Guest Bedroom

Amanda and I have been in the spring cleaning/remodeling spirit for the past couple of weeks and this last weekend we decided to tackle the bedroom in our basement. The walls are wood paneling and the whole feeling down in the basement was kind of cold, dark, and dingy. Last summer, Amanda’s sister lived with us and painted the walls white to brighten it up a bit. The white paint certainly brightened the room, but the wood paneling is not the best surface to paint on and it sucked up most of the paint she put on last year.

I’m not sure if I have a picture of the room with just white paint, so you’ll have to imagine. Amanda did a little brainstorming and came up with a color scheme for the room built around a bedspread she liked at Kohl’s. Turns out, the white paint that Amanda’s sister put up last year made a great base coat for our new paint job!

Amanda’s design idea also incorporates owls (which seem to be taking over our house). The owl lamp pictured above is from Amanda’s aunt and was originally brown, or owl-colored I guess. Some white paint brought it up to the modern era and we think it will make a nice addition to this room.

For the floor, we decided to go pretty low cost. We think that eventually we might do a bigger remodel of the basement (put up drywall, new insulation, new ceiling, new floor, etc) so we wanted to keep this cheap enough to justify redoing it in 5 years or so. The old floor was vinyl tile on concrete. The new floor we selected is a vinyl material that has a little more thickness to it with a sort of foam backing. Just for kicks, I wandered over to the “remnants” rack and, sure enough, there was a piece of flooring that was exactly the size I needed and very close to the color I wanted.

This stuff is SUPER easy to install. It requires no glue at all. Sweep up the floor, lay down the vinyl, trim the edges, hide edges under trim. The material has enough weight to it that it stays in place (like carpet would) without needing any glue.

Amanda and I are always keeping and eye out for decent used furniture and have happily collected many hand-me-down piece from our parents and relatives. My dad gave me a hard time about crowding our apartment with so much furniture, but I knew what I was doing… ha! It has spread out nicely in our house.

So here’s the break down of the whole project. We were more thrifty in some areas and spent a little more in others. Overall, we’re really happy with our updated guest bedroom. And we hope we can use it to bribe more people to come visit!

Yellow Paint: $17
White Paint: Left over from previous projects… kind of free?
Impact Vinyl Floor remnant: $117 (new was $150)
Blue Area Rug: $34 on sale
Bedspread: $30 after Kohl’s Cash and 30% coupon, etc (Kohl’s has so many crazy deals!)
Re-purposed Desk (you can see a sliver of it in the pic on the right side of the doorway): free
Bookshelf (left side of doorway): $10 my mom found at a rummage sale
Bed side table: $5 my mom found at a rummage sale
Owl Lamp: free hand-me-down

Grand Total: $213

(Our Thrifty-ness Disclaimer is the Mattress. There are probably ways to get a cheaper bed and if you’ve already got an extra, then you’re all set. I’ll spare the details but there is enough literature out there to strongly suggest that a mattress isn’t the best item to buy used. We purchased this full size mattress new from Verlo on their Miss-matched sale for $279. We think the real savings will come some years down the line when this bed is able to be used by our children. I’m sure it will still be in great shape when that time comes.)

So there you have it… Two days, $213, a deep gash in my thumb (By the way, did I mention to exercise extreme caution when using a razor blade?), and we’ve got an updated guest bedroom. Hope to see you there soon!