The current economic environment has made more Americans cut back on their expenses with many embracing the ‘do-it-yourself’ route; whether it is making your own coffee, trimming your own hair, etc. More and more people are also starting to look at their living space and finding ways to improve it. So instead of buying a new coffee table, how can I revamp my current one?
The idea of ‘nesting’ is that someone would have a strong desire to prepare a home, to tie up loose ends of old projects and to organize your world. But again, going back to the state of the economy, doing so in an inexpensive manner is best!
Here are a few ‘do-it-yourself’ tips for your apartment:
- Take a basic bookshelf from bland to GRAND with a quick fix. Paint the bookcase’s back wall in a cheery, contrasting hue. This is easiest to do if the back (or at least the shelves) is removable; if it’s not, you can still do the job. Just cover the edges of the sides and shelves with masking or painter’s tape while you’re brightening up the back. You would have taken an old, boring bookshelf to something new and vibrant with just the cost of paint and a brush!
- Calendar Pages-Last year, you probably invested in a beautiful wall calendar to cheer up your work space. Hopefully you didn’t toss out your old one! You can enjoy the images a little longer by framing them as wall art. Calendars are particularly good for this because the pages are themed -like beach scenes, flowers, Monet replicas, etc.– so they look like a series of prints when hung in matching frames. You can even save on matting if the pages already come with a border! Let’s see here, you can get inexpensive wall frames from the dollar store, or sets of matching ones at Target for less than $20.
- Another nifty idea from Country Living is to add shelving to your bathroom so it can hold pretty toiletries. Remove the back of an old wine crate or wooden box. Make shelves to fit inside the box, and then add a bit of glamour by fastening a gilded frame onto the front of the unit. For an antique finish, spray-paint with Krylon Crystal Color.
- You can revitalize an old lamp shade with inexpensive rubber-stamps. Depending on what type of style you want, e.g. a fleur-de-lis pattern, you can stamp on the border of the shade and fill in the pattern with permanent marker. To make it appear more decorative, you can also outline the design with a different color pen.
- Never throw out old candles! You can find a way to save the left over wax by following this do-it-yourself craft.
We think it’s great that Americans are cutting back spending on other goods and services and in turn are reflecting on improving where they live. That’s ‘nesting’ in its truest form! Do you have other ‘do-it-yourself’ ideas to share?
Tags: apartment, apartments, color, colors, decor, decorating, economic, environment, forrent.com, idea, ideas, inexpensive, tip, tips
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 9:05 am and is filed under Apartment Decorating Tips, Apartment Organization, Apartments Going Green. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
