Decorate on a Dime: Painting

Many people think that getting a beautiful look for one’s home usually costs you a pretty penny.  But what I have discovered over the years is that you can really get a beautiful look for a lot less than what people might think.  To learn how to decorate on a dime I’ve decided to show you some pictures of some rooms that I’m currently working on and how I’ve saved thousands of dollars.

The first room I’m going to show you is almost finished.  It’s what used to be my formal living room, however, I’m not a big fan of rooms that serve no purpose.  I suppose if I had quiet, polite get togethers where we sat around and chatted politely before being showing to the formal dining room for our fancy meal, I’d have a formal living room.  That type of entertaining, however, really isn’t part of my lifestyle.  So, to suit my family’s needs, I converted my formal living room into our music room.

I think one of most important parts of a music room is to have a place to sit when your proud child says to you, “Mom, come listen to this” for the umteenth time. (Oh, they will. And trust me…it will be often.)  So that is the first part of the room I’m going to show you how to create on a dime, the “Sitting Area for the Proud Parents.”

Decorate on a Dime:  The Music Room Sitting Area for the Proud Parents

Now I’m a big fan of Christopher Lowell’s 7 layers of design.  He says that his “approach to decorating a room one layer at a time is designed to keep you on budget and out of overwhelm.”  Having watched his show demonstrating this design process for year, I find that it makes sense to me. He says the first layer to work on is paint and architecture, and the next step is flooring.  Now I had to change this up a little bit.  First I painted the walls.

Painting on a Dime

Now to get a good deal on paint there are some great ways to save money.

• Paint the room yourself:  Really painting the room yourself is the easiest way to save money.  Once you have the initial investment out of the way concerning your tools, you can keep re-using those tools over and over again for at least an entire house before you have to re-invest in new tools.  That and a little time investment, and really it costs a lot less that the minimum painting fee I’ve found which is at least $300 for a 12×12 room for labor alone.
• Get someone you know to help you paint the room:  I went with this one.   You see my parents had rental properties for years, and they have a ton of equipment.  Also, they can knock out an entire room pretty easily in just a couple of hours.  They have a system.  My mom handles the edging; my dad handles the roller.  For my music room (and the dining room which flows into it) I took over my mother’s role, and I ended up only having to buy new rollers and paint.
• Buy Mis-tints:  Many people as they are figuring out what color they want to paint a room go through several colors. Paint stores can sometimes carry several gallons of this mis-tinted paint, and you can sometimes get a $50 gallon of paint for as low as a $1.  Don’t worry about getting the wrong color, you can always re-tint it, as long as you start with a similar base, until you like what you have.  Talk to your local paint guy at the hardware store to help you with this process.
• Buy Paint in June:  June is the time of year when paint goes on sale.  You don’t have to paint in June, but buying your paint in June could be a smart option.

I ended up spending only $40 on paint and $10 on fresh rollers for this room’s and the dining room’s walls that flow into it.

I decided to wait, however, to work on my trim, the architecture, as I had a bigger problem to take care of first–my floors.

Next Week:  Beautiful Hardwood Floors on a Dime