Decorating Tips

Before I leave the topic of my bathroom behind, I wanted to pass on a couple of tips that I learned while doing it. And they all involve saving money.

First, I wanted to put brushed nickel door pulls on the doors on the bathroom. The house came with no door or drawer pulls at all. The only problem was that the hinges were this (rather ugly) antique brass color.
However the hinges worked perfectly well. And if I bought new ones, not only would I spend more money, but the holes probably wouldn't line up and we'd have to drill new ones while filling in the old ones.

My solution? Spray paint! I'd seen this on tv, but wasn't sure it would work. I considered this my test run before I did the same thing to the kitchen hinges. And it worked! I don't know if you can see from the picture, but the hinges got a nice even color of a matching brushed nickel, and now look great alongside my new door pulls. Total cost for four "new" hinges: under $6.

I also needed to fill up a wall. But I had something very specific in mind. I wanted framed pictures that were pretty neutral expect for the pop of color I wanted as an accent color. I was using burgundy as an accent and I really wanted it in the artwork. So I hunted appropriate pictures I could put in inexpensive frames. But I could not find what I had in my head.
My solution? I grabbed my camera and went to my neighbors' houses and took pictures of their flowers in their front flowerbeds. Again, I'd seen this done on tv but was unsure it would work for me. Although I was prepared to go to a nursery to find some if I needed, both houses on either side of us have beautiful flowers in the perfect shade. My camera has a setting that blurs the background while keeping the fore object in focus. I then printed them out on our home computer using photo paper I already had. I shopped around to find the four matching frames for a good deal. Total cost for art work: under $30.
Actually I also saved a lot of money shopping around for other things as well. I found the mirror for about $30 and used coupons on the cubbies. I used paint leftover from when we painted the living room. It was actually more fun trying to figure out how I could do what I wanted less expensively than just going to one home store and buying everything.

Now I'm going to take a few weeks off from ANY decorating project. I have a few others in mind but promise not to touch a paintbrush until school is over!