Apartment Tour- Living Room and Kitchen

I though y'all might enjoy a little tour of our small apartment.  Today I am sharing the living room and kitchen.  They are wide open to each other so naturally they wanted to share a post.  Things are always changing around here as we are still figuring out what works and what doesn't. 

  What do you think?  Any suggestions for a tiny apartment- think 800 sq feet?

Kitchen Shelves

Wine Rack

Work in Progress Living Room

Side of the Living Room

Kitchen Galley

Hard to hide the Water Heater Closet

Using what ya got- Updating a Bookshelf

Being in a small apartment means we need to maximize the space we have.  Being on a tight budget means we need to maximize the space while using what we already have (for the most part).  We have this little oak bookshelf which fits perfectly in front of the office door.  It was cute as it was, but I get bored and always feel the need to change things.  So it got a coat of paint and now feels like a whole new piece! 

What do you think? Should I have left it oak? Do you like the painted insides?

Apartment Tour- The office farmhouse makeover

After

Apartments can be tricky to decorate.  Some people don't  bother.  I do!  I want my home to be cozy.  I want it to feel as if we have lived here forever.  Maybe its because we moved so often with the military that I am extremely partial to a well lived in home.  Our apartment is a little 2 bedroom 1 bath space.  Storage is scarce so we get creative.  Our office has no space for a real bookshelf.  I put up shelves all along the ceiling.  Cheap ikea brackets that I painted yellow tie the shelves into the rest of the decor.  We removed the gross apartment blinds and I gave the window a frosted treatment.  The plants and birds LOVE all the light and I love knowing neighbors are not looking in...

Before

So what do you think of my transformation?

Thrifty Tuesday-Using What Ya Got

Hubby and I have been getting in the crafty mood lately.  I bought this old cabinet door frame a long time ago in Maryland.  I got it for next to nothing since it has no glass, which is just fine with me.  I decided to make it into a jewelry window (for me, not to sell).  I used my staple gun and stapled chicken wire to the back.  I cut the chicken wire after it was secured and made sure there were no rough edges that would scratch the wall.  I then hung it up in our bedroom and I love it!  I think it is a subtle way to display my fun jewelry and seeing all my necklaces and such makes me more inclined to wear them.  A win win!

Would You Have Bought This?

A couple weeks ago I stopped by the little antique store here in town and came home with this beauty.  You totally would have bought it too right?  I mean its gorgeous, who wouldn't want it?

Ok, maybe I brought it home because it had yellow (one of my favorite colors, especially to decorate with!) and the store owner gave me a good deal.  Know what it is?  Its an old car hop tray from sonic.  The car hops would bring your food to you and this tray would hang on the car door while you ate.  Pretty cool huh?

I cleaned it up with lots of scrubbing, soap and hot water and now it found a home on top of my suitcase stack in the living room next to my favorite reading chair.  The tray is perfect for setting down a book, cup of coffee or pen and notebook.  I am so glad I didn't dismiss it as ugly and dirty.  I think its a gem!

Hidden storage

 

Storage is always an important feature in a home.  The house we are renting has funky storage.  There is lots of room for hanging clothes, but not much room or shelves for linens, a vacuum, or craft supplies.  Since we are renting we don't want to invest money (nor do I know if we would be allowed to) in putting up shelves or changing up a closet.  Not one to turn down a challenge, I started thinking of how we could store items like my sewing machine for example.  One day it just clicked.  In the living room, instead of using an end table we have a stack of old suitcases.  Empty suitcases.  Why not fill them? So that's exactly what I did!  The sewing machine now lives in the round blue hat box.  All my fabric and sewing equipment lives in the other two suitcases.  Hopefully someday I will be able to have a craft room where my sewing machine won't have to be banished to a suitcase.  But for now, it works perfectly.  And I didn't have to spend a dime, or worry about filling holes in the wall when we move!  Check back tomorrow for the history of the cute little tray on top of the suitcases...

Thrifty Tuesday- Decorating a New House

I love decorating!  If I had unlimited funds, I would constantly be changing up my decor.  As you well know, my funds are quite limited.  And, considering how we are just renting this house, I can't do anything too permanent.  Nor do I want to spend money on a house that isn't mine.  That said, I am trying to find ways to decorate on the cheap without hanging sheets as curtains.  I am a huge goodwill fan, and the other day I scored some wicker plates.  You know the kind you have camping to hold up your paper plates?  I think they were $.40 each so I bought the whole pile.  I then spray painted them white, pale yellow and bright yellow.  Once dry, I nailed them onto the wall in a cascading pattern.  Now we have a feature work of art, completely one of a kind and keeping in our budget.  What do you think?  Like it or not?  I would love to hear your thoughts!

Dyed Yellow Curtains

Now that Hubby and I are lightening up the living room, we decided that our original curtains were too dark for the space.  We bought inexpensive curtains from Ikea (can't beat $10 for the pair!) and dyed them ourselves.  We figured if we hated it, we didn't have a huge investment put into the curtains.  I bought a bottle of rit dye from Joanns.  I filled a plastic tub with warm water, and the yellow dye.  I then dyed the curtains by immersing the bottom half of the curtain into the dye bath.  Every 15 minutes I would raise a little more out of the dye bath.  When all was said and done, this procedure gave the curtains an ombre look.  I love how they turned out!

The ends are in the bucket of dye.

Drying on the clothesline

 See how dark these are?  And this is during daylight!

And these are so light even when its dark outside!

Yellow Doors

I thought I would show you some of the yellow doors around here. 

 The door to the knitting room

 The interior of the front door (the exterior is the same color but in special exterior paint)

Looking down at the front door

The pantry door in the kitchen (you might remember that Hubby and I built this door completely from scratch!

A Very Yellow TV Stand

Until recently our living room was a bit underwhelming.  We had a sofa set that we bought to fit in our previous place, that didn't really match our house style.  Our tv was set on top of an ikea bookshelf and looked very cluttered.  I was originally looking for a large dresser on craigslist, but found this cutie for $60.  I wasn't sure if it would stay wood or be painted so for a while it just sat there the same as when we bought it.  I finally decided the dresser was meant to be yellow (and this is what started the whole entire yellow escapade).  So off to Home Depot I went and returned with a gallon of yellow paint.  Now a gallon is a heck of a lot of paint when you are just painting one dresser... A quart would have given me leftovers!  Once I painted the dresser, since I had extra paint and might as well use it, I painted the front door, the knitting room door, the pantry door, stool legs, dog food chairs and I still have a ton left!   But back to the dresser- I sanded it using Hubby's mouse sander, then rubbed candle wax where I wanted to distress it (the candle wax helps the paint NOT to stick in certain places).  I gave it quite a few coats of yellow, waited for it to dry and distressed it.  I covered the whole dresser in a wood coating to help it shine.  I love having a bright and fun entertainment stand now.  All our accessories are tucked away in the drawers and cabinet.  It looks so much cleaner now!  I am still trying to figure out what else I can paint yellow...

The original piece

In between coats

The stand before... pretty cluttered looking

Yet Another Painted Dresser

Last week I showed you Hubby's dresser re-do. This week I would like to share my dresser. I bought my dresser off craigslist for $50. Both of the dressers are in the same bedroom so I wanted the style to match without being matchy-matchy. I kept the same idea of white, wood and green accents. This dresser was a bit more of a challenge because even after sanding it down quite a bit, the original stain kept showing through. I eventually made my own chalk paint by using 1 cup paint to 1/2 cup baking soda. So easy! It is definitely a more rough paint but it uses less coats and after two coats the original red stain stopped coming through. I stained the top in the same stain as Hubby's dresser and proceeded to paint a flower on the front. This dresser seems more girlie than Hubbys striped dresser. I am done painting dressers for a while. I have a gorgeous oak dresser in the other bedroom, but am not going to touch it. After having dressers in the middle of the living room while I was working on them, its super nice to have the floor space back. I am working on making the bedroom more retreat like. The painted dressers help tremendously!

DIY Dog Food Bowl Chairs

We have two big dogs who eat a lot! They each have their own bowl and space in the kitchen. Sounds good right? Only problem is that the bowls "travel" through the kitchen when Whiskey pushes them making sure all the food has been devoured. I am constantly tripping or kicking the bowls and was extremely frustrated. I tried feeding them in other rooms, but the bowls still got under foot. So I turned to Pinterest to solve the problem. I bought two mismatched chairs from Craigslist for $10. I painted them yellow to match the other accents in the house. While Hubby was at work, I got out his jigsaw and cut holes in each of the chair's seats. I had to keep cutting as my hole had to be big enough for the food bowls. I realized a bit too late that I should have done all this outside, as my living room was then covered in a thin layer of dust. Oh well, now I know for next time. Each dog now has a specific "chair bowl" as we had to shorten the legs on Whiskey's chair. It took them a few meals to get used to the new eating areas but now they know exactly where to go. I love how their bowls look right at home in the house, even if they do look like "potty chairs" as one of my Aunts commented...

Using What You Got- In the Basement

As you may already know, last year our basement flooded and we had to rip everything out down to the studs.  We are waiting until we can save up enough to fix it, so for now we are just living with it as is.  We use it mainly for storage since we don't have a garage.  Our house is a split level house, so as soon as you walk in the front door you can go up or down.  Until now we didn't have a door to separate the downstairs, so as soon as you walked in you could smell the basement-y smell.  It didn't smell horrible but it did smell basement-y.  And when you looked down the steps you could see the hot mess we call our basement.  I had contacted a couple contractors to see if they could put up a new door, but bids were crazy high.  We had saved the doors from the bedrooms (which we had replaced with french doors) and I was hopeful they would work.  They ended up being too small and I was resigning myself to just live with the basement no-door situation.  Until I remembered we had an antique door as a decor item in the spare bedroom. Guess what?  It just happened to be the perfect size.  The. Perfect. Size!  Hubby installed it and I just need to add a doorknob.  For now we can pull it open without a knob.  So we solved our door problem without spending a dime.  Its amazing what you find when you actually take the time to look!  We still have to pull up the vinyl flooring directly at the bottom of the stairs, but as of right now its looking a world better. 

A New Frugal Bathmat

On Pinterest I fell in love with a quilted bathmat.  I thought about buying new fabric to make my own, but decided against it.  In my quilt chest I have a collection of antique quilts, including this crib sized quilt.  I am guessing its from the 70s based on the patterns.  I have never really had a place to put it, since its so small.  And the binding/backing was super ugly.   Keeping with the re purposing mindset, I decided to make the bathmat from this quilt.  I measured and cut the quilt (it was super hard to cut an antique quilt!) and removed the backing, taking care not to cut into the squares I was saving.  I love the vintage-y-ness of the quilt and tried to leave it as in tact as possible.  I even left the blue yarn tufts that connected all the layers.  I then sewed the quilt to a white towel and bound the edges.  When all is said and done, it looks like a small quilt on one side with a towel on the other.  I love it!  It was super frugal too since I already had the quilt and towel.  I did have to buy a heavy duty sewing needle because I kept breaking the regular ones.  Considering how I used a coupon it only cost me two bucks (for a whole pack of needles).  I am in love with my new mat and might make a matching one for the sink.  Especially since it only cost a couple bucks to make!