Our New Family (DIY Decorating On A Budget)

Ever get an itch to start a new project, but you’re not quite sure where it came from? Well that’s what’s been happening around our home for the past few months. We’ve been purging – a lot, organizing everything I can get my hands on, and even transforming a few of our rooms. It all started when our old couch finally bit the dust, luckily we knew it was coming and had been saving for awhile to replace our furniture. Been when the couch finally went, so did a lot of other pieces around our home.

You see what started as a simple – “oh let’s go buy a new couch!” Ended with us buying a couch, a recliner, and a dining room table. You’re probably thinking, “That’s not a big transformation, Meredith.” And you’d be right.

BUT…

Getting rid of the couch prompted us to sell…

a desk
an office chair
a full bedroom set – bed, dresser, night stand and all
a dresser
and lamps

It also forced us to throw out…

a coffee cart
broken couch
broken dining room table

We had been using the bedroom set for mainly storage so when we sold it faster than we anticipated it forced us to start using the floor as a shelf. That drove me crazy and I needed to find a new home for all these things. So that’s when I decided to clean out every single closet in our home – J’s, the coat closet, my closet, the linen closet, and the medicine cabinet (the only one I skipped was Dent’s and that’s because I had just done it a few months earlier).

In the end we ended up selling a few items, donating over 15 bags to our local Rescue Mission and throwing out another 10 bags of pure trash. It felt good. We decided to make our guest room into a playroom for son and the only thing left was the family room. But much to my disappointment the couch that was delivered was the wrong one and the dining room table was on back order.

So instead of taking 4-6 weeks, it took over 8 weeks for us to get everything. I’m not going to lie – I could have hugged the delivery man when he brought in the RIGHT couch that day!

Also, I discovered that we needed to do something with our dog kennel. It was big and ugly. The only purpose it served was holding the dogs while we were away. We have two kennels, this metal one and a plastic one. We used to keep them in the eat-in part of our kitchen before we got a table, but they wouldn’t fit any longer. So we had to find a new place. On Pinterest I noticed a great idea for turning one into a side table. That led me to go to Home Depot and purchased a piece of plywood and a few pieces of 1″x2″ trim. I even found a nice associate to cut the pieces to my right measurements (I went late at night when they weren’t that busy).

I glued the trim to the piece of plywood and then used a few brad nails to secure it. After it was put together I took a few coats of high gloss white paint to it and that’s it. It sits neatly on top of our kennel and works as the perfect side table.

A few weeks ago I started cleaning up from Christmas and realized that I never showed off our new frugal family room makeover. I call it frugal because the only new pieces are the couch and recliner, which I mentioned how we saved for already, AND we did purchase one new piece of artwork. The rest came from other places in our home, hand-me-downs from my mom and a little creativity.

P.S. If you notice Sir Rines III standing in the corner – don’t even ask! He was a wedding present from my sister and brother-in-law. J loves him, I hate dusting him and Dent thinks he bites! But he stands guard when no one is around, so I guess we’ll keep him! HA!

Blessed Artwork from Small Wood Home (around $30)

Console Table from Amazon (less than $65)