January 2025 issue
As a teenager, Jaymi Poor painted her bedroom walls in eye-popping shades of hot pink, safety orange, highlighter yellow, and electric blue. Paired with a fluorescent-pink shag rug, a patchwork quilt, and mismatched curtains, the effect was something like peering into a kaleidoscope. “I’d have friends over and they’d be like, ‘I want to do something fun like this in my bedroom,’” Poor says. These days, Poor’s taste has mellowed, but it continues to inspire others, as evidenced by the nearly 12,000 followers of her Instagram account (@ourmainesaltbox). In weekly posts, Poor chronicles her budget-friendly decorating adventures as she attempts to infuse the bland 1976 Wiscasset Saltbox she and her husband, Josh, purchased in 2022 with a cozy vintage vibe. Filled with thrifted furniture and artwork, DIY wainscoting, and patterned textiles and wallpaper in gauzy earth tones, the interior lands somewhere between Colonial homestead and ’80s-grandma cottage. “I love that people are looking at it online and commenting things like, ‘I bet it smells like apple pie in there,’” Poor says.
Dining Room
Poor has overhauled this spot (shown at top) three times in the last two years. In the latest iteration, an espresso-colored table and secondhand chairs she stained to match provide rich counterpoints to delicate, vintage-inspired floral wallpaper, beadboard wainscoting with scalloped trim (rendered in Accessible Beige), and aqua linen curtains. “The curtains inspired me to bring more color into the rest of the house,” Poor says. “That’s kind of how it goes. Creativity sparks, and it can have this domino effect that takes over the whole space.”
Kid’s Room
Poor collabed with her 5-year-old daughter, Paisley, on a recent bedroom makeover that layers florals and soft gold, blue, rose, and sage tones on a 19th-century-inspired lattice carpet, bedding, velvet curtains, peel-and-stick wallpaper, and board-and-batten wainscoting Poor crafted and painted in Contented by Sherwin-Williams. “Paneling brings back the older look that I like,” says Poor, whose father taught her woodworking. A free Facebook Marketplace spindle bed sports fresh Alabaster paint, also by Sherwin-Williams.
Powder Room
A removable Photowall mural creates an immersive Secret Garden effect in this tiny bath, which was no fantasy when Poor found it. She coated the room’s yellowy pine woodwork in Cordovan by Sherwin-Williams to complement the burgundy in the wall- paper, swapped a simple oak vanity for a thrifted, marble-topped one (repainted in Accessible Beige by Sherwin-Williams), replaced vinyl flooring with marble-like ceramic tile, and juxtaposed glam brass, gold, and crystal accents. Even a clunky, Carter-era electric-baseboard register received a custom wooden cover, constructed by Poor and painted to match the trim.
Primary Bedroom
Dark-stained nightstands and wainscoting composed of a batten grid atop fluted paneling provide a visual counterweight to pale-sage botanical wallpaper, ivory linen curtains, and neutral-toned bedding in solid and printed slub, waffle-weave, and bouclé fabrics. “I love layering textures and patterns,” Poor says. “You see that in a lot of the older styles.” Balancing an off-center window are a cluster of wooden candle sconces and mismatched vintage frames displaying portraits and pastoral paintings clipped from thrifted art books.
Kitchen
Poor wanted the look of an old-farmhouse kitchen without the expense of swapping out the room’s dark-wood cabinetry and stainless-steel appliances. Instead, she replaced gold linoleum flooring with luxury vinyl in a distressed-oak finish and added shimmery Facebook Marketplace subway tile, a striped curtain to conceal the dishwasher, and an island she DIYed with scrap material and turned wooden legs. The quartz she craved for the countertops was too pricey, so she used a quartz-countertop paint kit to mimic the material. The epoxy topcoat bubbled a bit, she says, “but my dad always taught me that if something has an imperfection it adds character.”
Family
“I fell in love with this house immediately,” says Poor, pictured with her children, Beckham, 3, Riley, 15, and Paisley. She’d wanted a fixer-upper she could make her own, and this one happens to be located on the street she grew up on. Her dad still lives in her childhood home, where he taught her to build a deck and reshingle a roof, among other DIY projects. Now, “he talks me through projects,” Poor says, “or I just figure it out myself.”
