Tag Archives: cheap

turquoise kitchen redux

Posted on February 13, 2012 | 4 Comments

I was in love with the kitchen in our old spot: big old sink, turquoise walls, black and white checkered floor, huge windows. We put a lot of work into making it our own and I miss it dearly. The new place is a little more well-kept and the management company much more involved, so painting our new cocina turquoise was a no-no. The walls are the same gray we chose for the entire unit which, thankfully, makes a great contrasting color for my favorite shade. The first order of business was adding bits of turquoise everywhere I could. Most of this stuff had been orange in its prior life, plain wood or metal before that. I love how easy it is to update with a can of spray paint.

Shelf: $3, IKEA
Spray paint: Montana Gold Shock Turquoise, $6
Lotus bowls: .50 – $1.00, various thrift stores. I use these in almost every room of the house. I think I have around a dozen!
Mortar & pestle: gift from Papo
Yellow plastic sugar and cream containers: $3, rummage sale

Vintage shaker: $5, rummage sale
Vases: $2, thrift store
Wooden bowl: $1, thrift store
Bombay Sapphire: priceless !

Teak salt and pepper shakers: $30, A Hunted House, Washington DC
Silverware people: gift from Papo
Spice rack: $3, thrifted
Spray paint: the same Montana Gold Shock Turquoise, $6

Hook: $4 for two, Ace Hardware
Spray paint: Again, Montana Gold Shock Turquoise, $6

Coat rack: IKEA, $3
Spray paint: Of course, Montana Gold Shock Turquoise, $6
White cow: $8, thrift store
Wood art: $3-5, thrift stores

Knobs: $1.49 for SIX, IKEA

And of course, the cabinet doors came off almost immediately. The bottom doors that remained got a dose of color courtesy of the cheapest knobs ever.

BEFORE

AFTER

When our cutlery tray proved too wide for our new drawers we were forced to improvise. These jars came from the junk store and have been used for everything: remember my mini-planter from ReadyMade? They’re perfect for spoons, forks and knives.

And that, my friends, is a turquoise-tinted kitchen. I had much better photos of the whole room put together but accidentally deleted over 150 shots from my camera. I’m hoping to find a recovery tool online lest I have to contort my body into all those weird picture-getting angles again. More of the kitchen soon…

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Posted in my NEW apartment, thrifted vintage love

Tagged diy, apartment, spray paint, cheap, upcycle, thrifted, turquoise, color, cabinets

dovetail lamp + a peek of the dining room

Posted on January 25, 2012 | 2 Comments

I haven’t had a proper dining room since we occupied the mansion back in my mid-teens. That experience as a whole didn’t go so well. Maybe this is where my ambivalence towards any kind of formal area, be it for seating or dining or really doing anything other than sleeping since you kind of need a bedroom for that (unless you’re my dad, then the living room futon does just fine), stems from. You wanna eat? Do it in the kitchen, while sitting on a counter or at the table, your choice. Or maybe you’d prefer the back porch? Or the couch? Or the bed… while reading a magazine and swatting the dog away from the bowl perched perilously on your lap? Fine by me. Just clean up after yourself.

However, I now have a dining room. A tablecloth-covered desk may be acting as a table and the two benches that used to anchor our bay windows are standing in place for chairs but it’s worked for one gathering so far.

The tablecloth is a piece of fabric my friend Kate brought back from a trip to Curaçao a few years ago and the curtains are hold-overs from the old place. I’m sure I’ll figure out a way to update them soon. Any ideas? Maybe I could turn the tablecloth into curtains. Hmmm….

My favorite part of this room is the new lamp. It blows my $4 floor lamp out of the water both in style and price and was worth every penny thanks to a local vintage boutique. I had been out with Chernara all day looking specifically for a floor lamp for the dining room and I happened to pop into Dovetail while waiting for an order of Thai food from a neighboring restaurant. I pass the shop everyday on my way to work and loved a recent write-up of a co-owner from Time Out but this was my first time visiting. It also happened to be a day where every single item in the store was half off, making me a very happy girl.

And of course I love all of the built-ins! Perfect for the books that used to line the floor of our old abode.

So…who’s coming over to sit at the grown-up table?

Psssst… Chicago! Check out Dovetail!
1452 West Chicago Avenue
Chicago, IL 60642
(312) 243-3100

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Posted in my NEW apartment, thrifted vintage love

Tagged apartment, books, boutique, cheap, chicago, decor, dining room, dovetail, lamp, thrifty, vintage

cutting, ripping and idying curtains

Posted on January 21, 2012 | 16 Comments

I have a curtain problem: I want nice curtains but I can’t justify spending more than $10 a panel for a piece of fabric. This is why I painted the curtains in the kitchen and why I went to town on upcycling (I’m so tired of that word but I can’t think of another one: redoing? changing? manipulating?) three tab-topped pairs from IKEA. I’ve spent more time on these curtains than they were worth if I translated that time to an hourly rate and I’m still not sure that I like them. See for yourself.

Our living room, as of a few weeks ago. Notice the tension rods holding up some sad white Wilma curtains, $12.99 for a pair. I hated walking the dog past our apartment and looking at the tabs from outside. They were just messy. So I tried to sew down the tabs. That was a disaster. I studied them closely after my failed attempt and noticed a little pocket attaching the tabs to the body of the curtains: it was the perfect size for some thin rods I had also picked up at IKEA.

I used a seam ripper to pull off the stitches holding the pocket together. My neck hurt from looking down afterwards but it was worth it. No more tabs!

Still not satisfied, I picked up a couple of packages of iDye while in LA and dyed the curtains in our apartment building’s washing machine. It couldn’t have been easier, minus the staining my hand received when I reached into the washer to agitate the fabric. Don’t make that mistake or you will have tinted cuticles for days. The color, to me, is much more blue than gray and this is probably due to the short washing cycle of our crappy shared machine. If I had a machine that allowed a longer wash/soak cycle I believe the color would have been richer.

I don’t love them. I don’t hate them. They will do until the perfect set of affordable curtains come my way.

Here are some questions for you.

1. Should they be hemmed?
2. Aren’t they more blue than gray?
3. Should I have mounted the rods on the inside of the window well to show off the woodwork?
4. Isn’t our coffee table too big for this living room?
5. What do you think of our new Kattrup rug?

xxoo

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Posted in diy, my NEW apartment

Tagged apartment, cheap, decor, idye, ikea, jaquard, tab-topped, washing machine, wilma curtains

putting up the plate wall

Posted on September 19, 2011 | 8 Comments

The Mister was in NYC for the weekend and I happily spent my husband-less Sunday putting up our wall o’ plates and generally organizing and decorating the kitchen. I am embarrassed to report that I did this through three cycles of Nostalgia, Ultra, an album I swore I was ambivalent about but haven’t been able to turn off in the 72 hours since I saw the newly released and weird Swim Good video, which prompted me to check out all of the songs in their entirety again. It provided good background music and now I know all of the songs and interludes by heart. I need to start buying albums and not relying on Pandora so much. It was fun to be exposed to something new that all the kids out there are talking about! I feel very with it now. Moving on.

Before the plates. The silverware is in mugs because our new drawers are too small for cutlery holders; we’ll have to come up with a better solution soon.

Per Rosie’s suggestion in the comments of this post, I laid all of the plates out and moved them around until I found a pattern I liked.

Then I started hanging. The walls are plaster, so I was able to use a nail for some of the easy areas but had to resort to my trusty drill when I hit something hard.

I changed my mind a bunch of times at the last minute and decided to make it longer rather than wider. Even though I did this rather haphazardly and didn’t follow my initial plan, I can see the curve in the smaller plates and it is just what I initially envisioned but couldn’t get on the floor. Some of my plates did not make the cut so I have a few plate holders left over. I must go thrift more of them, of course.

I hung up my old orange and now turquoise shelf above the stove and put up the wood cutting that I swear is my dog in the recess between the counter and our cabinets.

And that is the kitchen so far. Not bad for the first two weeks in our new apartment, huh?

I still miss a lot about our old kitchen. Namely our old gal of a kitchen sink (I really did call her old gal in my head) and our cheapie white cabinets and faux wood counters. The latter two are things most people in an apartment would hate but they worked so well with our style and this granite-and-brand-new-cabinet thing is so not me. Next up: the doors come off. I feel a little strange taking the doors off of cabinets that are so new and shiny but I can’t take it anymore. I want to see my glasses, my plates, my bowls. Looks like me and the drill have some work to do this week!

Do you like the plate wall? Don’t you think I need more of them? Shouldn’t it stretch down the whole hall? Aren’t plates awesome?

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Posted in diy, my NEW apartment, thrifted vintage love

Tagged apartment, art, cheap, decor, decorating, diy, kitchen, plate wall, thrift, thrifted

before and after: our wicker park apartment front room

Posted on August 31, 2011 | 4 Comments

Bye bye crappy floors!

I planned to do an entire post of before and afters for each room. Alas, time is not on my side. This’ll have to do for now, and hopefully I’ll scare up the before shots from the other rooms this week. Onward, packing soldier.

xxoo

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Posted in my apartment

Tagged apartment, art, cheap, chicago, decor, decorate, front room, thrift, wicker park

painting, spray painting and updating the bathroom

Posted on April 4, 2011 | 3 Comments

Before

After

Ouch! I’m still achy all over: painting is NO JOKE. Head on over to ReadyMade to read the full post on my brand new bathroom! The before photo used here is a little misleading– this is the paint color two cycles ago. Yes, I have painted this room a grand total of three– four if you include the primer that sat on the wall for months– times. I’m insane. The good part is that the new color is here to stay. The pain was worth it.

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Posted in at ReadyMade, my apartment

Tagged bathroom, cheap, claw foot tub, decor, low-cost, no-cost, renovation, spray paint

the four-dollar floor lamp

Posted on March 20, 2011 | 6 Comments

I thrifted for the first time in almost a month yesterday. It was a beautiful, sun-filled, fifty-degree plus Chicago afternoon; as I type, gray has blanketed the city, the forecast calls for rain until this evening, and snow next weekend. Will we ever see spring?

Lucky for me, a $4 lamp is here to brighten the day.

Village Discount Outlet is having their fifty-percent off winter clearance sale. I spied this bad boy the minute we walked in and commenced to carrying it around the huge warehouse of a store. Originally priced at $8, I got it for $4 and eagerly plugged it in this morning: it works! I’d been looking for a floor lamp for a dark corner of our living room for eons. It’ll take a little re-arranging for the lamp to fit in the space but if you’ve read this blog for any amount of time you know that this particular room is the bane of my existence and moving stuff around always makes me feel better about its state, no matter that I can’t seem to ever get it right. Maybe the lamp will save me.

Since the grayness has turned our apartment into a dark cave, I shot this in the front room. If we end up getting sun this week I’ll update with the lamp in it’s new home.

I picked up some lotus bowls, too. I have an affinity for these guys but until now, only owned the smaller version. Now I have five big ones, purchased at $1/each. Not bad for my first day back on the hunt.

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Posted in thrifted vintage love

Tagged cheap, decor, interior decorating, lamp, thrift store, village discount outlet, vintage

an urban casita christmas

Posted on December 6, 2010 | 5 Comments

Our house is Christmas-y! I stumbled upon the last remaining bouquet of pine boughs at our local Trader Joe’s and took it as a sign. Along with your helpful decorating tips in my post on kitschy decorating last week, the $5.99 bouquet gave me the encouragement I needed to just get on with it over the weekend.

I picked up my normal bouquet of alstroemeria as well, and added a few flowers to some of the vases. As you can see from the kinda-bootleg arrangements, I do not have a calling for floral decorating.

Some of the vases didn’t get alstroemeria. I just liked ‘em as they were, simple and plain.

Well, maybe not too plain. The white was a little boring and not quite cheery enough until I remembered Linda’s comment about tying ribbons around the leaves of her palm trees.

I even hung ornaments with no tree! These modish ornaments came from our Saturday IKEA trip. They had little white ribbons attached for hanging that I removed and replaced with fishing line.

I think they’re high enough to keep the dog’s paws and teeth off of them. If I had been smart, I would have purchased more of these for our kitchen and living room windows. I see the mini-moible staying for bit after the holiday season is over and I’m pondering what else I can hang up seasonally. Dried flowers perhaps?

Last but not least, a little tiny milk glass vase graces my desk, precisely where I’m sitting as I type this. A few more vases are scattered around the apartment but winter darkness snuck up on me before I got the chance to photograph them.

Milkglass vases: around $1 each
IKEA ornaments: $2.49/6
Pine: $5.99
Flowers: $5.99
Green ribbon: $2.50
Fishing line: $1.50
Listening to Christmas Pandora while I put it all together: Priceless

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Posted in diy, my apartment

Tagged bouquet, cheap, christmas, christmas decorating ideas, diy, hanging mobile, holidays, ikea, milk glass, pine boughs, ribbon, thrifted christmas, trader joe's, vintage christmas, vintage decorating

bedroom update: painted floors!

Posted on November 2, 2010 | 4 Comments

You’re gonna have to click here to view the old bedroom as it’s too damn ugly to post here again. Oddly, it’s one of the most-viewed pages of this site, probably because of the DIY headboard ideas; obviously, I’ve yet to use any of them.

Anyways, my sister Bridie and I, along with help from The Mister, painted the bedroom floors this weekend and ooohhhh-weeee do I love the results! You can read about our experience today at ReadyMade but I’m using this post to show you how the room is starting to come together.

The photo above is the bed dressed with a quilt that has been in my family for ages. My grandmother’s friend Geneva used to make them and Gram had tons around the house when I was little. We used to stretch out in the backseat of our VW Vanagon (exactly like this one) and pile the quilts around us on long car rides.

Unfortunately, the quilt alone isn’t quite warm enough to withstand the brutality of Chicago winter nights and we’ve pulled out the comforter within the last week or so. I’m a little tired of the duvet cover and on the lookout for something really yellow. Finding a good duvet for under $100 is absolutely impossible. It might be time to just make one.

The bedside table was an alley find that I spray painted white. It used to live in the front room and was replaced by that estate sale credenza. The height is perfect but I’m not really in love with it and have kept my eyes peeled for replacements. Two things that definitely need to go are the crappy, cheap lamp and the window treatment. A simple white curtain will do a lot for the small space.

Painted frame, estate sale: $4 {spray painting it was fun but seriously, we need a damn headboard}
Duvet cover, IKEA: $14
Quilt: Free
Lamp, IKEA: $6.95
Side table, alley: $3.95 for spray paint

This gives you an idea of how small the room is.

Dresser, Craigslist: $35 plus $3.95 for a can of spray paint {before & after}
Chair, Salvation Army: $5 {the day I bought it}
Mirror, Goodwill: $4.95 {inspired by my step-mom’s mirrors}
Embroidered art, estate sale: $2 {from my very first estate sale}

The stuff on the wall is stapled paneling from IKEA. Yes, we stapled it. When we moved in and dismantled everything in this room we were met with glue all over this wall from a bulletin board the former tenants had put up. That and huge holes from shelving made for a really disgusting wall. This was an easy fix and I hope to change it out with more stapling or actually do the damn thing and wallpaper it.

What you don’t see is our television. It normally perches on that empty corner of the dresser but I made The Mister wait to move it while I snapped photos!

Room Total: $79.80 + million dollar mattress that doesn’t count + bedframe @ $20 = $99.80

Grand Total (in the rooms I’ve bothered to do this with)
$100 | Bedroom (paint/materials at around $100 covered by Mr. Landlord)
$387 | Kitchen
$370 | Front Room South
$80 | Front Room North

Total: $937

Under a grand. This still leaves plenty of wiggle room to continue updates in the bedroom and for the bathroom, guest room, living room and closet. I’m patting myself on the back, you know.

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Posted in my apartment

Tagged bedroom, cheap, diy headboard, painted floor, painted wood floor, painting wood floors, spray paint, thrift, vintage

fashion & decor go hand in hand? really?

Posted on June 22, 2010 | 10 Comments

I think my house is pretty cute.

My clothes are another story. This is definitely not a fashion blog but I thought it would be interesting to see what happened if I walked into the thrift and pretended I was shopping for my house in the clothing section.

About me and clothing: I stick to basics. I wear a lot of black and gray and white and I live in flip-flops and Nikes. I own two pair of heels (one for summer, one for winter) and two black dresses (again, one for summer, one for winter). My day to day standbys stay in such a constant rotation that I’m out of stuff to wear in less than a week. I’m cheap, I like old comfortable tees and I wear them ’til they fall apart.

Tonight I decided to make a change. MORE pattern! MORE color! MORE texture! MORE like pillows that I would put on the couch, LESS like my… regular black and gray and white.

No, that is not an ashy leg, it is the dirty mirror at Village Discount Outlet on Milwaukee Ave. They don’t have dressing rooms so everyone brings their cart around to the big mirror and quickly tries on what they can over their clothing. I found that the best place to look for stuff is on the rack of discards next to the mirror. Someone tried those items on out of thousands and thousands of other garments and there’s usually at least one cute thing hanging there.

The tank top looks like it belongs at Anthropologie and not at the resale shop, no?

It was $2.80. Anthro can have all the fancy summer sales they want; coming close to anything less than three dollars will never happen. Never.

The red shirt next to it is by Theory, which I knew was kind of nice but just had to Google to see where the brand was sold. Saks! And wowie, the shirts on their site go for around $180. Can we guess what I paid? Yup. $2.80. Note the difference in decimal point.

Looks like I may be thrifting for clothing more often, huh? Maybe fashion and home decor really do go hand in hand…

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Posted in thrifted vintage love

Tagged anthropologie, cheap, clothing, sale, theory brand, thrift store

Tag Archives: cheap

turquoise kitchen redux

dovetail lamp + a peek of the dining room

cutting, ripping and idying curtains

putting up the plate wall

before and after: our wicker park apartment front room

painting, spray painting and updating the bathroom

the four-dollar floor lamp

an urban casita christmas

bedroom update: painted floors!

fashion & decor go hand in hand? really?

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