The $100 Room Challenge is wrapping up today! Unfortunately, I can’t quite call this a “reveal” since I still have some work to do. Most of the delay was due to rebuilding the gutted pantry and kitchen at the same time.

But here’s the room this morning, and then a month ago!

Let’s just pretend the fireplace surround is painted charcoal already.

DIY Mantle

We removed the giant floating mantle and the Hubs built the new fireplace surround from scratch (we’ll do a post about it in the future). It still needs to be primed and painted, it will be a darker gray when it’s finished.

All it took to build was 5 boards, fasteners we already had on-hand, and the French cleat that we stole from the back of the old mantle to secure it to the wall.

DIY Art

This was one of those projects you’ve seen on most DIY blogs: a “blueprint” or “engineering print” from Staples. You can get a photograph printed in giant format for really cheap. Of course, it’s not meant for photographs, so it comes out looking grainy, but that look was fine with me for what I had in mind. I was hoping for something that looked old and modern at the same time, and the graininess did the trick.

For the frame, we used 2 1x2s, miter cut and fastened together.

I have lots to say about this project (including when we were getting ready to hang it and our dog stepped right through the picture and put a giant hole in it), so a post about it will be coming.

Rug

The rug is one we’ve had for many years. Unfortunately, even though it was a pretty pricey piece from a higher-end store, the ends started fraying pretty quickly.

If any of you have dogs or robot vacuum cleaners, you know both are drawn to anything fraying like magnets and make it their mission for the day to help in the unravelling process.

So the rug had to go away before it was completely torn apart.

Getting it repaired properly and officially would be in the many hundreds, and honestly that’s just not something we’re interested in spending hundreds on. So I bought an upholstery needle and wool yarn that matched and started stitching the ends.

It’s going well, but it’s time-consuming, so I still have A LOT to do. In the meantime, the really bad end is tucked under itself.

Dog gate

We wanted something more modern and more user-friendly than the big metal baby gate, so we built one out of a crib railing that we got for free from Facebook Marketplace.

There’s a post with the details here.

Accessories

Curtains were also from Facebook, just $10.

Plants were collected from other parts of the house.

We removed the Craftsman style sconces, and replaced the light fixture with one we purchased for our office area, but didn’t end up using, so it’s been sitting in a closet forever.

So the official total was $93.14!

Here’s my wish list from the beginning:

• Repair the black and white rug that’s supposed to be in this room, and swap the tan one out for it
• Paint the walls
• Paint the trim (decided not to–still debating)
• Remove mantle
• Build new mantle that actually surrounds stove (still art deco style)
• Replace light fixture(s)
• Custom doggy gate at the front door
• Complete curtain and blinds set on the window, hung properly (curtains, still keeping an eye out for blinds to go underneath)
• Custom radiator cover to replace metal one (under the window) (removed the cover and like it much better, still hope to build a simple, modern cover eventually)
• New bar stools for island (honestly probably won’t happen this month–and definitely not within the $100 budget) (was hoping to makeover the ones we had for a few dollars, but didn’t have time)

So we got 2/3rds of the wish list done!

Now go check out the huge differences the other ladies made with just $100 too:

The post $100 Dining Room Makeover Progress appeared first on Little Victorian.

Waaay back in week 3 of the fall 2018 One Room Challenge we were making over our bathroom. I had a post written about our progress, but before I could publish it, we got big news: we were moving across the country again.

There was no time to hit publish. There was no time for anything but a mad rush to finish our renovations at the highest quality could, pack the house, get the MCM on the market, and move to New England. In one month. Our usual fashion…

So here is the original post I had written back in the fall at the half-way mark of the One Room Challenge:

Once we pulled out all the rotten drywall and built a wall between the tub and the powder room, it was time to finish it. 

What we WANTED were mother-of-pearl tiles.  Because that’s what was originally there (though in plastic form), and because it’s gorgeous.  However that would have cost us well over $1,000 just for the tub.  Definitely something we would have saved for if this were our forever home. 

But it isn’t.

2019 edit: Ha! Good timing to think like that.

And while keeping the home close to original is very important to us, we can’t go overboard in over-improving.  The fact is, this is still, and always will be a two bedroom house, and number of bedrooms, baths, and location trumps any improvements you make no matter what “they” say.  We’ve lived through it twice…

So…well over $1,000 or $144 for a shiny new, fast, and easy plastic tub surround that will be covered by a curtain anyway?  

Yay for plastic tub surrounds!

We got it up and caulked in just a few hours.  I didn’t get pictures of the process because it took both of us to put the panels up.  But it’s just putting adhesive on the backs of the panels and pressing them onto the wall.  

We weren’t able to replace the vanity like I was hoping, but we did replace the counter top with a nice one from IKEA.

Sorry again for the low-quality photos…as mentioned, we were in a mad rush.

The floor is obviously new as well. And we took out the medicine cabinet and replaced it with a nice big mirror from a thrift shop.

Here’s how it was before we bought the house:

Then after our super-quick reno:

We didn’t add up the cost, but it was under $500 for the new wall, tub surround, countertop, mirror, paint, flooring, and accessories.

I’ll be sharing a photo tour of our whole house as we moved out soon.

The post Affordable bathroom reno (the after) appeared first on Little Victorian.

It’s the last post for the $100 Room Challenge!  Sadly, we didn’t quite finish the makeover yet. We searched the house for an hour and couldn’t find the hanging kit to hang the mirror. I was also hoping to put up two small shelves next to the mirror to balance out the off-center mirror and sink.

We were actually going out of town, so we only had just under 3 weeks to do it all in, BUT I’m pretty happy that all that didn’t get done was hanging the mirror and shelves.

So three weeks and $96 later, here is our powder room makeover:

Here is our cost breakdown:

• New light fixture, Menards clearance (!) $30
• Mirror, IKEA $20
• Paint, Menards $1
• Contact paper, Amazon $10
• Floor tiles, Menards $19
• Cabinet knobs, IKEA $15
• Seal for cabinets, $0 (already had)
• Shelves (still to be put up) $0 from scraps we have

Total: $96

We also had the setback when we discovered the rotted subfloor, so that took time, and cost about $10 for the new plywood, but I’m not counting that towards the decorating.

To start from the top:

• The walls were repainted
• The light fixture replaced
• The mirror replaced
• The backsplash removed and counter lip removed for a more modern look
• The counters covered in marble contact paper
• The vanity sanded and sealed
• New knobs on vanity
• Old vinyl flooring pulled up and new peel and stick vinyl tiles put down

We were happy to find the slate-look tiles because slate is something that was often in mid century moderns. Staying close to the originally intended style is very important to us.

If you’ve never used the peel-and-stick floor tiles, let me tell you…they’re super easy and super inexpensive. And we’re always way happier with them than we expect to be. As much as we don’t like synthetic materials, sometimes, it’s just the best option.

We also didn’t get the cabinet pulls we were planning on.  We wanted tab-style that is much less visible, but IKEA only had 4 in-stock and we needed 6, so we had to switch styles to get it done in time.  

Here’s the before and after:

I’m SO thankful to Erin for hosting this challenge! There’s no telling when we would’ve gotten the powder room done without it, and we definitely would have ended up spending more without the goal of staying within $100!

Here is how the other ladies finished, go check out everyone’s great work!

Here are the process posts:

• The “new” counter
• Demolition
• The before (SO ugly, guys)

Oh, and we did end up having time to put the shelves up that I was dreaming of before we had to put the house up for sale, but we DID get the mirror hung.

Pin it for later!

Hover over the image <– and click the PIN button that pops up.

The post $96 Powder Room Makeover appeared first on Little Victorian.

Our bedroom updates are done(ish)! The spring One Room Challenge is over and I’m SO glad we participated again. I know our bedroom would look exactly the same as it did 5 weeks ago if it weren’t for the challenge. Here’s what it looks like now:

We removed the closet doors and built our open closet in one side with a small dresser and laundry baskets in one side. In the other side, we built the bed for the dogs, and added a face-out rack for my blouses, and a shelf for a few more things. On the underside of the shelf, there are some cup hooks screwed in to hang my scarves from.

Where the dog bed (small sofa) previously was, we put a little seating area and a pretty little tree that I’m sure the Hubs will be able to keep alive. We have the arch lamp and the painting (that I think is still hanging too high) too that we scored from Goodwill.

I still need to hang the bamboo blinds above the bed. All it takes is a couple cup hooks, but it’s way too high for me to reach. I was tempted to start stacking things on the bed to stand on, but I knew I would just fall and likely injure myself. So I will wait until we can move the bed out and put a ladder back there and do it properly…probably at some point in the next 6 months(?).

For some reference of where we started, here are the listing photos from when we bought the house:

And here’s what it looked like 5 weeks ago when we started:

And now:

Since we’re still on a major budget, the only things we purchased for the room were the bedding (actually a surprise gift from the Hubs!), the MDF to make the dog bed with, the tree, and a few accessories from Five Below. So our total was under $100!

Click here to browse all the other One Room Challenge participants!

We’re already planning on the fall One Room Challenge. And we’re thinking something much bigger, like the kitchen…which needs new floors, appliances, counters, and some cabinets. ?

The post Master Bedroom Makeover appeared first on Little Victorian.

Update: this post was part of a series about making over our master bedroom. Click here to see the full before-and-after.

Everything is still in progress in the bedroom.  This week is all about the furniture.

(We LOVE having this corner of our bedroom back from the dogs!)

The townhouse we rented a few months ago was unfurnished.  We brought a few things up from the house, but we had to turn to Craigslist for the rest, and we scored big time.  I saw a sectional sofa from the 50s in decent condition…for only $120(!) and contacted the seller immediately.  She offered more of the furniture from her mother’s house, including two mid-century chairs (which I immediately agreed to buy for another $20), and two end tables.  I declined the two end tables, but her mother was sentimental about the furniture and really wanted everything to stay together, so we agreed to buy those as well.  And I am so glad we did because they make the perfect nightstands.

The color isn’t good for our house though, it’s a dark red and all of the wood in our house is very tan with orange undertones.  I was hoping to refinish them for the challenge, but there just wasn’t enough time.

Almost everything in here was purchased for our rental, and it all just worked perfectly for the bedroom. The floor lamp was from Goodwill for only $20.  The bookshelf was from there too for only $5, as was the painting above the chair for another $5.  The painting is an original, painted on a course woven fabric.  I couldn’t get over how the colors matched perfectly.  The cream stripe is the same as the walls, and the pink is the same pink the closets are painted in.

The Hubs also surprised me with new bed linens!  The bed is the same one we got for last spring’s One Room Challenge, it could use a fresh coat of rub-n-buff.

Window coverings were supposed to be hung, but we misplaced all of the curtain rod hardware in one of the moves.  We have all the rods, just nothing to hang them on. ?

Still a long way to go and less than one week left…

Click here to browse all the other One Room Challenge participants!

The post New vintage furniture appeared first on Little Victorian.

The last 5 weeks of the One Room Challenge just flew by.

We took another week off the ORC bedroom makeover last week because we were at a point where we’d have to spend money to continue, and when you’re paying for two houses, money isn’t exactly in abundance.  (Anybody want to buy a cute Victorian?  Please?)  We were also kept pretty occupied half the week by the sewer pipe that backed up and flooded our basement.  Fun!

The Hubs found me a dresser on Craigslist, though!  I think it’s amazing and gorgeous, and the price was a steal.  It was also, literally 5 houses down from us.

It’s a nice, cool brown, not too yellow, and not too red, so I didn’t even want to re-stain it (in the future, I might want to make it a couple shades darker).  The hardware was a little drab though, so I rubbed them with gold Rub ‘n Buff to brighten them up.

Rub ‘n Buff gold leaf color is what gave the headboard a little makeover too.  I just needed something quick, cheap, and easy to make it a little less…IKEA.  It’s not bad!

The chunky knit throw has been waiting to be made for a long time.  The deadline for the One Room Challege helped me finally get it done…as did learning how to arm knit (I told the story on Instagram).

I can’t wait until we own the place and I can pull up the green carpet and the laminate that’s underneath it.  Obviously, the room is still lacking a lot, like curtains and lamps and a rug…they’re all still at our other house until it sells.  Are you sure you don’t want to buy a Victorian?

Back to the room…the biggest job here was the painting.  It started with filling in all the grooves in the paneling, priming, and painting the walls.  There area total of 7 doors and 5 windows in this room.  All the doors were painted with the wall color, and all that moulding was painted black.  (Actually, it’s not done yet, most of the moulding still needs to be finished, and the windows need to be painted white.)

The ceiling!  We were still working on that Tuesday night and Wednesday.  The Hubs brought pizza, wine, and painting supplies home with him so we could just keep working through the evening.

The chair was another steal…only $5 at Goodwill.  And the kitchen area still looks the same as it did two weeks ago.  We’re just going to pretend it’s not there until we can renovate.  All told, this temporary makeover only cost the price of the Craigslist dresser, 2 gallons + 1 quart of paint, $10 on random things at Goodwill, and one $5 tube of Rub ‘n Buff.

Hopefully by next Spring we’ll own the house, and maybe we can give it the real makeover for next year’s One Room Challenge!

All the other participants have their final posts linked up too, you should go here to the One Room Challenge page to check out some great before-and-afters!  I really appreciate Linda from Calling it Home for hosting this challenge, a deadline and accountability always work wonders for me actually getting stuff done!

The post Bedroom makeover with just paint and a few second-hand items appeared first on Little Victorian.

While I was away, we took a road trip and visited my parents.  They wanted some changes made to their bedroom decor, so before we left I put together a terrible Photoshop rendering of some ideas and picked up some things at IKEA.  (The closest IKEA to them is 4 1/2 hours away. Poor people.)

But here is where we started.  The room was decorated with traditional style in mind, in the late ’90s.

They had an abundance of furniture.  Most of them are nice vintage pieces.  But they’re also all so bulky and have a lot of visual weight.  They had her grandmother’s night stands that were dainty and Hepplewhite (?) style, but they thought they needed bulky, visually heavy pieces to match the bed and armoire.  As I’ve mentioned before, furniture doesn’t need to match, it needs to balance each other.

I explained it to them this way: it’s like having a party and only inviting type A people.  Everyone is a commanding presence.  Everyone there has something to say, but there’s nobody there to listen and add the breathing room.  And each of their large, heavy furniture pieces were the commanding presence, they were all competing for attention, and without the laid-back, non-focal-point types to balance them out, the room was overwhelming.

Of course, we didn’t want to get rid of the antiques, so we just rearranged the room so they wouldn’t be the focal point anymore.  (As a side-note: in a bedroom, the bed and bed area should almost always be the focal point.)

We brought back the dainty vintage side tables.  What they had is on the left (sorry for the low-quality…long-distance decorating has challenges).

In their defense, the sitting room wasn’t normally this cluttered, it had furniture they were hoping to get rid of.  We posted the dressers and nightstands on Craigslist and they were gone in a heartbeat.

Now the after photos:

We still have more to do in here.  We’re going to be looking for a big, creamy-colored rug to go under the bed to lighten and soften the room (and of course, provide comfort), and new bedding.  

And they really, really wants to replace the light fixture.  We’re not sure yet if we’re going to go with something more simple and transitional or something with more of a Craftsman style to go with the house itself.  Along the lines of these lovely lights (similar here):

I should also mention that this makeover has only cost $120 so far. All we purchased were the new curtains, curtain rods, and lamps (all from IKEA). Here are some before-and-afters so you don’t have to scroll:

I still recommend a new transitional-style cover for the bed in a lighter color, but with pattern and texture, the aforementioned rug, a less bulky chair, and some fresh paint so that the new white accents flow better. But this was a good start for less than $150!

A few years ago, we gave their living and dining rooms makeovers too, you can see them here: living room, dining room.

We will also be working on Mom’s craft room, which we started a plan for a year ago, but it was put on hold, and now we’re going in a different direction.  I’ll post about that when that project is resumed.

They said the office is next, and I’m really excited about that room!

The post One day budget bedroom makeover appeared first on Little Victorian.

I’m short.  Really short.  5 feet even, actually.  With 20+ years of practice, I can get around just find in a world built for people significantly taller than me (unless there’s a glass item I need on the top shelf at the grocery store–I still haven’t figured that one out).

But there is a disadvantage to my lack-of-height when it comes to homekeeping: I can’t see the tops of shelves.  I can reach the tops, I just can’t see them.  They do all get dusted regularly, but if I miss something, I won’t have any idea.

So because I can’t see the piles of salt and pepper our salt and pepper grinders were leaving behind on the shelf, I didn’t realize we needed some sort of tray under them all this time.  I thought for a couple days about how to get/make an itty bitty tray to put under the shakers, but I was blank until we went to Crate and Barrel for some rug shopping.  They had these pretty slate trays.  But I didn’t need to buy one, because we have piles of slate slabs and fractions of slabs that we’ve been pulling out of the dirt in our yard for the last 4 years.

Why is our yard filled with pretty, ready-made slate trays?

This house originally had a slate roof, and when the previous owners put a new roof on, they just tossed all the slate tiles into the yard where the ground swallowed them up.  Every once in a while, the yard regurgitates one for us.  I’ve been saving them because I knew there had to be something cool they could be used for.  Finally, after 4 years, I realized they could be used as cheese plates, platters, trays, or to save our shelf from the salt and pepper.

PS: If you don’t have a front yard that spits out free slate tiles for you, you can get them cheaper on Amazon than at Crate and Barrel.

The post Upcycled trays for the kitchen appeared first on Little Victorian.

Happy Monday!  I’m sharing a tip today that I’ve been using for years: a decorating file.

Whether you’re currently decorating your house or not, it’s very helpful to have.  All of your paint colors and fabric swatches can be kept together in one little folder.  It’s my favorite way to keep track of paint chips (and you have the color on-hand if you need to go buy more).

It’s also small enough to fit into your purse, so if you’re out shopping for new pillows or curtains, or even something big like a sofa, you’ll have pieces of your room with you to make sure the new item will work.

Mine is a coupon organizer from an office supply store (the closest thing I could find online is this).

When I get a gallon of paint, I always grab an extra color card to add to the file.  If you’ve ordered your furniture or linens online, you can often get fabric swatches from the retailer mailed to you for free.

Other good things to keep in the folder are dimensions of rooms or pieces of furniture, for example, if you’re shopping for a new media cabinet, it would be helpful to have the size of the TV handy.  Adding an inspiration photo or two would help keep you on track to if you use the file while you’re out shopping.

This little organizer only took a few minutes to put together and cost $6, and has saved me a ton of time and guessing if something will work.

The post Decorating file appeared first on Little Victorian.

Why would anyone paint a room with little natural light a dark color?  It seems weird.  And weird wouldn’t necessarily be out of character in this household.  But there is logic behind it!

Last week we painted our dining room dark blue.  The room is stuck in the middle of the floorplan, and doesn’t get much natural light, though it’s surrounded by rooms that are flooded with it.

Last week, the dining room was still the same semi-gloss light yellow that it was when we bought the house.  The color, in itself, wasn’t bad, but here, it was really dreary.  See all the shadows in the “before” pictures that just make the room look drab?  The light color made it obvious that there was no natural light.  While the shadows on the dark walls just seem to add depth and richness.  So many shadows in a light painted room can make it feel cold, while shadows in a dark painted room make it feel warm.

The dark walls have done two things for our room:

1. They give the room definition and clear boundaries and that makes it feel inviting and cozy.

This dining room has doorways in every direction (and the silly half-wall), which make it feel more like a hallway than a room.  But now that it’s painted in such a contrasting color from the other rooms, you can clearly see where the room begins and ends, which is another thing that gives it the warm, intimate feeling.

2. You no longer notice the lack of natural light.  Before, it was all I noticed, it felt like a cave, now it feels like an old fashioned library where you could curl up with a book and stay day.

Much like when driving and your lane is always the slowest, it seems to defy logic that a room without much natural light would feel drab when painted a light color.  It also seems to defy logic that a dark color would make it inviting and make you not realize there wasn’t much natural light.  It seems weird, but it works!  Would you ever try it?

The post Why dark walls look good in a room with little natural light appeared first on Little Victorian.