Using What You Have

Recently, I have been helping out some friends as they redo/remodel their home. The end results of just what they have planned are incredible! They painted their walls and their cabinets and added laminate floors and already their house is a different place! They asked me to come over and give them so advice and help put things up. Here are just a couple of the things that I did with what they had and not having to buy anything to do it. Our shopping trips will come up in a later blog :).

Drapes: They already had chocolate brown panels that were in really good condition, so I didn't see any need to buy more. However, they needed a splash of color. I had this really pretty green table cloth that I had traded for at my Bible study's last accessory swap, so I brought this over. With the help of some pins and precarious balancing on a gatorade cooler, I managed to turn the table cloth into a swag that covered the curtain rod and united the two pannels and the living room automatically had a pop of color.

Lamps: Lighting is always an issue in any home, and in my friends' bedroom, this was no exception. They had two bedside lamps that really were just two small and not very helpful for reading in bed or overall lighting. With good bedside lamps that have a little weight to them costing close to fifty dollars (unless you're really luck and find some in a thrift store that aren't from the 70's and still work), it seemed silly for my friends to buy new ones after having paid for the floors and especially since the lamps still worked. So, I took several nice looking books (leather or cloth bound) and made a neat stack on each end table and placed the lamps on top of the stack, automatically giving some height to the lamps and a little more weight to the end tables. This especially worked because the look also references my friends' love for reading.

Accessories: Sometimes it feels like you need new accessories to dress up your home, when really all it takes is just moving them from room to room. This was the case with my friends' home. They have some great accessories from travels and family members that they really had only one safe place for (with a three year old and a 7 month old, you get the picture) before they redid their home. However, with the clearing of the bookshelf in their room and the addition of an armoire to their room, they automatically had more safe places for their items. I simply moved some of their items that matched their bedroom to their room and arranged them on top and automatically, they items felt new and the room felt different.