Posted by pudding on 2004-09-30 09:10:03
Post Subject:
Oh my goodness! I'm so excited to read this post - I was going to start a thread about the same thing.
My husband and I moved into our very own home after 2 and a half years of renting and the absolute joy of renovating is awesome!
In fact, we have been working on our latest project today. So far we have made changes to our kitchen, main living room and bedroom and we had modest budgets to improve each of those rooms, but today we tackled the ugliest room in the house and we were determined not to spend a cent. I'm sitting here in it now I have to say I think I love it the most!
The room is a tiny rectangular shoebox which we think the previous owner, an 80 year old home handyman, built himself. The room seems to have been tacked onto the exterior of the house - one wall is the same as the outside of the rest of our home! There was only a masonite floor and two of the walls were some very cheap wood panelling. A positive point about the room is that it has two windows which let in a lot of morning sunlight. Oh, I almost forgot - on the exterior / interior wall is a window for another bedroom in the house!
We decided to make this little room our "study" and until 8am this morning we were just going to jam all our furniture in there, but painting our other rooms had such good results we decided to have a go at this one. So we painted everything a beautiful creamy off-white, the same as our other rooms, with gloss trims.
Then, because we were determined not to spend any money, my husband lay some vinyl offcuts my mother had given us after she had recovered her kitchen floor. It's a beautiful terracotta tile pattern. This was the hardest part, but very funny!
We arranged our bookcase, computer desk and birdcage in the room and re-hung the green roller blinds that came with the house. Tomorrow we are going to start putting up our knick-knacks - a clock from the zoo which makes a different animal noise to mark each hour, a indoor/outdoor temperature gage, a cork board that holds all our take-away menus, a calendar and some framed newspaper articles and cartoons.
My friend and I christened the room "The Italian Grotto" (every room must have a name) and we are going to carve the name into a spare piece of the vinyl and hang it on the wall like a sign. :)
I got Jean's book this week too, and I loved it. As you can see I was very inspired!! Renovating, decorating and creating my home is one of my favourite ways to craft. The 'home' chapter was one of my favourite parts of the book.
P.S I took a before photo, and I'm so glad I did. When I get an after photo I'll scan them in and show our work!
P.P.S A good book to read is Home Comforts. It will give you every possible piece of information you might need about looking after your home.
