Finishing Touches On Studio Redo

Thrifty Folks,
You all know how it is when you start a room redo. You are just going to do one thing. But after you do that one thing it seems to make everything else look bad. So, you are only going to do one more thing but it starts to take on a life of its own. Maybe you paint the room, but then the furniture looks really sad or the curtains are yucky. The same thing happened in the studio redo.

When I first moved into the studio, I made some curtains and a matching cornice board. But now with the furniture painted, the windows needed a redo, too. I had originally thought about venetian blinds but the cost seemed too much. So I just left everything as it was. Boo hoo!

About a week after the room redo was complete, I went to my favorite place "Goodwill". After checking out the furniture area, I started toward the front of the store to leave when I spied a cart full  of boxes of white 2" wooden venetian blinds. I immediately asked the lady behind the counter if they belonged to someone. She said "No, they were for sale". I started checking my phone for the window sizes I had measured a few months earlier, but they were not there. I rushed home, which is only a couple of miles from the store, hoping the blinds would be the right size. Well, they were the exact size I needed.

 

The price was too fabulous, $9.99 each. I checked the brand online and discovered they were stocked at Home Depot. The Home Depot price was $ 31.85 each.  After I got over the shock and the thrifty honey installed them I was just beside myself. These blinds really made the studio redo complete.

 

There you have the complete redo. I am still so very happy, happy, happy with the studio.

Happy Thriftying!

Studio Furniture Redo

Good morning to all,
For quite some time I have wanted to redo my studio. The most overwhelming part for me was painting the furniture. My thrifty honey is the painter in our family. He comes from a long line of professional painters and well less just say, I am not up to standard in that department. If he sees me with a paint brush, it strikes fear in his sweet heart.

This past week while he was on vacation, he agreed to tackle the studio furniture. He really doesn't think furniture should be painted, even though I showed him a lot of pictures of the latest styles. I have had pictures from Pottery Barn's white office display in my "to do" folder for at least 5 or 6 years. When I told him the cost of new white office furniture, he immediately changed into his painting clothes. I have always wanted the bookcases and desk components painted white. I also thought the back of the bookcases would look good painted pink.

Since pink has been the accent color in my studio (aka. office/sewing room), he suggested  painting the front of the components pink to match the back of the bookcases. I thought this was a great idea. After about one hour and a half, he had them all finished. The paint power sprayer is a real whiz. That time even included a paint cleanup to change to the second color. I decided my bulletin board frame needed to match the rest of the redo. So after it was painted, I covered the cork part in some leftover curtain material.   

Here is the before picture:

 

     Here are some shots taken during the redo:

 

Now for the unveiling:

 

 

 

Well, I am happier than a pig in slop. This is my dream room made possible by my dream man. I am so grateful he was willing to take part of his vacation time to make this Thrifty Sissy very happy. This sure does look a lot more girlie! I read somewhere that every girl needs a room for herself regardless of her age. Total cost for this redo was $50.00 (for the paint), unless I have to count thrifty honey's hourly wage!

 

 

I hope this will encourage you to try your thrifty hand at furniture painting. You never know what kind of change a couple of gallons of paint can bring to old furniture. 

 

Thrifty Painting To All! 

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Copied from Pinterest

Welcome Thrifty Folks,

If you have not seen this pin on Pinterest, these are the ingredients for homemade laundry detergent. Well, you might be saying:"I hardly have time to make supper, much less make my laundry detergent. Well, me either but I was really tired of paying anywhere from $9.00 to $11.00 for the store bought stuff. There were so many people, who said it worked as well as the regular detergent and you could even use it in a "he" front loader machine. I thought why not? I'll give it a whirl to see what all the buzz is about. After all I want to be thrifty and a good steward the money God has provided us.

So off to the store I went. The total cost was about $28.00. I was not expecting it to be that much. So it really left a hole in my grocery budget. When I got home I found a clean 5 gallon bucket in the garage and started dumping in all the ingredients. Using my kitchen grater on the bars of washing soap was the only thing that took a little time. But the whole process took less than 15 minutes. The ingredients filled the bucket to more than half. The directions on Pinterest recommended 1-2 tablespoons per wash load. That was so different from what I was used to using. But when I saw what 1-2 tablespoons looked like as I dipped into the bucket, it was clear. This really is a lot of detergent for the money. So now what about the results?

Much to my surprise the laundry was just as clean as when I used the store bought stuff. The real test came when I asked my husband if he noticed any difference in the clothes. He said: "No, what is different?" I simply said, "Honey it's all in the money!"

Just to say I am sold on this new detergent is to say the least. I am on my second batch, which I made in June. The first batch was made in March but it didn't last as long as I thought it would. I ended up giving lots of it away, so my friends could sample it for themselves. I believe I will be able to use one batch for close to 6 months. Now you do the math. $28.00 X 2 times a year equals $56.00, instead of $10.00 (Minimum cost of my favorite kind of detergent with a doubled coupon) X 15 times a year equals $150.00. A savings of $94.00 per year. That money looks real good in my pocket. You can visit www.budgetingjoy.wordpress.com for a complete list of ingredients and instructions. I have started buying the ingredients one at a time every few weeks and storing them for my next batch. By spreading them out over a 4-6 month period it saves the weekly grocery budget.    

I found a glass container with a lid at Goodwill for $1.99 to hold smaller amounts of the detergent. I punched a hole in a small measuring spoon and attached it with a ribbon to the top of the lid so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle. Since the detergent jar looked better than the store bought detergent containers, I decided to get a plastic drink dispenser from Goodwill ($1.99) for the fabric softener. It really kind of added a little pizazz to the laundry room.

 

I hope this inspires you to try your thrifty hand in the detergent department.

 

 

Happy Thriftying to All!