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Decorating on the Cheap! (part 4)

Sep05
2008
Leave a Comment Written by Alicia

furniture

This post wraps up our four-part series on low-cost decorating ideas.  

Furniture

If you moved into a new home with your old furniture that no longer impresses you, or you’re trying to hide old furniture from the eye of potential buyers, slip covers offer the most affordable option. Slip covers are available in abundant colors, fabrics and styles that could easily match the furniture to the style of room you’re going for. A solid color that connects well with the color and style of the walls and floors is the best choice. Slip covers hide stains, holes or outdated patters at an affordable price.

Add a custom design to an accessory for an extra flair that’ll catch anyone’s eye. Sew on fabric to the front of an accent pillow that will help your furniture match the rest of the room. Buy material that flaunts a pattern you love and use it as a table cloth! Fold up little pieces of fabric into formal dining room napkins and place one at each individual seat. Or, add one strip of the material to your neutral curtains or above blinds. A little bit of patterned fabric can go a long way and can drastically emphasize the style or flow of a room.

Even if you are dealing with old furniture, just some rearranging can create a polished look. If you have an antique piece of furniture, place it in your living room or sitting room where people don’t lounge as often. This will allow it to be admired rather than worn down. If you just updated the appliances in your kitchen or added high-tech electronics to your family room, keep the most modern and chic furniture in these rooms. Even if you don’t have an expensive dining room set, place your fanciest chairs in this room or buy slip covers for them. Add a bookshelf that you no longer have room for elsewhere and use it to hold china. Wherever you move your furniture, make sure its location makes sense with its surroundings.

You can paint old furniture for a quicker, more creative and fun route. Buy stencils and carve designs into wood or draw designs into material. You might want to practice first so your stencil is perfectly placed into your furniture. A little craftiness can go a long way in helping your furniture to look updated.

As with the floors, polish wooden furniture, spray glass surfaces and dust all surfaces. Cleaning can go a long way to make your furniture look its best. You can also add lamps to tabletops to brighten up a room and add plants to make the room airier and homier. Accessories can go a long ways no matter where they are placed in the home.

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Posted in Home Improvement, Tips and Ideas - Tagged decorating, making a house a home, moving, selling your home
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Decorating on the Cheap! (part 3)

Sep03
2008
Leave a Comment Written by Alicia

walls

Whether you’re a new homeowner, a new home seller or someone who’s enjoyed living in the same place for decades, you probably have given some thought to decorating.  Have you considered this? Home decorating doesn’t have to cost a fortune!

To help you see creative ways to improve your home’s look, we’re bringing you this four-part series on decorating on the cheap!

Walls

To get the most out of your wall space, you must emphasize what you’re already given. For starters, take a look at your windows. Though custom window treatments are a definite advantage if you can afford them, showing off any window is a great place to start. If you own a spacious yard with landscaping, why not show it off through the window? Raise those blinds up or take those full-length curtains down to allow natural light to fill your room. The room will seem larger too with a view of the outdoors.

If your windows aren’t particularly impressive, add mirrors to your walls as décor. Mirrors come in all shapes and sizes and can really make your room seem larger. They also help a room look fancier, like a dining room. Mirrors include many advantages while taking up wall space.

To fill your walls with framed pictures, first consider what your objective is. If you are selling your home, you want to keep the pictures artistic and depersonalized. If you’ve just moved in, you probably desire more personal photos. Either way, a classy choice is cheaply framed still-life photographs. If you have gorgeous pictures of nature or skyscrapers, blow them up and frame them. Others can relate to their beauty and they’ll mean more to you because you experienced these beauties firsthand. For a 3D effect, collect items from the outdoors, such as seashells, branches or pressed flowers and organize them into a frame for an even more outdoorsy feeling.

If you own fancy or nifty dishes that you want to exhibit, display them on the wall! Hang matching sets of dishware on the wall as a sort of collage. If that’s too weird for you, exhibit them in the kitchen by replacing only a couple cabinet doors with glass doors. This will cost much less than if you were to replace all of your cabinets, and it’ll give the room a glamorous appeal while displaying your favorite dishes proudly.

  • TIP: If you already have a lot displayed on your walls and it feels like too much, take it all down. Find an open space in your home and lay everything out on the floor. By doing so, you may notice two items that coincide well with each other but were displayed in separate rooms. Some items might look worn to you when looking at them close up. Other items might work better as a centerpiece instead of cluttered between other objects. A whole new perspective can come from redisplaying old objects.

If it’s an overall paint job that needs work, take one room at a time. This way, you can concentrate on the look of each room while saving up cash for the next room. Paint offers so many options now that you’ll want to take your time deciding. Do you want a solid color or do you want a pattern? Roll it on, blotch it on, spray it on … all of these methods conclude with entirely different looks. Just don’t get too out of control or your room will end up looking like a toy room with a clown theme! Decide if you want to paint all the walls or just one wall. One wall doesn’t take long, it uses less paint/money and it accentuates the room.

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Posted in Home Improvement, Tips and Ideas - Tagged decor, decorating, making a house a home, moving, selling your home
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Decorating on the Cheap! (part 2)

Sep02
2008
Leave a Comment Written by Alicia

Image of hardwood floors

As part of our continued efforts to bring you helpful information on home ownership, this is part two of a four-part series on sprucing up your home on a budget! First, we looked at ceilings; today, think about your floors! With a little bit of creativity, you might be surprised at how they change your home’s look! 

No matter what type of floor covering you display in any room, a throw rug could add a color scheme that overlaps with the room’s overall style. Whether you place it on wood, vinyl, tile or even short carpeting, this throw rug presents personal elements to the room and adds a unique style. So many colors, shapes and designs can be found for area rugs. Your options are endless!

Floor cloths originated in France and are gaining popularity here. Because they are made of cloth, they are thin enough to create a custom shape and design, yet they are sturdy and flat enough to be placed under a table or under chairs. You can buy floor cloths premade and ready-to-use, or you can buy a plain cloth and design it yourself! These cloths can be painted, cut into shapes and designed to your personal liking. If you love art and creativity, this is the perfect cheap project for you to partake in.

What your floor may need is just a good cleaning! Whether it’s had years of usage or it’s all dusty from a recent move, your flooring may benefit from polishing that hardwood, washing that carpet or scrubbing your vinyl. Try to find cheap cleaning supplies that get the job done. Multiple green choices or homemade cleaners are available that help the environment, too.

If your floor just seems too vacant, but you can’t afford new furniture, add some cheap accessories to take up space and highlight certain features of the room. If you’re decorating a Florida room or lanai, add floor plants that accentuate the outdoors. If you spend much of your time in a family room or loft area that doesn’t allow much natural light in, add floor lamps that brighten the room and take up floor space. Many opportunities await your vacant area.

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Posted in Home Improvement, Tips and Ideas - Tagged decorating, making a house a home, moving, selling your home
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Decorating on the Cheap!

Aug31
2008
Leave a Comment Written by Alicia

Image of color swatches

You just moved into a new home, and you can’t wait to decorate, but your savings are a little low. Or perhaps you want to spruce up the home you’re trying to sell for the pictures that potential buyers will see through Buy Owner, but you don’t want to spend a fortune doing so.

We’ve got your answer! Over the next few days, we’ll be providing you with a few inexpensive ideas for your ceiling, your floor and all the space in between, guaranteed to impact without breaking your wallet!

Ceiling

Most ceilings are painted white because owners don’t know what other color to paint them. But white ceilings don’t emphasize the best qualities of your room, especially if they coincide with white walls.

  • If the walls feature a particular color, paint the ceiling a lighter hue of that color. It will bring the room together more.
  • If the walls display white paint, paint the ceiling a natural hue that you’d find outside to make the room appear bigger and brighter.
  • If you prefer to make the room seem less airy, paint the ceiling a darker hue.
  • If the room is too dark for your liking, paint a gloss over the ceiling that will catch the available light and make the room seem brighter.

Many cheap options are available for paint, so find them and make a huge difference in your ceiling.

If your ceiling displays an unattractive ceiling fan that causes you to dread having guests over that might notice it, fix it. Ceiling fans can be disassembled for you to paint over ugly coverings and/or colors. If a long chain hangs low enough to become a room’s prominent feature, trade it in for a shorter, stylish chain that you’ll want people to notice.

Don’t have a ceiling fan or own one beyond help? You can start saving up for a new one. Ceiling fans come in all shapes, sizes and prices. If you find a good deal, you’ll add a long-term decoration to your ceiling and you’ll save on your electric bill in the long run.

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Posted in Home Improvement, Tips and Ideas - Tagged color, decorating, how to improve your home, interior decorating, interior design, making a house a home, money-saving strategies, moving, paint, selling your home
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Founded in 1984, BuyOwner.com® is the leading provider of real estate marketing services. We pioneered the "For Sale by Owner" (FSBO) market, which today represents over 20 percent of all residential real estate transactions.

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