All articles filed in Budget Decorating
Take a Peek into My Workshop
It’s been a while since Libby Mills profiled my workshop in her blog’s Studio Snapshot series. Since then, I’ve branched out into other mediums including felt, do more metalsmithing, and have acquired some new tools.
I am lucky enough to have a dedicated space for my work, but I live in a small house and purge regularly out of necessity. This includes my workshop. My current set up is the result of regular purging and many wasted hours playing Tetris.
Here are some pictures of the ordered chaos.
Green Bathroom Redo
The thought of doing a major renovation gives me the shakes. Maybe that’s why I still have wall to wall carpet 20 years after moving into my house. Until I can gird my loins and steel myself in preparation for moving furniture, ripping up things and upsetting the cat, I will have to content myself with room by room redecorating.
I don’t have any before pictures of my bathroom, but let me give you an idea: the tub, toilet and sink were an indescribable yellow somewhere between mustard and school bus. We had an ugly plastic medicine cabinet with make up lights and three mirrored doors that were corroded. There was no storage space for cleaning supplies or anything else. The bathroom was cluttered. In a moment of weakness, I had painted the walls yellow with blue and green accent. It looked OK 20 years ago, but was starting to grate on me.
I wanted something relaxing, where I could get rid of clutter yet find things when I needed them. We had to replace the toilet two years ago, and I wanted the sink and tub to match. The tile was in good shape and I didn’t want to spend a lot of money. We had the tub reglazed, and replaced the sink. The mirror cost five dollars at a sidewalk sale. The cherry medicine chest came from ebay. The two decker wire basket was another cheap house sale find. The rug was free-I found it in a free bin at a local thrift store. It was filthy, so I soaked it in dish washing powder and warm water for a couple of days. Now it looks like new.
I altered the toilet paper holder and spray painted the waste can and towel rack to match the brushed nickel fixtures we got at Home Depot. Throw in two storage cabinets and baskets from Ikea, and the cost for everything including the plumber and electrician (but not the toilet) was just under one thousand dollars.
And while we’re on the subject of re purposing and reusing, here’s a picture of bookshelves I made by inserting an old ladder I found into a small niche in our upstairs hall way. I nailed boards onto the ladder steps and the scalloped ornamentation on the front is made from Dollar Store place mats I painted to match.
Ornamento 