Thursday, May 31, 2012

Stretching your dollar--before and after!

One of my close friends asked us to help create a special space for her daughter who also happens to be one of my daughter's closest friends.  It was important that we use as much of the existing furniture, bedding, and window coverings as our budget was limited.  We hoped to be able to stay within a budget of $500, and here are our before pics:
It's sort of difficult to see, because as I've shared before, my pictures are always awful, but the bed was pushed to the back right corner of the room,the desk was on the diagonal in the other corner and the tabbed panel curtains were not correctly sized.
The Pottery Barn comforter was a Christmas gift for the teen owner of this bedroom and she loves the vibrant paisley swatches on the black and grey background.
Mom checking her list

So we began the planning process and the shopping process.  We had to plan carefully and shop smart in order to stay reasonably within our $500 budget.  After many days of sketching, searching, shopping and painting, we were able to make our sweet girl's new room a reality, please take a look then we will go thru the elements and see how close to budget we came.

We lucked into a couple of wonderful finds on craigslist--the green velvet desk chair we used to replace the old blue one, and the iron piece we used above the platform bed.  I love to -scan craigslist for treasures and was certainly lucky to get both pieces for $75.  We painted the iron piece and used the green velvet chair in its original condition, adorned by a simple oblong floral accent pillow with a price tag of $30.

We had a couple of shams custom made, white linen with green banding, we re-upped the client's body pillow at a cost of $129.  The forms are all feather-filled--a little more expensive but very important in terms of the richness of the look you are trying to achieve!

We removed the curtain panels and had a seamstress band the bottoms of the panels with white, repeating our bed treatment and our apple green primary accent color. The extra fabric made our curtain panels the correct size to cover the floor to ceiling space.  We replaced the rod, choosing a black cafe rod and hung it close to the ceiling.  The seamstress charged us $40, the new rod was $18.

Lamps and wall hangings, really cool black and white photography with a glossy finish, came to about $200, so yes, I busted the budget.  Oh yes, and a rug.  We ordinarily would not do rug on carpet, but my clients really do not like the carpet and replacing it is not an option, so we did a 5x7 to provide as much coverage as possible.  I think it was a success. We got a lot of change for not a lot of change!  Get it, change, change?  The girll who sleeps in this room deserves my best effort, she is an angel and I hope she lives well in this space!






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