Making Our Rental Feel Like Home: Bedroom & Bath

I won't lie to you, friends, I very seriously miss my GIGANTIC old bedroom, huge closet, attached master bath, and wood floors. I loved that I had room for a chair, bed, dressers, desks, nightstands... all the things. However, what I've quickly realized since we moved is that we don't really need all of those things. In many ways it is much easier to keep the bathroom cleaned without it, I have less places to stack items I don't need in the bedroom, and cleaning is much faster with less floor to mop or vacuum. 

Our new room is probably just over half the size of our old one. Here's a small angle of what the master looked like when we first toured:

Making Our Rental Feel Like Home: The Kitchen & Dining Room

We spent a lot of time after we moved in making the house cozier for us. We love the kitchen and dining room area, but it definitely lacks in storage and the washer and dryer are in the kitchen right there. That was a compromise, for sure. At our old house it was off of the kitchen but separate enough that it worked. I wanted to make sure that it was at least as attractive as it could be. Having a place with a washer and dryer hook up was big, so dealing with it in the kitchen and not having shared laundry seemed a fine trade.

Top 5 Messy Business Redos

I've owned my house for quite awhile now and feel like I've done a lot of upgrades. But sadly most of them I did before discovering the blogging world, so I didn't "do it as a I went" I thought it would be fun to highlight some of my big projects and some of my favorite projects. That might light my fire to pick up a paint brush again. or something.

1. Kitchen. The kitchen overhaul was my number one favorite favorite thing. (Besides installing wood floors rather than uglio carpet that was originally there.) This is what the kitchen looked like before. Clean. Dated. Nasty. Ew. 

The kitchen had everything from the handles spray painted... to the cabinets painted... to the walls painted... to the countertops. It got real painted all up in there.

Installing wallpaper backsplash from Lowe's was also an awesome money saving solution and made it actually look pretty.

Here's a comparison of the before... and after. Way better in my opinion!

Total cost: $300.00
Total time: 10 days

find all the details: painting the cabinets here, painting the countertops here, see how i added little details here, tile backsplash here, accessories here and here,

2. Guest Bathroom. My second favorite project I actually did quite awhile ago... almost two years I think... might be time for some switcheroos! But anyways. This guest bathroom has undergone at least three transformations. The most recent one being from a baby blue nursery with the same dated cabinets as the kitchen to an elegant, relaxing space.

Here's what it looked like back in 2008:

And in 2010-2011:

Everything in this room got a face lift. The countertop was replaced awhile back but I painted the cabinets a blue gray color and moved the shower curtain up to the ceiling and put in two panels which makes it feel bigger and allows light from the teeny tiny window to come through.

2011-2013:

New light fixture for super cheap from a WalMart clearance sale (I think it was only $20.00 or something)  and even added a storage component where the old towel bars used to be. That's the problem with a house like mine... no storage. At all.

Total Time: 1 week

Total Budget: $150.00

find all the details: how it got started here, some cabinet assembly info here, and the final product here.

3. Jewelry display built-in.

Total Time: 2 days

Total Budget: $35.00 (already had beadboard left over, bought trim and hooks)

find all the details: built in details and origination here, how the whole bathroom panned out here.

4. Laundry Room.

 This room was originally such a total nightmare we called it the "murder scene" when we first bought the house. (I say we because it was my parents and I.) Everything was basically wrong about this room and I've managed to correct most of it. The venting for the dryer was being pushed under the house, which is real bad bad for the insulation under there. So that was rerouted and new flooring was put in when we first did the overhaul on the place.

Here's what it looked like for the first couple years of living here (roughly 2008-2011):

My washer and dryer came from Habitat for Humanity. The dryer I actually got off a dude that was shopping that same day. For free! So they were okay for the first few years. They were super loud and sometimes you had to wash stuff twice and definitely not energy efficient.

                      
Gross. That's all I can say.

                                         

After the great flood of 2010 (when my entire house had to have the flooring replaced due to a slow leak from the water heater) I decided it was a good opportunity to redo the laundry room, though I feel the color is a bit too dark now.

We ended up tripling the amount of usable storage/work space in the laundry room. Which has been really great.

And this was the final reveal picture:


Total budget: $900.00 for the washer and dryer. Roughly $150.00 for wood, paint, and accessories.

Total time: 3 weeks

 find the details: starting the project here, making the awesome countertop here,  making the shelf here, finishing up the accessories here.

5. Free Furniture Painting.

I think free furniture is the best furniture. If you know exactly how to make it pretty anyways, otherwise it could get a little out of hand. 

One of the first things I painted was this park bench my Mom gave me. I don't recommend actually sitting on it but some spray paint and a little can of exterior paint can go a long way.

A previous roommate had left behind this old desk. It was sort of warped and funky but with a little engenuity it worked out well in the laundry room for the litter box and extra storage. That's my thing if you haven't noticed... creating storage.

Not to bad eh?

 I had another friend that was moving into an apartment from her townhome and didn't have any back yard space for a full 8 piece outdoor furniture set. They weren't awful but I thought they could use some more class...

9 cans of spray paint and 1 horribly sore thumb later I had an awesome, all matching patio set.

 

This chair was given to me by my Mom also. She found it at a thrift store for about three dollars. So it wasn't free exactly but pretty close. I think it came out of an office or something.

Some spray paint and cute fabric made it totally awesome. No more weird chair! Yay.

{see it all here}

 Before my parents moved away to New Mexico they found this buffet/cardenza thing on the side of the road that said "Free" they loaded it up in their mini van and brought it over! It cost me nothing to redo it because I used a bunch of paint I already had and reused the handles.



{see it here}



Not too bad ey?


I suppose when I stop to think about it I do have a lot of things accomplished in my little house. I also now think that I've got a few more ideas for other things to do. No more blogging slump! Hopefully anyways. lol. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions on any of these. :)

Free Furniture Re-do!

I am relieved to announce that I have finally, for the first time in about four months, done a re-do worth blogging about! Yay! Let's just say I've been super crazy busy with this whole graduation thing, college ending thing, student teaching thing, and working thing. It happens. But! Back to the redo.

My parents picked up this buffet/dresser/furniture thing on the side of the road. For Free! I love people's garbage sometimes. I have been looking forward to being able to put my coffee pot and other items in something (remember my house has zero storage) and this was perfect!

And free.  But ugly.

The top of the buffet was a little rough.... It had some anti slip contact paper that they put on it right after painting it. Not good. It stuck to the top. I sanded as much off as I could...

The only part that wouldn't really come off is that ring part. Oh well. I used the paint that I had already from my cabinets (read: free) and painted the top and sides...

While Lucy-kitten explored...

I actually kind of liked the hardware it came with.... It was a cool vintage bronze and so I kept it. I figure I can just replace it later if I decided. I free handed some chevron stripes across the whole thing. I accidentally painted the bottom drawer upside... my bayyy-d.

And I placed it in it's new little home in the back of the dining room! My table is a mess. Don't look at that. But my new buffet is totally cute!

 

Total investment?

Zero Dollars.

My kind of project! Yay!

Linking up with: House of Hepworths Lil' Luna

A Little Crazy on the White Powder

I feel as though- since you are all such lovely readers and friends who already know that I sometimes suck  am challenged by my DIY tasks. For example before painting the walls there had to be some hole patching. After you patch said holes you must sand the spackling/mud to create a smooth and unnoticeable finish.

First of all the whole notion of smooth and unnoticeable didn't work out. But I shall disguise that easily enough. The second thing is that obviously sanding anything creates dust. In the case of drywall spackling... white dust. White dusts in little piles. Little piles all over. You get the picture. So I decided to implement my excellent house-handy skills and shop vac up the dust! Nice and easy that way all I would have to do is wipe down a few areas and paint! A one day project! I'd probably even have time to watch a little HGTV or something.

Not so. You see shop vacs have two settings.

Blower and vacuum.

Do not be deceived friends they are very very different. So different that ShopVac as a company decided to label the sides of each "Blower" and "Vacuum" very nice of them. But that's only helpful if you pay attention.

I put my hose into one of the fore mentioned selections and powered that sucker on!

Within seconds my glasses and my self were covered in white dust. Along with everything else in the bedroom. Good work me, I dispersed the dust freely around the entire place. Awesome. That took forever to clean up. Thankfully my Mom came over to help me. Thanks again Mom.

After that 3 hour long clean up I got to do the fun stuff (okay and after the painting too).

I got to decorate! My favorite part! 

I moved the dresser into this little nookie by the closet and made it into a little dressing station.I added a lamp, my awesome HomeGoods mirror and some decorative accessories. As well as a random empty corkboard.

I'm not sure how I feel about the clock being right there. It's my iPod radio but it may find a new home after I move the desk and everything back into the room. I love that you can see into the bathroom in this picture. And it's even better because the colors flow together to make one awesome master suite. How many can say that they have a custom beautiful master suite in college?

I also put the same curtains that I've always had back up. Partly because they were hella expensive and partially because they are energy efficient. They work great in the summer and awesome in the winter. I am still considering painting them but i want to wait until after I get a double rod for the sheers and decide at that point. Once you put paint down you're kinda committed. Thanks to blogland though I may be able to come up with other curtain ideas too.

This is the corner where the computer desk will go. I haven't put any decorations up or anything over here because I have to decide if I'll be getting a new desk or working with what I have and whether or not I'll be putting my bookshelf in the room. Lots of decisions to be made very soon.

But wow! It looks so amazing! I feel like it's really my room and my space. I love that people can walk in and say; "Now this is Meaghan's room." It reflects so much more of my personality and my tastes. And my lamps are cool. hehe.

Here's another "before" view:

 

And the glorious after! (okay after-in-progress-like)

So for $40.00 in paint and $30.00 in new table lamps I have completely transformed my space.Everything else is what I already had. Same headboard (so far, I still want to make one), same rug from the office, same tables, same napkins from Salvation Army, same curtains and nightstands. But it all looks so different now. And I love it!

I hope you do too! And remember.... read what is said on your shop vac before pushing that button.

Seriously.