It's the little things

My design philosophy is to be as creative as possible to create the look you want while staying within a meager budget. If I had unlimited resources and funds... well lets just say I have expensive taste. However, these things are not true so I must get inventive to make things look the way I want. Of course it is appropriate to splurge every once in awhile to really get a piece that you want, but in general with a little elbow grease you can modify things to be what you want for a fraction of the cost. Now this of course takes time and work but for me it is worth it since I love doing it and I find I end up with a much more custom look than if I bought everything and keep it as is.

For the nursery this design philosophy was in full force and for this post I have clumped together a few projects where I simply found a great deal and them customized it to be exactly what I wanted. My previous post about the old dresser I painted and converted into a changing table is such a project but was a little more work than is always necesary.

First, when searching for a chair for my nursery I could not find a single chair that I liked for less than $900 (like I said I have expensive taste). I was very specific that I that I wanted a glider or rocker that was modern looking, not too big and came in grey. In my opinion I found the inexpensive options for chairs to be frumpy and usually came in terrible shades of pastel pink, green or blue. So I began going to local thift stores, looking on Craigslist and checking out yard sales for an old chair that I could reupholster. It took some time and I went to a lot of thrift stores but I eventually came across a chair that with a little altering was perfect.

I found this chair at the Goodwill Redesign center on Scottsdale Rd and Thomas. It was $30 after a student discount (if you still have a student ID you can still claim to be a student). It is obviously from some little old ladies formal living room because it was in great condition and quite clean for being white. It rocks and is very comfortable making it a good choice. I considered even doing the reupholstry myself to save money but it was a bigger job than I wanted to take on so I went to a professional. I was referred to a place called By The Yard and I loved working with them. The fabrics they had available there were not quite what I wanted and were starting at $20 a yard so I decided to purchase this fabric from Fabrics.com and have them just do the reupholstering. To modernize the chair I had them take away the majority of the button-tufting (they said they couldn't take away all of it without compromising the comfort), remove the skirt at the bottom and take away the detached cushion on the top of the chair. So for a $30 chair plus $45 in fabric and $240 for the reupholstery totaling $315 I got a custom chair that no one else will have and is exactly the look I wanted. Here is the final product:

 

Two other small items in the nursery that gave me a lot of trouble finding what I wanted were the floor lamp for the reading corner and the area rug. Both, especially rugs, can be quite expensive and I just didn't want to pay a lot of money for either. 

While at Target one day just browsing the home section and mostly checking out the vast amount to clearance stuff I found a lamp on clearance for $15. The only thing it had going for it was the price and it had the basic shape I had been leaning toward in a lamp selection so I bought it. After getting it out of the box it is worth just about what I paid for it but I figured with a new shade it would be cute. I bought about 4 different shades in different colors and designs and none of them worked with the lamp or the rest of the nursery. So I figured why not try just painting the original shade that came with the lamp. It was just a plain cream fabric shade so I took some yellow fabric paint that I had and painted a chevron design. The result I rather like, it is imperfect and custom and goes great with the rest of the nursery. Lastly, I painted the silver base of the lamp cream and now I have an inexpesive lamp that I love.

As for the rug I had agonized over that purchase for months trying to rationalize spending hundreds of dollars on a rug but I couldn't. Eventually I ended up back on a rug I had liked from IKEA. The rug was large enough for the room and was only $20 so it was an unbeatable deal. The only problem was that it is grey and white and the room has so much grey I didn't want to make the room look dark. After the paint was done and a lot of the furnishings in place I decided it wouldn't make the room dark and went ahead and bought the rug. Of course, once in the room I thought it just needed a little something to make it special so I decided to add some yellow. Using fabric markers and a lot of free time I colored parts of the flowers on the rug yellow. It was a small alteration that makes the rug different from the 3 million out there and ties it into my color scheme a little better.

Customizing pieces can mean something as big as refinishing a dresser or something as small as adding accent colors to a rug. What's important is being creative to make something your own and not always having to settle for what's in stock.