apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I'm celebrating this recession by cleaning house and repainting the bathroom sherbet orange! yippee!

I hope AT will feature more budget-conscious home decor projects, not just tons of expensive furniture and the like. I'd love to see more before/after on a budget as well!

oh, the feeling re-arranging my bedroom as a kid was such a natural high - does that make me weird?

wait, don't answer that...

but i do love to organize... especially my craft area...

yes! today i painted a shelf i installed last night. mission for the rest of the week is to buy ceiling paint for my hallway. i donated a bunch of stuff to an animal rescue place nearby. thank you!

You mean I'm not alone in this? I loovveed re-arranging my furniture as a kid, still do. I've found my people.

The three greatest letters when it comes to home decor in a recession, or for that matter regardless:


D-I-Y


Have something that you dont know how to do? Head to the internet or just plop down with a book at your closest bookstore and learn how to do.

There is very little that is as rewarding and as frugal as improving your house with your own two hands.

Haha, I used to re-arrange my room as a kid too! It was still a cluttered mess though, until I was about 14 or 15 and just took all of my junk and toys that I never used and didn't really want and put them all in the basement (my dad wouldn't let me actually throw anything away... you see where the problem lies?).

I just moved, so I think I'll get my fill of home decor pretty quickly... and it should last a while. :)

Speaking of DIY...I love the artwork in the first photo and I am SO stealing it!

When me & my sis were little, my Dad emptied out the basement, cleaned it up, put up low shelves, and then painted the floor this great blue color I'll never forget, for us to set up our play area. We quickly set up our little metal (aluminum?) play stove and sink, and with all our dolls and games we had a blast for years to come! I'll never ever forget it! So, yes indeed, sprucing up a room and painting can do wonders.

i also used to be happiest as a child right after re-arranging a room. haha.

I always rearranged the furniture in my room as a kid. I would draw up floor plan after floor plan and show my mom and dad my plans. They thought I was crazy but my mom kept one. And when I entered interior design school she framed it with a note that said, "we always knew something great would become of this". I have it hanging in my office now!

I, too, was obsessed with rearranging my furniture as a little girl. I would stay up until all hours of the morning pushing around furniture that weighed twice as much as I did - a difficult feat considering the friction created by the lovely '70s green shag carpet I grew up with. I credit my somewhat freakish strength today (despite an appalling lack of exercise) to those days of relentless rearranging.

Hi, my name's Heather and I too was a furniture re-arranger as a child.

Admitting I have a problem is the first step.

i want to rearrange my furniture in the worst way. i do so every few months. but this time, my friends and family are saying i shouldn't do it because they like the layout as it is. but it's making me mental! i want to move it all. is this a sign of some OCD we have?

i used to live in a permanent state of pretend when i was a kid. my room was my apartment. i used cast off furniture from my family and sectioned my room off to make different areas. i even put a basket on my door as my mailbox. i was eager to be in my own apartment, even at the age of ten. then i'd play barbie, but not with the dolls, but designing her a place to live. puzzle box beds, thread spool tables, cotton ball pillows, soda lid dishes. it made me giddy with delight to discover something else i could add to her home. a fabric swatch from grandmas house = a new bedspead! yay!

I find Craigslist, floor sample sales, and a few hand tools are great for revamping the house. I've fixed, painted, reupholstered, hacked, and polished everything from a busted up Risom chair, to an Ikea lamp, to a beat up curbside desk, to a cheap set of curtains (take an inexpensive cloth shower curtain..cut it in half and hem the sides)

A little information goes a long way. Google and the library are great sources of upholstery techniques and furniture repair.

I'd also love to see a section of Apartment Therapy devoted to those of us who are very budgeted. Now that a larger percentage of this audience will be earning less and able to afford less for their homes, why not, along with the nursery section the green section and the tech section, have a frugal section?

I was a major furniture re-arranger as a child. And I still am now :D

As a kid, I used to wait until my parents went grovery shopping and do it then to surprise them when they got home. It usually met with many an amused head shake :)

Now, I re-arrange roughly every couple of months. It just hits me sometimes, that feeling that I want something different but am unsure what. So I just start moving stuff and experimenting.

Also, those paintings in the first photo, where are they from? I love them!

is the first photo from a previous house tour?

I want to see more, could someone please paste the link？

Thanks

Tse Moana, that is hilarious!

atlantadesigner, I love your story!

I, too, love the blue bird prints. Where to find them?

For those who wanted to see more photos from the home shown in the first shot above: LA House Tour: Danielle & Lakshan's Comfy Modern

I like to rearrange things, but I discovered that in my house, there are very limited placement plans that work because of the size of furniture and rooms as well as locations of doors, closets and windows. So instead I'm settling for repainting.

I have great yards so I am outdoors tending to my trees, plants and shrubs. Nothing like pruning and dead heading to perk up a yard.

I am also attempting to propogate my Yves Piaget Rose bushes. Growing my own roses from scratch will be interesting and cost effective if they bare roots and some growth.

The best "redecorating during a recession" trick my mom used when I was a kid -- checking out large, over the sofa, paintings from our public library! Every 2 weeks we had new art work, all for the price of a few overdue fines now and then.

What is that yellow chair with black piping and a throw on it? There is a similar one that I sit on at my college. When I get bored in class, I dream up ways of sneaking it out:)

I TOO rearranged like crazy in college. Thank goodness my roommate was cool with it. We even un-bunked our bunk beds, which is not the safest thing to do cause it fell ontop of me as we did it. She pulled me out of the metal contraption before it totally collapsed on me. But we did eventually figure out how to make it stable enough to work. What do you expect from college kids at 2 in the morning? That was the start of my DIY attitude.

I like to rearrange my apt now, but it's a small studio, so not a lot of options. But I still love it! Fresh! Fresh! Fresh!