Yes, that ugly thing has sat in our old apartment and our new home looking like that. After discovering Annie Sloan chalk paint, I bought some in Old White (it took two testers) and painted a thin coat and then a thicker coat. The great thing about chalk paint is it does not require sanding or priming, so even though the paint is expensive, you save time and extra supplies. My vision for this desk was to paint it with my chair fabric motif. I thought the huge drawers needed a little more than just that, so I took an inexpensive tube of gold acrylic paint and painted squares with the corners scooped out (is there a name for those?). I then penciled in the design from the chair and painted it with a cheap light orange acrylic paint, and a second coat of Basic acrylic red paint which I wiped away for a more “worn” look.

Now I just need to find the missing piece of hardware for the desk – it’s sitting in one of my many junk drawers somewhere.

The rocking chair is the one I reupholstered for Hailey’s room, of which the seat cushion still needs to be fixed, but it works. The book racks on the wall are Ikea Bekvam spice racks painted grey.

Since this bedroom has a spiral staircase cutting a chunk out of the corner, I decided to make the closet part of the bedroom instead of just storage. Down the road I want to paint the closet the same color as the bedroom and put up a curtain or shade to hide the top shelving.

Cost Breakdown:

• Crib/bedding, swing, rocker, artwork: Hand-me-down from Hailey
• Sunburst mirror: Thrifted, $1.99
• Paint: $24
• Dresser + Paint: $45
• Ikea spice racks: $3.99 each / total: $11.97
• Lamp: Thrifted, $4
• “M”, paint and fabric for Ikea Ung Drill: $8
• Closet pole: $6ish?

Total Cost: $100.96

Still to-do checklist:

• Paint closet
• Cover lampshade
• Window treatments
• Buy Rug
• Curtain for closet
• Move closet rod support to the end of the rod
• Re-sew cushion for rocker
• Child-proof the stairwell

BEFORE:

The mantle went white with Olympic Premium’s zero VOC primer and 3 coats of Olympic Premium paint, and the fireplace cover went to the dump. I also scrubbed the inside of the fireplace with Trader Joe’s Peppermint Castile Soap mixed with water.

AFTER:

The rag-painted left side will get another coat of stain, since it wiped away and is considerably less sheen-y. And yes, the right side of the fireplace is still a good nine inches wider than the left side. Maybe someday we’ll remedy that. But for now, we love how the brick ties in with our dining room table and leather sofa. Another view:

My sister and I painted the walls with Benjamin Moore’s Fantasy Blue color matched in Olympic Premium by the good people at Lowe’s. (Actually the guy who worked with me to color match asked me 5 minutes later if he could help me when I came back to collect my paint. Apparently a pregnant Asian woman is hard to remember.) We also removed the old drapes and sagging rods complete with their greasy looped pulls. New window coverings pending!

Total cost of the fireplace project:
$5  for the mini can of stain I bought to finish the left side of the fireplace (yet to be done)
$3 for the dropcloth
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Total: $8. I had the paint and larger can of stain on hand from other projects. The paintbrush had to be thrown away, so maybe the cost of the project in damages comes to a bit more.

I found this French Provincial dresser on Craigslist for $40, which I’m finding out is a STEAL! I’d checked Craigslist for months trying to find a similar piece to the one in Hailey’s room, only to discover that they typically run from $200 to $400.

BEFORE:

The dresser came painted in a flat pink color with gold trim. I had found a mistinted grey semi-gloss Olympic no VOC paint at Lowe’s for $5. I have been sticking with the no-VOC paints while pregnant, and probably will continue to due to small children being in the house. I love that there are no smelly gases coming off the walls into our home.

I primed the gold paint on the dresser with Olympic no-VOC primer, then painted the whole thing with a mini foam roller, giving it 2-3 thin coats to keep the paint smooth. I painted the hardware with Rustoleum’s oil-rubbed-bronze spray paint, which I had also done on Hailey’s dresser. I coated the whole dresser with two coats of water-based polyurethane for protection and added gloss.

You may remember my Ung Drill of yore, I’ve now updated it for Madelyn’s room and I think it looks great against her turquoise wall (Olympic’s Serendipity). I grabbed some fabric at Jo-Ann’s along with a wooden letter and some grey paint for a total of $8. I then spray-mounted the fabric to the backing board (formerly the chalkboard), painted the letter grey, and hot-glued the letter to the fabric. The fabric wasn’t quite firmly mounted enough to hold the wooden letter, so I used my electric stapler to staple it from behind in a few places. Since the dresser will double as a changing table, I wanted to minimize the chance of a heavy letter falling onto our little baby.

AFTER:

I’m really excited to actually be able to paint the walls in our new baby room. With Hailey I made up for the beige apartment walls by painting her dresser. Our bun-in-the-oven, Madelyn Faith, will have an aqua room with coral accents. Here is the inspiration board:

The wood floor will require a nice soft carpet for our little girl (and for our toes in the middle of the night in the dead of winter). The rug will probably be our most expensive purchase for this frugal little nursery. Our current crib is brown, but I hope to find time to paint it white before September, when Madelyn is due to come. The rocking chair probably looks familiar, yes, it is the finished reupholstered rocking chair project (which still has yet to be completed – the cushion needs to be ENTIRELY resewn). The dresser is a stand-in for what I’m hoping to find on Craigslist as I did with Hailey’s dresser – which was a steal at $40. The tissue pom-poms are super easy to make, the hardest part is finding the right colors of tissue paper. And I would love to find the other ball-type things – any ideas? Party supply maybe? Pom-poms are my idea of a mobile-replacement. Hailey loved watching them twist and turn while having her diaper changed when she was very young.

Our biggest hurdle with the baby room will be closing up a huge hole in the floor. Yes, that’s right, we have a spiral staircase through the floor into a basement bedroom, as odd as that is. Unfortunately the rooms are on the small side, and we can’t afford the square footage the staircase takes up. Otherwise we might consider putting a closet around it until the kids were older so they could have the ultimate two-level shared bedroom.

Basement guest-bedroom:

Madelyn’s Room:

Obviously by the railing placement, this staircase is an extreme hazard to young children, in addition to the space it takes up. My hope is to close the hole up and put matching wood over the floor, probably nabbing the wood from the coat closet floor and replacing it with carpet.

So here’s a picture of our fixer-upper “House of Dreams”:

Yes, the house color and the “artistic” shrubs will have to go. We will have 3 bedrooms upstairs, 2 bedrooms downstairs, two bathrooms, with a good-sized family room in the basement. The basement is mostly finished, with lots of extra storage, which I’m so excited about! The house is also in walking-distance from some good friends and my grandparents.

I couldn’t resist beginning a design board for the living room, so I’ll share that with you. My plans are a bit lofty for our budget, but I’ll try to bargain shop my way to this look.

Actual living room (there is a wood floor under that carpet):

My plans:

Excuse my photoshopping skills, I don’t actually have fancy Adobe software, just the open source equivalent, which leaves much to be desired!

A quick Design Board Rundown:

• I’m working with the chair and sofa I already have, the sofa is similar to the picture above, and the slipper chair is the exact same. My plan is to buy a second orange slipper chair. The chair is from Target.
• Wall color: upper left – Benjamin Moore Cotton Tail (my paints will be a low-VOC color match since I am prego and have Hailey in the house and can’t use regular paint).
• Wall color: upper right – This is my mock-up idea of a stencil design I want on one wall (which wall is TBD). My stencil will most likely be purchased from Cutting Edge Stencils’ shop on Etsy. I’m not totally decided on the leaf pattern, they have some really cool damask stencils as well. Inspiration photo for the stencil wall from Caitlin Wilson Designs:

  

• The curtains, table, and lamp are from Crate and Barrel – all pretty high in price, so we’ll see what I can finagle for cheaper. I know the curtain print and the chair print look pretty busy together, so I’ll have to wait until I get my furniture into the living room to find out if they will fight with each other or not. If so, I’ll go for a more solid fabric for the curtains.
• The rug is from Overstock.com
• Printed pillows: Etsy, Plum Cushion’s Shop
• White mirrored chest: Overstock.com (This one is waaay above my price range, so I’m hoping to DIY one from a thrift store or Craigslist find!)