I started out with a $300 budget for my bedroom project, and initially I said I didn’t need any furniture. But I did need something to store shoes and various bits of things in this horrible corner:

Our last penultimate piece of Ikea furniture took up a lot of space and stored things I didn't need.

I wouldn’t normally think of Wertz Brothers Antique Mart in Santa Monica as a place for thrifty furniture – a thousand-dollar table may be worth a thousand dollars, but that doesn’t mean I have a thousand dollars to spend on a table. But since it was raining on my shopping day and the flea markets weren’t exactly stocked, I checked out Wertz Brothers for some wire baskets, crates, or suitcases to store things, and came across the most wonderful antique wooden storage … thing:

This antique wooden cubby/shelf was a perfect find.

At $150, it was a little pricey – it took up half my budget, so I left it at the store at first to go home and measure. That, and it wouldn’t fit in my car. But as soon as I got it in the room, I realized it was the perfect piece. If you set a budget, it’s okay to spend a lot of it on one piece that sets the right tone for the room and is highly functional. I also had these lens cases from Alex’s dad that had been sitting unused in the bathroom:

These lens cases are perfect for storing buttons, zippers, and other sewing notions.

This antique level was just $4 at Wertz Brothers and serves as a tiny shelf for thread and alternate feet for my sewing machine. With the photos above, I’ve used up nearly all of my original $300 budget:

• paint & supplies: $67
• wooden cubby thing: $150
• organic cotton sheets: $35 on clearance at gaiam.com
• quirky vacation photos above wooden cubby thing: $25
• vintage wooden suitcase for storing christmas decorations: $15
• antique wooden level: $4

Total: $296

Everything else came from elsewhere in the house or was already in the room – this reading lamp I picked up for $5 at a flea market a few months ago, but the light was too garish to use downcast, so it just sat around until I realized that shining upward, it was perfect.

Cast upward, this lamp provides ample light for the bedroom and the loft above.

All the art for the room was here or in other rooms:

The art on this wall originally came from flea markets or talented relatives.

The orange curtain on the left hides the elliptical trainer (nonnegotiable in this room) from view when you first walk in the house (it’s actually a table runner that happened to be the width of the machine). Overall, I couldn’t be happier with the final result for the budget. Although the room before was adorable and fun with the trees and all, it’s much calmer and more functional now.

I liked the bedroom before, but I needed a change, and I love the after.

The first part of this exercise is spent preparing your canvas, and that may include painting. Painting a room is, for me, a very zen and calming exercise because it requires a great deal of concentration around the detail parts but lets you totally zone out during the big parts. Then, all of a sudden, you have this transformed space that often evokes a completely different feeling.

The erstwhile green living/dining room was a little garish and wacky, but the pale gray is soothing.

I tend to paint rooms in our house with some frequency; if I get an idea for a different color, I can’t withstand the old one for more than a couple weeks. So over the course of the last three years, I’ve learned a few things about painting a room.

Painting Rule #1: buying paint without looking at swatches in the room rarely delivers enviable results.

It’s kind of a pain in the ass to go to the paint store, find a few chips or sample pots you like, go home, look at them on your walls in different lights, go back to the store and order the paint. But it’s even more irritating to buy an entire gallon (or even a quart, for that matter) of something you think is going to be totally awesome that the next day makes you want to retch. Along with this rule goes the knowledge that just about any brand of paint will color match any other’s, or, for that matter, any decent-sized swatch of any color you can come up with, so don’t feel limited by the over-saturated, under-cool palettes you see at the store.

Painting Rule #2: Despite simply being more expensive, better paint is, in point of fact, better.

It’s no secret that I have a certain amount of disdain for “category killer” big box stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s. I understand that sometimes you need to paint on a Sunday, and that most smaller stores that sell good paint are all closed on Sunday. I also understand that sometimes an extra $12 is out of the question. But the pain of waiting a few more days or saving up a few more dollars will be mitigated by your results: the finish is just nicer and the coverage is better. Plus, you get to avoid standing in a line ten people deep waiting anxiously for your number to get called by someone who visibly has much better things to do. The first time I painted the bedroom, I used an entire gallon of Behr paint over a primed surface. This time around, I used a quarter of a gallon of Yolo Colorhouse without priming, which has led me to think that Yolo, for $40, covers about four times as well as Behr, which if I recall was somewhere around $26-$30. If you have a large job to do, you will absolutely end up saving money and getting better coverage. I was also very impressed with American Pride, also adorably marketed as Mythic Paint.

Learn to paint clean, straight lines and avoid the need for painter's tape.

Painting Rule #3: Tools matter.

Buy the nicest synthetic brush you’re comfortable with ($8-$10) in about a 1 to 1 1/2 inch width and rinse it out when you’re done so you can use it for other projects. This brush will allow you to skip the bored-sigh-inducing step of taping off trim areas, which is an utter waste of time if you have a good trim brush and can learn to paint straight, even lines (windowpanes are a different story) by using the tip of the brush instead of the face, and spreading out a small amount of paint across and away from the line you’re painting. And you should probably have extra trim and wall paint handy, because even if you’re as stunningly gifted as I am at painting, you’ll still screw something up sometime.

I also greatly prefer smaller rollers – an inch in diameter instead of two:

Smaller paint rollers are easier to handle, cover more effectively, and require less energy to use.

Painting Rule #4: Trim does not have to be white.

I love the idea of monochromatic trim, so I used it in the bedroom:

I painted the bright gold a calmer greige with slightly darker trim.

Already, the room feels more comfortable and calmer. Next time, I’ll solve my storage dilemmas!

Gypsy’s back, and so am I. Unfortunately, domino magazine’s Deco File tool I mentioned last time will no longer exist, because domino magazine is now over. I subscribed to domino, and I liked the pretty pictures, but it was always too pricey for me. I remember being particularly irritated by one month where the focus was on budget decorating, and the model on the front cover was wearing a $3000 dress. In the November issue (ironically entitled “the new luxury!” since apparently magazines are now a luxury), the average price for a chair shown or approximated in the magazine was $1,670. So while I feel for everyone who’s been put out of work lately, I also feel like this is a time when we collectively need to focus on necessities and conserving both our resources and our past in order to move forward. Anyway, let’s put the unpleasant derailment of the last few weeks behind us, and get back on the redo track with renewed perspective. The next five or so days will be spent cleaning, painting, and/or hunting. As with anything worth doing, the unpleasant parts come first.

Making Room

Before we get into painting and hunting, the general idea is cleaning. If you’re going to have a comfortable, livable space, you first have to make sure that it contains only what you need and can reasonably store. Many of us who are obsessed with thrift store shopping and antique collecting have a hard time with this, preferring to fill our cabinets and shelves to the ceilings with things. If you have collections you don’t have room to display, or have old things you’ve been hanging on to for years to which you don’t have a particular emotional attachment (not, say, your grandmother’s tweed suit she wore to the White House in 1963), consider letting it go to give yourself a little breathing room, and perhaps some extra cash. If you can sell or give away these items, you’ll probably feel better for 1) having more space, and 2) giving it to someone who can actually display and/or appreciate it.

Make the most of what’s left

Now that you’ve whittled down to what’s necessary, you’ll need a place to put those things. Containers are some of my favorite things to hunt for because they can take so many forms – wooden crates, wire baskets, tin canisters, whatever. There’s a specific antique look I’m going for, sort of a black and brown rustic library thing, so I’m going to try to find containers to fit that description.

This adorable vintage sewing kit is an unbelievable steal at $15.

Worn vintage suitcase with purple lining, $18.81 via etsy

Vintage camera case, $15 on ebay

Tiny Italian leather box, $12 via etsy

Camera lens case, $17 on etsy

At $12, this former socket wrench set could be a perfect place to store sewing notions.

Allow plenty of time for the cleaning and hunting process – it can get overwhelming if you look around your room and can’t see the floor because you’ve cleaned out a storage closet. Just keep in mind that it’s going to get worse before it gets better, and it’s okay to have a big mess for a few days if it means having a clean space afterwards.

Tomorrow: Everything I Learned About Painting I Learned From Lots and Lots of Practice (or, Why I Never Use Painter’s Tape).

If you’ve already defined what your room is going to look like, now it’s time to get a little more substantial. What do you need in your room? Is there anything that’s taking up space, that you’re not using, that you can sell? Are there things you have stored away that can be repurposed?

It was so, so difficult to sell this lounge chair.

This chair was given to us, but it was so terribly hard to say goodbye to. It wasn’t a real Eames chair (we never would have sold it if it were) and it needed a lot of repair, but the look is so iconic and beautiful that it felt criminal to get rid of it. But more important than having a piece of furniture that was a particularly good deal (free is a pretty good deal) or a piece that you really like the look of, is getting both value and looks in a piece that works beautifully and is functional in your home. And in our 630 square foot house, this chair and ottoman combination simply did not work, no matter where we put it. Ultimately, we decided to sell it, so voila – instant redecorating budget. And a nice couple got a cool chair on craigslist.

Once you’ve figured out what you can live without, it’s time to think about what you need. Think about what you want to be able to do in your room, keeping in mind that rooms can often do double duty – our dining room is also our office, for example. Some advise against adding offices to bedrooms, but sometimes it’s unavoidable (in my first studio apartment, my desk was right next to my bed, and it never bothered me a bit). So for my project, in our bedroom, we need areas for:

• sleeping
• storing off-season clothing and other essentials
• storing current clothing and getting dressed
• exercise (the kind you could do in public at the gym but prefer to do at home because of financial and personal insecurities)

So you’ve decided what you want to do in your room, now think about exactly what you need to accomplish that – probably things you already have, with room for an improvement or two. For instance, I want to store off-season clothes. I have the space, but maybe I need some boxes first, so the clothes don’t just get piled in the corner. Stuff like that. Now, sketch out the room as you want it – pretend it’s an empty space and a blank slate, and start filling it only with what you need.

As you do this, make a list of things you need to make or buy to accomplish your goals, and begin checking out thrift stores, ebay, etsy, and craigslist. If you want to be notified immediately if, say, someone posts a vintage dresser on craigslist, you can create a google news alert for it. Just click here, enter your search term (i.e. “vintage dresser”) followed by site:your local craigslist site (i.e. “site:losangeles.craigslist.org”), choose your delivery options, and click “Create Alert”. Be sure to enter your local craigslist web address, natch. Google will now handily notify you if someone in your area posts a vintage dresser, or whatever you’re looking for, for sale or free.

As you make this list of what you need, consider the balance and flow of your room. If it doesn’t feel comfortable (and if you’re doing this, it probably doesn’t), try to pin down exactly why. If it feels too empty, imagine what it would be like with the furniture pulled away from the walls or rearranged to prevent dead space in the middle of the room. If it feels too cold, consider adding a rug and/or curtains. If it just makes you generally anxious, compare your room to the photos you’ve chosen as your inspiration – what’s different (besides the obvious professional styling and photography)? Are the colors drastically different? Colors play an essential part in the feeling of a room – and that doesn’t mean everything has to be neutral; white walls make me terribly unhappy. Is the room too dark or generally poorly lit? Try to avoid garish overhead lighting and instead rely on sconces and table lamps that create a nice glow.

the bottom line

Today, we:

• see if there’s anything in the room we can sell, give away, or repurpose
• determine what we want to do in our room
• decide what we need to make or buy to accomplish that, staying within our budget
• start scouting for bargains and ways to DIY
• think about the balance and flow of our new room

At this point, we’ve already accomplished a lot. We know how our room will feel, what we’ll do in there, and what we need to make or buy to make it happen. Day three, however, is when we actually roll up our sleeves and get into it. Ready?

A year ago, i redecorated our dark brown bedroom with an adorable little woodsy theme:

I used painter's tape and a craft knife to create these birch-y trees and birds.

which was really fun for a while, but every few months I get the itch to paint or redecorate, or both.
Sometimes on HGTV they have these decorate-on-a-budget shows where they have $500 to redo a room, and I am always close to throwing something at the television, or at least shaking my fists in rage, because of how they’ve squandered their fortune on tacky crafts and chintzy fabrics. It also crosses my mind that I could do better.

So I wanted to see if I could do better than these shows and redo this room for under $300, including paint, lighting, bedding, storage and whatever else it needs. Now, this room doesn’t need any furniture because, well, it’s a bedroom and we already built our own bed, so this will be largely decorating-related. And I’m going to do it in two weeks.

The Apartment Therapy Cure is a great starting point for redecorating a room, but since we’re not going that in depth, I’m going to borrow some of their basic steps for this two-week quickie.

day one: build a vision for your room

Domino’s Deco File tool is a great way to collect images from anywhere on the web into one inspirational file, but it’s also helpful to maintain a “style tray” in the real world with paint swatches, fabrics, photos, and magazine cutouts. For this bedroom, I’ve started a deco file at Domino here, but here are some of my favorites:

I love everything about this room.

I love the maps and all the wood here.

Bedroom from hownowdesign on Flickr, with found swan

A perfect vignette of old and brown things.

Look through your sample photos and come up with few adjectives to describe what you like about them. The words can relate to textures, colors, materials, emotions, places, or anything else the pictures say to you or remind you of that you want to duplicate in your room. for the pictures in my style tray, my words are:

• beige
• rustic
• soft
• wood
• calm
• antique

Once you have you list of photos and words, think about how you can create a room that embodies them:

• beige – paint color
• rustic – sisal rug
• soft – organic cotton sheets
• wood – floors and furniture
• calm – lighting
• antique – wall art and artifacts

All this may or may not be in our budget right now, but we’re not going to worry about that until day two. BTW, it’s best to start this process on, say, a Monday or Tuesday before your favorite flea market if you need to buy anything, to give you a chance to determine exactly what you need. See my thrifty guide for flea markets in the LA area.

Tomorrow: What goes in there? Deciding what you need in your room.