Saturday, January 1, 2011

Furniture Relocation

Husband Matt, has a wonderful talent for moving around furniture in rooms to make them look much more pleasing to the eye, be more conducive to needed space, or just all around be an awesome change! Here's the most recent change in our bedroom: (remember, the bed was originally against the  right wall, back corner...)



I really like this change actually!!

Empty Cupboards

Ok, we kinda cheated on this, since we didn't do it ourselves. We recently convinced our landlord/maintenance to do some remodeling on our kitchen, and thus had to move all our things out of the kitchen to allow some space for renovations - and planned on spending the weekend at Jensen Parents so we didn't have to worry about what to eat.

Kitchen sink/counter before receiving some TLC

No food - cept for some we still needed to move...

And... this is where it all went.

Yup - lots of stuff! I promise that we don't normally live like this!

Countertop before...

Cupboards before...
AND . . . 

Sorry folks, this is going to be anti-climactic for you, as it was for us. 

They didn't have time to do all the renovations that they wanted to, so we ended up having all that stuff in our bedroom for over a week while we waited for the new paint on the cupboards to dry, and be able to put all the stuff back. The linoleum, countertops, and back-splash are still awaiting their turn for some TLC - maybe over Thanksgiving or Christmas break? We'll keep you posted. 

Light and Bright

Bringing light into basement apartments (or even the basement of your home) can be tricky, but as we live in a small basement apartment, it can start to feel dark and cramped from time to time. This is what we have discovered about adding or enhancing light in a basement:

Step One: Let as much light as possible into the small windows. We only have 3 windows, and they are all on the west side of the house, so we only get direct sunlight in the evenings (well.. as direct as you can get around the apartment complex next to us). Therefore, you must remove as much of the blockage as you can. We made sure the weeds outside our windows got pulled out, and the bike that had found an odd home blocking our window got removed. 




Step Two: Add unnatural light tactically. We put a head lamp in our bedroom, and are trying to get a multi-head lamp stand for the kitchen. Be careful not too add too many light bulbs or it will just weird your eyes and head out! Oh, and be careful also to do a variety of lighting, otherwise the weird shadows (or lack of them) will mess with your eyes and head as well. 



Step Three: Tactfully add mirrors to reflect the light you have. This one was done wonderfully by my husband in our bedroom (see this post). We bought these square bevelled mirrors at Target for under $20 (for 6). Some of the pictures were gifts, and others we bought for our receptions.
Before
After! :)
Step Four: Uh....this is where we are at now. We'll keep you updated as we figure things out.

Home Fixer-Uper Projects

So, since we are newly wedded, and live in a small, 100-year old apartment, the place is in need of some slight renovations. Clearly, we do not have much money for them though. So this will be a section where I post of our thrifty, and most likely small or crafty, adjustments to our home.

Keep checking for updates if you are interested. I will try to include a "how-to" with each post in case you're interested in doing something similar.




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