Living paycheck to paycheck is awesome. Being a 20 something in this economy has given me some lifelong skills, and some great daily affirmations. Insert Stuart Smalley quotes here.
I am…
1. Thrifty with my expenses
2. Creative with my color schemes
3. Ambitious with my weekend to-do-lists
I can…
1. Repurpose stuff that just needs some love
2. Rearrange furniture and art (even when its extremely heavy)
3. Resourcefully hoard items I know I can use later (don’t worry Mom, I don’t have a problem)
I wanted to finish my boyfriends horribly unfinished bedroom. So while said boyfriend was doing this…
Biscuit, Turk and I were doing this…
note: this is HALFWAY through the project. NOT FINISHED. And Turk is clearly not happy about the progress we have (or have not) made. Or maybe he is angry that he is priming instead of running, or chasing, or swimming, or barking.
3 months ago, the room looked like this: 
Then we installed laminate wood floors (not free, but ch ch cheap…real hardwoods will come when we are real adults)
Looks pretty nice, ehh? So then we threw all of Pete’s stuff in the room.
The only thing wonderful about this room is the box of Wheat Thins on the bed, which I happily devoured after taking this photo.
Then, I started painting…
When I painted the walls brown, the gray comforter looked HIDEOUS. So I brought out my dingy duvet from college, gave it a new, clean life with Tide and Clorox and covered the drab gray…
…room looks better already, right!
Then I realized that side table just wasn’t working …
- Can’t access anything from sleeping position on the bed
- Isn’t sturdy enough to hold a lamp, or a glass of water
- It matches the floor, blah.
- Its a dark piece, and the walls are already dark. Let there be light.
So I painted it white.
After I speckled the brown wall with primer, I moved back to the walls…and that nasty cream trim…
See that? That’s a finished wall, being cut in WITHOUT tape. I should be a surgeon with my steady hand.
Then I spent way too much time trying to figure out how to move all the furniture back, by myself, without scratching the floors.
I brought in the 4 tiered shelf from the 3rd bedroom of the house that is currently serving as the storage space for all the “furniture and accessories and things I know will be of use someday, somehow”…also known as the Hoarding Nook.
I finished painting the wobbly shelf, and is now being used as an accent piece, to lighten the space.
Oh that’s a cute piece of pottery! Its not pottery, its a plant holder…that was keeping our beloved money tree safe on the adorable front porch at Pete’s old house. 
I didn’t want to touch the dresser because it is a great (and by great I mean expensive) piece that I was way too nervous to attempt a painting makeover on. It is a dark piece though, so I really needed to bring out the light wood accents on the knobs and top surface.
To do this, I brought in another Nancy special…yet another blanket in my linen closet (and by linen closet I mean the wicker chest I put everything I don’t know what to do with in…broken laptop, tank tops from summer, old dog toys and this wonderful gold blanket)
Remember that cute little sailboat on his wobbly bedside table? His grandfather built and painted that, so it needed a spot where he can always see it.
So…to recap:
- Painted the walls and trim (with paint we already had) – $0
- Painted the shelf/old bedside table with the trim paint – $0
- Covered the drab comforter with a fresh white duvet – $0
- Added my gold blanket to bring out the light wood on the dresser – $0
- Brought in the 4 tiered, sturdy shelf and a LAMP! (from the hoarding nook) – $0
- Moved the old bedside table to the entrance of the room, creating an accent piece – $0
- Brought in Mr. Fishman that had been outside – $0
- Gave the sailboat a more prominent resting place – $0
- Added accent pillows from the living room – $0
- Removed the dining room table chair and replaced it with a canvas director’s chair he had in the office – $0
- Covered the quasi computer desk (made of massive, broken speakers) with a white sheet – $0
Now…onto items I WANT to spend money on:
- A new rug. This one
- Square white frames, 9 of them, to be hung above the computer with black and white abstract photos. Similar to this look
- White Plantation shutters
- A real desk, or…even better…a wall mount for that beautiful imac!
Other things I worked on this past weekend that are not ready for presentation, but will make the blog soon enough:
- Laundry Room
- His bathroom
- Living Room
- Office
And with that, I’m out. This blog post almost took as long as the room makeover!
The Charleston Porch 
