it's been a month since I've updated you on what's going on in our lives. Since my last post about getting rid of "necessities" like my couch and dryer, I've been quite the busy little bee! Here's a synopsis: We sold our sectional, chair, and ottoman for $500. We actually sold the set to a couple that is doing the opposite of us... they want a place to sit in their kids play room, where we wanted to get rid of furniture for the sake of a play room, ha! I also sold my dryer for $75. The end result with the money was two completely transformed rooms, and a mini vacation. I'll talk about the play room later, but here's our new "living room"...
This is an extended room off of our home's master bedroom, by the way. In the 7 years we've lived in this house, this room has transformed from an office, to Shane's music room, to Shane's music teaching room, to just an empty useless room for the last year. Since we wanted a play room in our living room area, we decided this small room would make a cozy movie room. The total cost we spent on our new living room was $250. I got the pallets for free by batting my eyes at the manager of Home Depot (they usually sell their pallets back to the company they come from). I used 2 whole pallets in the back, and the one in the front was cut in half. I painted the walls with colors I had stored in our closet outside. (I like painting things so I have a few to choose from.) I had a slate brown/ grey color I used to paint the back wall (not shown in the pic below...the orange fugly color was the original wall color), and I used up the leftover mint green I had gotten for our bathroom a couple years ago on the other walls.
Josiah helped. :)
Next I headed to Old Time Pottery and found the fabric and pillows. I spent $50 on the decorative pillows and $30 on the fabric. The foam for the cushions I bought online from Home Depot. Each piece is 6' x 2' and 3 inches thick. I used 4 total rolls. I measured and cut the foam to size and used self adhesive spray to glue them together.Two rolls of foam were used on the bottom, then I cut, sized, and glued 2 rolls on top to make the cushions 6 inches thick. I spent $100 total on all the foam ($25 per roll). Since I'm not a very good sower, I cut the fabric to fit our custom new couch and ottoman, then used a little of the self adhesive spray to wrap and stick it to the foam.
To finish it off, Shane and I took a trip to Atlanta and had ourselves a mini vacation in Stone Mountain Park, then headed to Ikea to finish out our new living/movie room and also furnish our play room. I found the picture of the city of Paris for $30 and the decorative vase in the corner for $20. We also got the bigger pillows for some back support for $20.
That's all for now! I am still working on our play room, but will update you on that as soon as I complete it! If you're wondering, we've spent $450 total out of the $575 we received for our couch and dryer split between the two rooms, with no plans to spend anymore. There is a chair and ottoman in the play room and I'm hand making a tepee. Trust me, it's cool! ;-)
PS: You may be wondering based on my last post about how our cell/power bill changes are going. We switch to Republic Wireless next week and our projected savings will be around $130/month. Our power bill from June to July went down by $40 and we're hoping we can double that savings in energy this month. I've learned a big part of this new way of saving is really just breaking old habits! I'll talk more on all of this later. :)
PS: You may be wondering based on my last post about how our cell/power bill changes are going. We switch to Republic Wireless next week and our projected savings will be around $130/month. Our power bill from June to July went down by $40 and we're hoping we can double that savings in energy this month. I've learned a big part of this new way of saving is really just breaking old habits! I'll talk more on all of this later. :)