Five Tips to Save on Home DIY Projects

Something about me you should know, I like being thrifty and finding a good sale.  Through the years I have found a few ways to be able to save money on all of those home projects.  Whether it be for smaller decor items or bigger ticket items, there are ways to save some pennies.  Check out a few below and some project ideas too!

1. Paint - One of the easiest ways to change up your spaces in your home.  When we moved in we had to paint pretty much every inch of our house, in and out.  All of that paint really starts to add up.  There are ways to find paint very inexpensively.  Depending on your project you may not be that set on a certain shade or, if you are really patient you might just luck out.  My favorite place to check out every time I visit Lowes or Home Depot is the Oops paint section.  Usually its a little shelf nearby the paint mixing area.  Gallons go for $5 and quart for $2.50 (usually).  I painted the inside of our walk-in closet and our laundry room floor with paint I found on the oops shelf!  I have also painted several pieces of furniture with oops paint as well.  Like I said, I check every time and if its something I like I usually grab it...you never know! Another great place to check for discounted paint is the Habitat Restore, another place for finding paint for those furniture projects!

2. Fabric - I mentioned this earlier this week when talking about recovering our ottoman, but I get creative when searching for fabrics for different home projects.  Fabric from the fabric store can often add up if you need a lot for a project.  So, I'm always on the look-out for discount fabric items I can re-purpose into something.  I'm talking about shower curtains, sheets, table cloths - anything.  Target is a great place to look for these kind of items in the clearance section (usually the aisle end caps).  This is another thing I often check when I have the time.  Also, don't throw away any of your scraps.  I have used fabric scraps for jewelry, wreaths and garlands.  I never waste a inch.

3. Repurpose - Lots of times you have things already in your house you can repurpose into something new.  Anything from gift bags and paint chips turned to artwork to chop sticks and washers into a fun mirror accent - you never know.  What items are lurking around your home that could be reused and made into something cool?

4. Get Thrifty & Creative - You don't have to be a thrift store pro to find a good piece to redo.  I don't have time to constantly check craigslist, go to yard sales every week or even to thrift stores every week.  But, if I'm on the hunt for a certain thing I will always check these places first.  You never know what you might be able to find.  Every so often I will pop into our local restore and just check out what they have.  I have found some awesome deals, especially when they have marked down an item.  After an item has been in their store for over 30 days it gets drastically reduced.  Restore is also a great place to find doors and old wooden chairs.  Two things I love.  A cabinet door plus some chalkboard paint can become a really cute project at almost nothing - thrifty and creative!  And, don't forget free things like pallets!  We have made chalkboard signs out of pallet wood and recently repurposed one into a shelf.

5. Be Patient - This one is hard I know! But, just taking some time to research prices and wait for sales is huge.  Also being patient will allow you to really figure out what you need.  Sometimes we can be drawn to something but realize later its just not going to work.  Being patient helps weed out those impulse purchases.

Those are just some of the ways we have saved on diy projects around our home.  Do you have any more ideas?  Share with me!

Etsy Treasury - Vintage Inspiration

I really am so in love with all things vintage, especially for the home.  Vintage items just add so much interest, personality and classic style.  I love to think about the stories that could be behind an old piece and wonder what tales it could tell.  Here are some great vintage finds for the home that offer lots of  inspiration that I found looking through Etsy.  There are so many awesome and interesting vintage treasures buried in the land of Etsy that need to be discovered - this is just a sampling.

'Vintage Love for the Home' by daydreamdesign

All things vintage for House and Home

vintage gooseneck l... experimentalvi... $46.00	Fenton Hobnail Milk... BarkingSandsVi... $46.00	Vintage Mid Century... uglysanta $28.50	Vintage electric fa... moxiethrift $37.50
Vintage Brass Deer ... rhapsodyattic $56.00	The END...vintage m... HamptonHouseVi... $15.00	Electricity Free Vi... TheOrangeColle... $23.50	Vintage Pair of Met... havenvintage $64.00
Vintage Lux Mid-Mod... OurLadyVintage $45.00	Aqua and White Fold... mostazaseed $31.00	Vintage Victorian S... theblackbicycl... $25.00	vintage drawer pull dkgeneralstore $4.00
vintage industrial ... RecycleBuyVint... $33.00	Vintage Lime Green ... OliveVintage $16.00	steel stars industr... mightyfinds $45.00	SOLD Herman Miller... CoMod $650.00

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

Progress Makes Perfect

Some of our bathroom booty

Yesterday we shared with you a few items we purchased over the weekend for our main bathroom in our new house.  Today, we wanted to share with you the actual progress we are making in there.   We had big dreams of getting everything accomplished over the weekend but we just didn't quite have enough time in the day night to get there.  King Silas had his own agenda in mind and we were happy to oblige (you only get a small amount of time with them this age you know?) It was all we could do to get the bathroom back in a working order so we could take showers for church Sunday morning so we didn't walk into Easter service stinky and covered in paint - although I think a lot of people would have found that amusing.  So pretty much in standard with the rest of our house we will eventually be replacing everything in this room for the bathroom remodel.  We are starting with some easy less expensive things first and plan on working our way up as we go. It's amazing what a few changes will do to a room, just some paint will work wonders and then add some textile goodness and you are starting to really see progress.

I loved shopping for new things for our bathroom, starting with a new shower curtain rod, new shower curtain rings and a new shower curtain.

I was on a mission to find things that were priced right and also something that I loved.  Many times in my life I have purchased something just because it was on sale, when I really didn't love it.  So I made sure I did not impulse buy but waited until I found something that I truly loved -plus was a great price - it takes more time and patience but totally worth it in the end.  Here's a  round up on the cost with this upgrade:  

Curtain Rod - Target $12.99

White Fabric Shower Curtain - Homegoods $9 (on sale, originally $22) 

Patterned Fabric Shower Liner - Homegoods $12.99

Shower Curtain Hooks - Homegoods $5.99

I was very adamant about finding a fabric shower liner for our home after reading so many warnings and reports about the old tried and true vinyl polyvinyl chloride (PVC plastic) shower curtains.  There is a lot of info about how harmful to the air those bad boys can be, off gassing voc's and such.  If you are interested you can read the report from CHEJ.  You will be happy to know that many retail stores have caught wind of this as well and are offering a lot more fabric shower liner varieties as well as zero PVC ones.  The one I found was not only affordable but cute and all I have to do is wash it when it starts getting yucky and it will be good to go - just makes sense.

Quick Before

And After, looking all Misty Lake green and bright

We found this awesome curtain for our window and just had to have it.  This window is actually pretty small - we did buy a curtain rod for it and realized when we got home that it was too small, so the towel stays for now until we find something that fits.  I just like showing how we roll around here, very far from perfection.

Quick Fix - Master Bedroom

We have a slight overabundance of doors in our house, especially in the tight places.  We have 3 doorways alone in our master bedroom, all leading out to different spaces.  One of these doors was particularly frustrating as it continued to block the bathroom door when opened.  

This was taken before we started painting.  Another issue, this door was in terrible shape as you can see in this picture.

The little hallway space here has a bedroom door, bathroom door and a closet door all opening up to the same spot so you can see how irritating that was becoming.  So, our fix was to take down the bedroom door that was blocking the other doors, easy enough.

(Before)
I first started painting the door and midway through we decided we were going to remove it so I just stopped, hence the half painted door.

(After)
One day we will have a much prettier laundry room space, it's just not on the top of our list right now.

We liked it immediately after we got the door out.  There was one issue though, we really didn't want the laundry room view from our room.  Enter our quick fix idea - a curtain.  We headed over to our my favorite store, Target and searched for the perfect curtain, except there was no perfect curtain.  (My sister always says there is a required $50 exit fee when shopping at Target, this time however we got out way under - score!)  I did however find a tablecloth that I loved which I could easily turn into a curtain, thanks to these awesome curtain ring clips.

Our tablecloth and curtain rings, we also used a tension rod to hang them.

These clips are so super easy, you can pretty much make anything into a curtain.

Now we have a lovely "curtain" in our doorway that hides the ugly laundry room view.  We love, love, love this.  It also adds some much needed color and decor to a pretty bare space.  Quick fixes are the best.  In total it cost $25 for our new doorway, we like that.

We hung the curtain on the back side of the door with our tension rod.

So what about you?  Have any quick and easy fixes you love?  Comment and share!!

Have a wonderful week!

In The Works

Just a few things we have been working on...

Yay!  We (Justin) finally got motivated and started putting up our new kitchen cabinet hardware!  Little by little this kitchen is starting to look finished.  

Trim and walls painted in the family room - check.

Some shade and privacy action now going on in the family room - this is a much welcomed addition.

Yes, that is our master bedroom all painted and pretty - no more master cave, hooray!

We spent a lot of time decorating our spare bedroom this weekend, doesn't it look nice?...ok maybe not but just thought you might want to laugh at how crazy it looks in there.  This is currently our "we don't know where to put this stuff yet room", it's serving it's purpose nicely right now.

Hope everyone has a wonderful week!  

I Love A Rainy Night

So it's time to introduce you to one of our new friends here at our house.  He's a lovely decorative fixture we just couldn't wait to have when purchasing our home.   I'm going to call him - Mr. Greeter.  As soon as you enter our front door, BAM! he's there welcoming you in.  Yep, he's right smack in the middle of our lovely family room and kitchen, I'm sure everyone will have one of these soon after seeing ours....

Pretty isn't he?

What is this thing? To tell you the truth I'm not really sure, but it's some sort of closure/fixture over the pre-existing wood stove pipe that was attached to a wood stove once in the house. Whatever it is, I can tell you this - it was a cheap ugly fix. So tonight we were treated to a new tune, not only does Mr. Greeter welcome us and our guests in to our home and provide a lovely decorative finish to our room, he also does this:

Perfect.  We knew we were going to have to replace Mr. Greeter eventually, now he has just forced our hand to do it faster.  The question is, with what? So this is what I leave you with tonight...suggestions please on how/what to replace this with.  We will just be enjoying our new house music in the meantime.

DIY - Painting Knotty Pine Cabinets

This is a project that ended up being a lot more time consuming than originally thought, so goes the life of diy remodeling I suppose.  Like I mentioned before here, I have been very surprised at the number of people who enjoy the knotty pine look of our cabinets and had many question my idea of painting them.  But ultimately for us they just were not our style and a fresh white coat of paint needed to happen.



So, the first step in our project was to remove all the doors and hardware, simple enough.  The first little issue that arose was the weather.  My plan was to paint all of the cabinets outside but of course it was raining the weekend we had to get it done.  So we just set up a drop cloth in the kitchen and laid all of the doors out on the floor.



Our next step was to apply a good coat of oil based primer.   You really have to use an oil based primer for knotty pine in order to get a good coverage on the dark knots.  The primer actually didn't take very long to dry and we were off to painting.  I chose to use a water based no voc paint in eggshell finish.  After  one coat of paint we realized we had issues.  Streaking issues and hole issues to be exact - this is after we also realized that all new holes would need to be drilled for our new hardware, more on that later.

Whoops, I think we might have jumped the gun on the painting and forgotten some crucial steps.  Luckily we had some wood putty handy (from all of the other numerous holes we have found in this house - which I think my dear husband will be writing on soon).  We filled in the holes, sanded those cabinets down and primed again and painted them twice.  It took forever and was a little frustrating when we realized we had to pretty much start over but, we love the end result.  They look five million times better and I absolutely do not regret our decision.  So, if you are thinking of painting your wood or knotty pine cabinets, here are the steps I would follow:

1. Remove your cabinet doors and all hardware
2. Fill in all the holes with wood putty!!!
3. Sand those babies
4. Give them a good coat of an oil based primer
5. Next is two coats of any paint of your choice
6. Give your cabinets a good 24 hours to dry, at least
7. Re-hang your cabinet doors
8. Admire your lovely fresh and clean cabinets

We still need to add the rest of our hardware, hopefully that will happen this weekend!

  

Chatham snuck in on this one.

Looking at the journey these cabinets have been through and seeing them now all fresh and white and new, it reminds me of the journey we take in life with Christ.  Like our cabinets, we all have issues and we have sin.  The amazing grace of Jesus can cover a multitude of sins.  By the precious blood of Christ we are made white as snow, new.  It's pretty cool that now when I look at our cabinets I am reminded of the redeeming and cleansing love of our Savior.  You can even see God in cabinets, who knew?

“Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool".  Isaiah 1:18