It's inevitable...you buy a 'fixer-upper' house and begin making all these grandiose plans for how you are going to make it beautiful, and the 'fix-it' list becomes enormous. You will eventually get to everything on the list, but it may take a year or two...or three...
I've lived through that already, and I'm about to live through it again. First on our list is a complete reno of the upstairs floorplan, then the kitchen, and then everything else.
But what do you do with the rooms while you are waiting? I need it to feel like 'home' for my own sanity, and not a continuous construction zone. Darren and I rented for 10 + years before we were financially able to purchase our own house, and while it was annoying to have to wait so long to own something, we did learn some tricks along the way to make each place we stayed in feel like 'home'. And yes, we've moved a lot...at least 13 times...I think we've lost count along the way.
The very first thing I always have to do is paint...something...anything. I can't express this enough - it makes a HUGE difference, and it doesn't cost that much (if you are really on a budget, pretty much all paint stores have a mis-tints section where they sell cans of paint at discounted prices). The house we recently purchased has horrible colors, and the paint job was horrendous. In fact, they liked to paint EVERYTHING (light fixtures, electrical outlets, baseboards, light fixtures, paneling...even toilet seat and bathtub) in the same colors. Both our living room and dining room are pretty much livable right now, but they needed some sprucing up to feel homey. We painted our hideous fireplace out white (it will eventually be destroyed and rebuilt), and are planning on putting a tile insert in the front...I'm sure there's some tile in our basement (oh, did I mention that the previous owner left the basement and cupboards FULL of things? Mostly useless things?) We also painted out the bead-board trim in the dining room, as it was painted a dark grey-brown. These rooms will eventually have the walls plastered and painted, but for now, there's a sense of cohesiveness.
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Fireplace before - they had it painted the same color as the wall, and there is a weird plaster finish on it.
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Fireplace - painted it out white, and we are experimenting with a tile insert (we can get cheap glass tiles from Walmart). We also have it blocked off from my 9 month old!
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| Dining Room Before |
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| Dining Room - beadboard painted out |
While painting is quick, I have recently found that wall decals are quicker! This is something that I am new to, but I love it! Our daughter, Jaelyn, had the most beautiful tiny room in our last house. And now, she has another tiny room, but this one is just sad. The floors need to be redone, she needs a closet, the walls need to be fixed, and it is painted the most lovely shad of Seafoam (barf!). I remember saying to my husband that I was sad for her - it is such and ugly room to wake up to every morning. We don't have money to, in essence, renovate twice, but she needed (or I needed) something to make it feel like a little girls room. Then I discovered a wonderful company called Wall Pops - who make beautiful, reusable vinyl tiles. They are affordable, and are found at your local hardware store (and if you keep the packaging/backing, you can remove them before you paint, and reapply them). For $16 I purchased a package of Ivory butterfly and flower Pops, and it has really changed the feel of the room.
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| Jaelyn's Room just after we moved in...so sad, not even any real curtains! |
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| Jaelyn's room with Wall Pops and curtains...feels like a little girl's room now! (Don't worry, when we put up her new curtain rod, we'll raise it!) |
I also discovered wall decals at the local Dollorama for, you guessed it, $1. I've experimented with some of these (hey, they're only $1), and it resulted in a beautiful door to the basement that I love! I had to cut up the wall decal so I could format it the way I wanted, but I really like the result.
Finally, I suggest that you deal with the curtains - sometimes you are lucky enough to inherit decent curtains, but when you are buying a fixer-upper you usually have to dispose of the dated, lacey, valency, ugly things. You also will most likely need to move your curtain rods. Did you know that many if not most people hang their curtain rods incorrectly? Take the house we are in, for example. They have the living room and dining room curtain rods fastened directly to the window trim. To get the most out of the height of your room, you should put your outer curtain rod brackets 3" up and 3" out from your window casing. If you have fairly high ceilings, you can even take them pretty high up. And just because you have a shorter window does not mean that you need shorter curtains! They should be the full height of the wall. While our upstairs curtains that we inherited were all gross and dated, we lucked into plain ivory cotton tab curtains in the living room. They had four panels on each window (which they didn't need) so we were able to use the extra panels in the dining room.
Our last sad little "room in waiting" is our bathroom. I have found that the easiest fix there is to shell out the money and buy a new shower curtain. A nice one. Look at the color of the walls and the floor, and choose one that compliments both. It will really make a difference in your room, and then you can coordinate from there.
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| Bathroom before |
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| New Shower Curtain - $25! |
