Tightwad October - do it yourself - we hope!

Remember just a couple of weeks ago that I posted this dining room's makeover was done?
well, not quite!  Our house has white carpet in most all the rooms and after 8 years of hard living on it with messy adults, dogs and now grandbabies,  it was not as fresh as I would prefer.
I've never much liked carpet anyway because of how hard it is to clean and to know if it is clean. 

So - after 3 trips to Lowes this weekend, one trip was just to look, second trip was to buy one box of the tiles we thought we liked to see if they would coordinate with our current tile and the 3rd trip was to buy 32 boxes of tiles, borders, etc. 
We plan on replacing the carpet in our dining room, living room and one hall.
Jeff ripped up the carpet in the dining room and it came up easy with no glue holding it down. 

So, if all goes well,  I guess we will start tiling soon.  Nope, we have never done it before except for some peel and stick tiles we put in our old house. 
And if it goes badly when we try to do it,  I guess we will do all the prep work and then hire someone to do the tiling.

Tightwad October - Office/Craft room redone -

For about a week now,  I've been working over our "office" that is mostly my craft room.  I did not take any before pictures, it was just starting to look like a junk room with nothing hanging on the walls.  This room was Nina's bedroom and I don't think it ever got decorated after she moved out almost 5 years ago. 
All the furniture pieces I had to work with were good.  The room just needed some cleaning and organizing, as well as some color coordination and things to put on the walls.
I looked through what I had and ended up reusing some window treatments, thrift store fabric, and a bunch of frames from my craft closet. Apparently I never get rid of frames and I have a lot that came from yard sales for 25 cents or so. 
The only new expense for this room was 2 cans of black spray paint.  It was used on a wood chair, piano stool, several frames and a bulletin board.



Before - just an average office-type chair







I did a search for tutorials to recover office chairs and make slipcovers



Office chair make-over.  For the fabric, I re-cycled some black and white checked curtains that I sewed for a house Nina and John lived in as newlyweds. The skirt "was" a black toile valance that used to be in our master bedroom.   



the pieces pinned on and the sewing line marked with a pen with disappearing ink.



After

Thrift store fabric - a big piece of blue and black toile bought more than a year ago.  I used it to cover the glider rocker and footstool. 

glider rock with a new slip cover



I guess I could stay busy with this fabric stash and all these magazines and books for a long time!

 



this toile valance used to be in the dining room.

I  like this new room very much and I think I will do lots of crafting and sewing in here. 

I know I have different things than you have - but I also know that most of us have more stuff than we are using. 

If you are wanting a makeover, try looking at what you have in a different way.   



P.S.

My chair has arms - so to cover them, I cut out an oval shape, sewed bias tape around the edge and used that as a casing for elastic.  I just pulled up the elastic to get a snug fit, then tied it in a knot and hid the ends under the cover.

Dining Room re-do update

Way back in August,  I started a re-do of this dining room.  Then in September,  I sewed up the new curtains and swapped around some furniture.   This weekend,  Jeff did this woodworking project of building a pair of shelves to hold his plate collection.

He stained the shelves to match the buffet table and the dining room chairs.  He worked hard and measured and measured again.  He was worried they would be crooked or off-center but I think all his efforts paid off, and he got them straight and even. 

His plates are the Professions, a line of plates put out by Royal Doulton. 

Jeff's grandmother had a huge plate collection.  A big wall in her farm house was covered with plates, many were gifts from friends and relatives.  She had a  lot of souvenier plates and state plates and holiday plates.  She let all the relatives pick out the ones they wanted  and she wrote their names on the back with permanent marker. 

I think Jeff picked out the classiest and most valuable of all the ones she had, at the time, he was just a kid and had no idea what they were, he just liked them. 
After he got them,  they pretty much went into a cabinet.  Years later,  we saw one of the plates on a British tv show called Bargain Hunt and Jeff started doing some online research on them.  He bought a few on Ebay and then we found 2 more at the Antique Mall in our town. 
This summer, he got the oldest and hardest to find one, The Bookworm, on Ebay and it completes the set.
I really like the plates on the shelves,  and how nice that they are mostly green and red and match my green yard sale table cloth and the vintage rose fabric I used on the curtains and stool!


the 93 was Grandmother Pearl's numbering system.  She had over 200 plates and Jeff's were 93 and 96.






















So making this room pretty again has taken awhile but I am really happy with it.  There is still one huge blank wall but I can live with it. 

This project really went with my Tightwad October theme too.  We did spend money on the wood, stain and hangers to make the shelves.  But everything else was just re-used and things that we already had.

I am linking this to Cottage Instincts Make it 4 Monday.  This is a wonderful blog with lots of links to other decorating projects. 

Nina's latest project

Nina came over yesterday and used the Cricut machine to make these cute labels for her canisters - if you want to read how she did them,  she posted more on her blog Love Sweet Love

Tightwad October - Day 7 - borrow if you can

I take care of my grandchildren some of the days that their parents work.  4 month old Elizabeth usually spends 3 days each week with me.
At her home home,  she has a swing that rocks side to side and she puts herself to sleep in it and takes long naps. 
Well,  the swing at my house just went back and forth and she would only sleep 10 or 15 minutes at time in it.  Elizabeth was not getting enough sleep at my house and we were both getting a little cranky. 
Nina mentioned this to some of her other new-mommy friends.  One of them has a daughter that is almost a year old and she had outgrown this pink swing that rocks side to side.  That mommy had her husband fetch it from the basement and even washed the cover so it would be fresh for Elizabeth.   Nina brought it over and set it up this morning and little Miss Elizabeth had a much better day today rocking side to side the way she is used to at her home. 

Babies, like most Americans,  seem to have so much stuff these days.  Especially if you are needing baby things or child things or most anything,  just spread the word among your friends that you are looking for it.
 I think the odds are pretty good that somebody else has one and would like to get rid of it. 

Even the side to side swing Elizabeth has at her home is borrowed from their next door neighbor.