Given the state of the prices which continuously go upward, or so it seems, it’s not a surprise that people are trying to save a few dollars on whatever they can. In fact the only people who aren’t trying to save money are the folks who have more than they can actually use.
Getting, and keeping your home in great shape is one of our priorities as a home owner, so the décor is important to us. It tends to tell the world who we are, what we like, and what’s important to us.
Decorating or redecorating your home can be costly, but a few tips on where to find things will save you a lot in the overall cost of the process. We began to redo our dining room with about 200 dollars to spend. We came in under budget by using some mistakes, some second hand store finds, and a few other items that gave us the look we wanted for a price we could afford.
While it may sound odd to some of you, you’re going to find that you can get some remarkable deals on paint and trim by taking advantage of the mistakes that happen in a store every single day. Visit your paint and wall coverings store and you’re going to find a section that has gallons of some top quality paint on sale, because someone mixed it to a color which wasn’t exactly what a client ordered.
We tested this theory and found a top notch paint that sold for about 30 dollars a gallon, which had been mixed in an off-white. Because it was mixed incorrectly and was a shade away from what the client had ordered it was set into a sale section of the store at a cost of under ten dollars a gallon. There were several gallons there to be picked up at under a third of the price.
The wall coverings store yielded enough rolls of border that we absolutely loved to redecorate our dining room at a price that was under 5 dollars for a roll of wallpaper border that normally sold for about fifteen dollars a roll.
The last item we wanted for our dining room was a breakfast bar. Having seen them advertised for more than 499 dollars, we knew we were not going to stick to budget on this one unless we used some ingenuity.
A visit to a local used furniture store yielded up two used kitchen cabinets in good condition at a price of 25 dollars. To make the breakfast bar, we used a remnant piece of countertop in a gorgeous blue, set one kitchen counter at each end and placed the counter spanning the distance between the two cabinets. Using L brackets we secured the counter top to the cabinets and the cabinets to the floor in the same fashion.
Some trim from the woodworking store came in about 20 dollars for enough to trim the edges of the counter tops, while two pine bar stools, 26 inches tall cost about 25 dollars each brand new.
The total cost of our endeavor, and our newly painted dining room and breakfast bar was 175 dollars. It left enough to buy the fabric napkins and placemats that we’d wanted to match the dining room.
Using some ingenuity and a few tips on saving money, you can get a new look in your house for a fraction of what you might expect to pay.
Tags: Build a New Dining Room, Cheap Home Decorating, Cheap Redecorating Ideas, Cutting Decorating Prices, Decorating on a Dime, Low Cost Redecorating, Saving Money on Redecorating