Monday, February 23, 2009

Painting on the Cheap

Paint!?!? It can brighten a room while draining your budget :o)
Yes, I know that they say that a coat of paint is the cheapest and easiest way to add "pizazz" to a room. (Do they really say that?). But when your budget is $0 even color has to go on the back burner. So what is a girl to do? What is this girl to do, who has been dying to put some color on her walls since she moved into her first rental some 9 years ago? All I want is some color in my life people, that's it just a little cheeriness and at this point I don't care what color it is I just want COLOR! UGH! Sorry for the momentary lapse of insanity. I am back now.

For starters, I have many people offer me paint. Seriously. It has been fun. Our old neighbor (no she is not actually old, we just live in a new house now and have new neighbors so all the neighbors at our old house are now our old neighbors) offered me four different colors of paint that she had used in her girls' room. The colors were perfect. We had 2 shades of pink and 2 shades of lavender. None of the colors had a full gallon. So we had to figure out how to make it all work and get all the walls covered. Here is how we did it:
The closet (which you cannot see) was painted the darkest shade of pink. Most of the wall was painted in the other shade of pink (as you can see above). There was less than a half gallon of the darker shade of lavender and almost a whole gallon of the lighter shade. The problem was the lighter shade was really light and I wanted something darker. So I mixed the two shade together and came up with the color you see above for the ceiling and the top part of the wall! When money permits we will get a pretty white molding to put up on the line between the colors. I was so happy with the way it turned out! Painting the girls' room= $0. Thanks Raquel!!!!! You rock!!!!!

Another way we have been able to buy some color is to hit up the "oops" paints at our local "man stores" (H*ome Dep*t/ L*we's, and even w*llym*art).
I found this can of paint last summer (when we thought we were moving into a different house) and will use it to paint all of the bathroom cabinets. It's a dark grey color. Bathroom Cabinets= $6.

I needed to paint the inside of our closet with a good semi-gloss before we moved all of clothes into it. I headed off to w*llym*rt to pay full price (shocking I know) for a gallon of white semi-gloss. When I go there I noticed their section of "oops" paints and started in on them. To my surprise they had a can of almost white semi-gloss paint right there for only $6! I use the whole gallon to paint the master bedroom closet and all of the hall closets (we have 4 of them).


I had hopes to have enough of the almost white paint left to paint the laundry room but I did not. I was a bit sad but that sadness to turned to happiness when I decided I could paint it red! Finally a red room! Some GOOD color! Thank you Lord!
Off to the above mentioned place again to get me some red paint. Again, planning on paying full price. Have I told you how much I hate paying full price? I, of course, decided to devour through the "oops" paint once again knowing that they would not have my shade of red in there. Well, can I just shout, GOD IS GOOD!!!!! There was my red paint. In my perfect shade! At that moment life just could not have got any better. Well, it could have if someone would have offered to come and paint the laundry room for me right then and there for free :o) But I am a realist and life was plenty good at that moment just the way it was
Laundry room= $6. I already had all of the turquoise buckets from the old house. I am going for the Greek isle look in here. Like in Mama Mia. Oh I so do love that movie! Please, no judging here people. We are all entitled to our own opinions :o) I am going to trim the shelf with ribbon as soon as I find just what I want. So fun!
I also have another friend who has offered me a gallon of paint that she has lying around. I plan on using that one for the office. I also go and check the "oops" sections every time I am at the "man store" (this is what my kids call it) just knowing that one day I find the colors for my front room, kitchen, hallway, and bathrooms!
Happy Painting!
~Caroline




4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Woo hoo!!! Good for you!!! Everything looks wonderful. I LOVE the red in the laundry room with the green buckets. It looks great!

Dana said...

That is such a funny play by play. Super inspiring!

kristi said...

I have been prayerful about how to get our house decorated with no money. You have been so inspiring!! I love what you have done and I knew I liked you - I picked red for our laundry room too! Except now I'm leaning toward hot pink :) Like you I've lived without color long enough and I want lots of it!!!!!

Tim, Allyson, and kids said...

You should check out freecycle in your area. We were able to get about 7 or 8 almost full gallons of various colors from people who were looking to get rid of paint. We simply mixed them to get the colors we wanted. The only paint we bought for our entire house was white ceiling paint. If you've never heard of freecycle youdon't know what you're missing. Go to www.freecycle.org Also, you can look to see if you have a Habitat for Humanity Resale store in your area. People donate home improvement supplies and the proceeds go towards Habitat. These stores are open to the public.