Money Crashers: 2 new articles

Money Crashers has just posted two new articles of mine, both on appropriately ecofrugal topics. The first one is about how to remodel a bathroom on a budget. In the piece, I drew on my own experience redoing the downstairs bath on a budget of under $1,000 (a project I learned was technically a renovation, rather than a remodel, since no walls or fixtures were moved). But I also gleaned ideas from other budget bath remodels covered in This Old House, as well as some advice from experts. These sources yielded tips on how to save on every part of a bath remodel: tile, fixtures, lighting, countertops, cabinetry, hardware, and most of all, labor. (Spoiler alert: DIYing as many jobs as possible can cut your costs by as much as 50%.)

8 Ways to Save Money on a Bathroom Remodel or Renovation

The second article is about a topic dear to ecofrugal hearts: getting stuff for free. As it turns out, if the stars align just right, it's possible to find nearly anything at no cost, from necessities like food and clothing to fun stuff like travel and entertainment. Obviously, it's unlikely you'll be able to get all the items on my list for free, but there's an excellent chance you can get some of them for free, and free up a nice chunk of cash in the process.

16 Things You Can Get for Free – How to Get Free Stuff

Money Crashers: How to Remodel Your Kitchen on a Budget

In the ten, nearly eleven years we've lived in this house, Brian and I have never actually redone the kitchen. Oh, we've tackled little bits of it here and there—we painted the room and refinished the cabinets before moving in, and we've replaced the cabinet handles, added rolling shelves to the pantry, replaced the fridge and, more recently, the microwave, and added various small storage items like a coat rack and knife insert—but we've never attempted a top-to-bottom makeover of the room. All the major features—cabinets, counters, flooring, lighting—are pretty much as they were when we moved in.

There are two reasons we've never tackled the kitchen. First, it functions pretty well as is, and we're very much of the if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it school of home design. But there are some things in the room—I'm looking at you, nasty old laminate countertops—that, though functional, leave a lot to be desired aesthetically. But we've never replaced those either, on account of the second reason: cost. Even though we've got a grand total of maybe eight linear feet of countertop in our kitchen, when I checked the price of replacing it—just with a nicer laminate, not stone or anything—it came to nearly a grand, including installation. And I thought, you know, maybe the old counters aren't that bad.

Well, I can't do anything about problem number one: if a job isn't worth the trouble, it isn't worth the trouble. But I've found a solution—actually, a whole bunch of solutions—to the cost problem. And I've laid them all out in my latest Money Crashers article: How to Remodel Your Kitchen on a Budget – Costs & Design Ideas. It starts out with some general advice like where to buy secondhand materials and which jobs are reasonable to DIY, and then it moves on to specific ideas for saving on cabinets, counters, appliances, flooring, backsplash, and lighting.

So, if you've been thinking about redoing your kitchen—or just a part of it—but you don't think you have the money, check this piece out. You might discover that the remodel of your dreams is within reach after all.

Money Crashers: Home Decorating Ideas on a Budget

Here's a new Money Crashers post I'm rather proud of. Over the years, I've done several posts here on budget decor, which highlight the best examples I've seen online of dazzling room redos on unbelievably small budgets. (Room makeovers from Young House Love show up often, but I've also found great room makeovers on This Old House and numerous other blogs.) These posts have been fairly popular - especially the second one, which for some reason has more than twice as many hits as all the others combined and is on my "greatest hits" list.

So I thought I'd do a single article that outlines all the tips and techniques these budget decorators have used to produce such amazing results with so little cash. Based on my extensive (probably too extensive) examination of budget decor posts, my personal top ten list is:

1. Do it yourself - whether "it" is painting, tiling, or installing hardwood flooring.
2. Rearrange the furniture. Use What You Have Interiors, which is probably the world's most ecofrugal decorating service, is built around the premise that you can make a room look and feel completely different just by putting what you already have in different positions.
3. Repurpose furniture and accessories. Lots of budget makeovers feature old pieces put to new uses, such as a sink vanity made from an old dresser.
4. Shop secondhand - at thrift stores, reuse centers, on Craigslist, and of course, on Freecycle.
5. Use paint. This is probably the single most important tool in a budget decorator's toolbox. I go into detail about decorative techniques like ombre, sponging, stenciling, and rag-rolling, as well as how to create the illusion of architectural detail with paint. I also discuss the use of paint on furniture, floors, counters, appliances, and pretty much everything.
6. Use paper. Wallpaper is pricey when you use it on a whole room, but small pieces, strategically placed, can substitute for even pricier treatments (like wainscoting or a tile backsplash).
7. Use fabric. Swapping out the fabric pieces in a room - pillows, curtains, rugs, bedding - is even easier than repainting and creates almost as dramatic a transformation.
8. Add woodwork. This takes a little more work, but there's nothing like a few strategically placed boards and battens to make a builder-grade room look custom-made.
9. Focus on details. Little touches like faucets, knobs, accessories, and lighting can make a big difference.
10. Create cheap artwork. I could have done a whole post on this alone, because there are so many ways to DIY your own art pieces on a budget. But I limit myself to a few tips and examples, since once you have the general idea, it's easy to come up with more.

For each of these tips, I provide details about where and how to use it and some examples of budget room makeovers that have used it to great effect. And at the end, I highlight several complete room makeovers that show how you can combine all these techniques to transform an entire room.

Read all the details here: 10 DIY Home Decorating Ideas on a Budget – Tips & Techniques

Best Budget Decor, Part 5

It's been a while since we had one of my budget decor posts, so I thought a new one might be a good way to start off the new year. (You can see my previous posts on budget room redos here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. I've also added a new "budget decor" tag so you can see them all on one page.)

Thus far, all my budget decor posts have focused on room makeovers within a specific dollar limit: up to $1,000 for a kitchen, $500 for a bath or basement remodel, and $250 for any other room. Those limits left me unsure about including a redesigned breakfast nook posted on This Old House. If you count it as a kitchen, it's well under the $1,000 limit, but it seems like cheating to call this a kitchen remodel when they didn't touch the appliances or, indeed, any of the actual cooking space. But on the other hand, it doesn't seem quite fair to exclude this under-$350 remodel because it's over the $250 limit for "other" when it's technically part of a kitchen. So I've decided to create a new category called "partial kitchen makeover," with a $500 limit, for any project that involves redoing some part of a kitchen without tackling the entire room.

One thing I find annoying about the way room makeovers are posted on This Old House is that they insist on showing the "after" picture first—leading off with the big reveal rather than showing just how awful the space was to start with, so that you can really appreciate what a transformation the homeowners achieved on a small budget. So I'm going to direct you first to the before picture, which shows the original breakfast nook as a completely dull brown space: dull brown floors, dull brown furniture, and dull brown wallpaper, without a single hint of color anywhere.

Now that you've had a chance to take in the complete absence of character, take a look at the after picture to see how much of a difference the Crinion family made with a bit of paint and one new piece of furniture. The biggest change from a functional standpoint was replacing two of the four chairs with a new corner bench they found on Craigslist, giving them enough seating for the whole family of five. Then they painted both the bench and the table white, added some cheerful red-and-white cushions, and gave the two chairs they kept a completely new look by cutting down their posts and painting them bright red. An ombre paint design on the walls and new artwork complete the transformation from dull and brown to bright and cheery.

You can read more about this project on their blog, House for Five. And while browsing there, I happened to find a post about how they made over the rest of the kitchen for $663—which means if you lump that together with the breakfast nook, they're only just over the $1,000 limit for a kitchen redo. On the other hand, it may be sort of cheating to count this, since Ms. Crinion admits it was actually the "2nd phase" in their kitchen renovation; they had already replaced all the "ancient" appliances with modern stainless-steel ones back in phase 1, and that was almost surely a whopping expense that isn't included in the $663 budget. So if you put all that together with the breakfast nook, it's definitely too pricey to be considered a budget kitchen remodel. But it is a pretty snazzy transformation, nonetheless, and worth taking a look at.

Fortunately, I also found several kitchen remodels that definitely fit the "budget" criterion. First, from the Remodelista site, is yet another dull-brown kitchen that was converted to a sleek, clean, all-white space for just $350—and, more impressively still, over the course of just two weekends. Remodelista, like This Old House, insists on spoiling the surprise by showing all the "after" pictures first, so you'll have to scroll down to the middle of the page to see what a neutral, featureless space the homeowners had to work with, with builder-grade oak cabinets blending seamlessly into the wood of the floors. They spent the first weekend cutting the oak vista in half by ripping out all those upper cabinets so they could replace them with airy open shelving: hand-painted pine boards from Home Depot mounted on IKEA brackets, supplemented with hanging racks also from IKEA. Personally, I wouldn't care for open shelving in my kitchen because I'd find it a hassle to keep it looking presentable all the time—but since one of the homeowners is a potter by trade, it only makes sense for her to keep her own wares on display. They then added flat white paint to the wall and the lower cabinets and splurged on a new $170 faucet—nearly half their total budget—to replace an old, leaky one. Even though the beige laminate counters weren't touched, they look much less blah in their fresh new surroundings.

Next up is a $468 kitchen also covered on This Old House. Unlike the previous ones, which started out as neutral spaces devoid of color, this kitchen originally had far too much, as you can see in this before picture. With bright blue cabinet doors, blue-and-red-checked flooring, and polka-dot wallpaper, the assortment of vivid colors and patterns drew the eye in every direction at once. So rather than punching it up, the homeowners toned it down with an all-white paint job, plus neutral brown paint on the floors and stone-look paint on the counters. Then, to keep the newly neutral space from feeling boring, they added some extra details to give it character: beadboard wallpaper and 1/4-inch plywood trim on the lower cabinets; open shelves in place of some of the upper ones; a striking new kitchen island built from pine planks in a "distressed" dark finish, creating a new focal point for the space; and to add back in a little touch of color, a new pendant lamp made from blue glass mason jars. Ironically, the new white kitchen looks much brighter and cheerier than the brightly colored original, and the new island makes it more functional as well.

Here's another shoestring kitchen makeover featured on Remodelista. This a tiny Brooklyn kitchen started out with decent bones—new appliances, granite counters, wood floors, and sturdy cabinets—but it lacked character. To bring it up to par with the rest of her 1920s-era apartment, homeowner Danielle Arceneaux painted the light wood cabinets white and added beadboard paneling to the island, giving it an instant vintage feel. A new subway-tile backsplash with dark grout, installed right over the old tiles, made the room look more streamlined, and an extra shelf installed above the upper cabinets added much-needed storage. She did all the work herself, turning to YouTube videos for guidance, and spent less than $300 on materials. You can read more details about the new shelf installation at One Kings Lane and the handmade feather-covered lampshades on Design Sponge.

Finally, here's yet another kitchen from This Old House. The before picture shows a dark, cramped space with generic wood cabinets and overpowering rust-orange walls. Instead of going the easy route and painting everything white, the homeowners brightened the space with white paint on the walls and upper cabinets, then added a pop of color with a sage-green paint on the lower ones. They also ditched the upper cabinet doors in favor of the now-ubiquitous open shelving. Beadboard wallpaper makes yet another appearance in this kitchen makeover, serving as an inexpensive backsplash. To set the dining area apart from the kitchen, they painted one accent wall in a light blue, refinished their dining table with a dark top and white legs, and added a new mirror and a pair of vintage cabinets. Finishing touches included new cabinet hardware, molding, and light fixtures. The finished room now looks much lighter and more open, and all for only $564 total.

That's it for this installment of Budget Decor. Watch this space for more exciting room remodels in the future—possibly even some in our very own house, as we're preparing to tackle a new project in the office that could well end up triggering a reexamination of the entire room. Stay tuned for details!

Best Budget Decor, part 4

And now it's time for another exciting episode of everybody's favorite blog topic, Best Budget Decor! In my previous budget decor posts (from January, February, and July), I've shared bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen refreshes on budgets ranging from under $100 to around $1,000. This time, I'm changing things up by covering redesigns of some new spaces, including two laundry rooms and a basement.

But first, let's start out with something familiar: a basic bedroom redo. The homeowner, Carrie, was depressed about her blah bedroom with its "pee yellow" walls, so her five closest friends decided to team up and redecorate it as a surprise birthday gift. She conveniently went out of town just before her birthday, giving the "flash mob" of redecorators just one week to knock out the project. They started by perusing Carrie's Pinterest boards to get a sense of her style, then got to work repainting the walls, rearranging the furniture, and jointly sewing a new pintuck duvet cover for the bed. (No, I didn't know there was such a thing either until I saw the pictures, but it looks quite nice, and the blogger has thoughtfully provided a link to a complete DIY tutorial on the project, which cost them about $23 all told. Not too shabby considering that similar bedding goes for over $100 at West Elm.) They kept most of the existing furniture, but brought in a $25 orange armchair from Craigslist to provide a pop of color, along with some new curtains and an assortment of throw pillows. They also "shopped [Carrie's] bookcases" to find some colorful accessories to pull the room together. They spent $247 all told, and Carrie reports on her own blog that she was delighted with the result. (In fact, I think this project needs a tagline, like a movie: "One room. Five friends. Seven days. Two hundred and fifty dollars. One amazing transformation.")

The next three projects are all winners in the "Best Budget Redo Before and Afters 2014" at This Old House. The article doesn't give exact dollar costs for these projects, but it groups them into broad budget categories. First, in the $100-to-$500 category, we have this bathroom remodel, completed on a timeline of "less than a year." The homeowners "gutted" the room, fixtures, flooring, and all, and redid it in a style more fitting for their 90-year-old home. To stay within their small budget, they "shopped at yard sales, thrift stores, antiques shops, free piles, and our favorite store, the ReUse Center," spending only $55 on the clawfoot tub, toilet, sink, wall cabinet, and light fixture. They also did all the work themselves, from tiling the walls and floor to re-plumbing to accommodate their new vintage fixtures. The result: a fresh, crisp, black-and-white room perfectly in keeping with the home's prewar roots.

An even more dramatic bathroom remodel appears in the $500-to-$1,000 category. Unlike the first one, it's only a half bath, which makes it a little bit less impressive in terms of bang for the buck, but it certainly is a remarkable metamorphosis. The homeowners stripped the room down to bare walls and added all-new tile, a feature wall covered in distressed pine, and a fabulous DIY vanity that they made from an antique dresser with a marble top. They topped this "under $200" find with a "hammered copper miner's pan sink" and faucet that they scored for "less than half of retail." Other budget-priced materials included clearance tile and an overstock mirror. The finished space is a real statement room with a dramatic, eclectic vibe, blending the rustic look of the pine-plank wall with the traditional style of the marble-topped vanity.

The third entry from This Old House is a basement remodel. In under a year, and on a budget of under $500, the homeowner converted this dingy and dilapidated basement into a bright, open studio for his budding woodworking business (with a corner set aside for his young daughter to work on her art projects, side by side with Dad). He tore out the old acoustic tile ceiling (installed by the previous homeowner, who used the space as a music room) and exposed the ceiling beams for an open, airy feel. He also patched the cracked concrete foundation, sealed it against leaks, and repaired the crumbling lath-and-plaster walls. A fresh coat of white paint—with one accent wall in a vivid orange—and a colorful rug complete the room's rebirth as a cheery space for creating art.

And while we're on the subject of unusual spaces for a room refresh, let's take a gander at this $157 laundry room refresh, done by Kelly, the blogger who documented the redo of Carrie's bedroom above. The space she started out with was definitely unpromising, complete with yellow vinyl flooring, popcorn ceilings, haphazard shelving, and a wallpaper border of laundry hanging on a line (just "in case we ever got confused" about which room it was, as Kelly put it). Right away, she and her husband stripped away the popcorn and slapped some paint on the walls, leaving the space tidy and functional, but completely neutral in appearance. Well, she has slammed that space from neutral into high gear now.

What's really impressive about this room redo is how much Kelly improved both style and function on a minuscule budget. First, she repainted all the walls a light, creamy shade, and then she added a repeating stenciled pattern across the whole length and breadth of the back wall, creating an eye-grabbing accent feature. She also boldly went where no DIYer had gone before by deciding to paint the dated vinyl floors in wide blue and white stripes. Having added more than a dash of style to this blah space, she then turned her attention to function, replacing the single wire shelf with a wall cabinet, centered on the back wall, and two open shelves to either side. The cabinet was a $20 yard-sale find that was originally a corner cabinet, but her handy husband cut it down to size, replaced the side, and built the shelves, tying everything together with a coat of crisp white paint. They rounded out their new storage with a marked-down wall-mounted drying rack. Then Kelly put the finishing touches on the room, with pictures on the walls, accessories on the shelves, and a phenomenal dodecahedron pendant light that her "brilliant husband" made from scratch for a mere $10, saving more than $400 over the cost of the Ralph Lauren piece that inspired it. (This light was such a hit with Kelly's readers that she started offering copies of it through her site—and sold out almost immediately.)

After seeing how gorgeous and functional Kelly's space turned out, I assumed that her remodel was simply the last word on budget laundry room renovation. However, it turns out that blogger Tasha at Designer Trapped had at least a word or two of her own to add. She achieved a transformation nearly as striking as Kelly's on an even more eye-popping budget: just $71. Admittedly, she didn't have to bring in any new pieces like Kelly's cabinet and drying rack, and she was fortunate enough to have lots of leftover materials (paint, curtains, a mirror, Ardex Feather Finish) that she could use to keep her costs down. Tasha painted just about everything in the room: the walls, the cabinets, and even, like Kelly, the vinyl floor. She also hung curtains, concealed plumbing with a "creatively placed" mirror, and created some original art for the space (a shadow box full of clothespins and a set of papier-mâché letters that spell out "FLUFF AND FOLD").

Her most remarkable feat, however, was covering the laminate countertop in Ardex Feather Finish, creating the look of a concrete counter without all the hassle and heft of pouring a new one. I'd previously seen this technique used by the Young House Love bloggers on their kitchen counters, and the results looked impressive enough that I wondered whether this might be the ideal choice for redoing my own laminate countertops, which have long been a source of conflict in my ecofrugal brain: I hated the ugly surface, but I also hated the idea of scrapping the perfectly usable base just to get rid of the ugly. Now that I've seen how well the Ardex worked out for Tasha (and seen her assurance that it's a "totally doable DIY job"), I feel more confident about the idea than ever. I also like the look of the Ardex finish: it's got that slightly imperfect, artisanal feel, which I think would be a good fit with our strong-grained wood cabinets.

See how much you can learn by reading DIY blogs? It's not wasting time, it's research!

Best budget decor, part 3

One of my favorite features on Blogger is the "stats" section, which lets me see not only how many hits my blog is getting overall, but also which particular posts have been the most popular. That's how I know that over the past month, my second post on budget decor has earned a remarkable number of hits; in addition to being the most-read post of the month, it's reached number nine on the all-time top ten list. (Click on "greatest hits" in the "labels" section to see the others.) Apparently, budget decor is a topic that readers just can't get enough of.

If you happen to be one of those readers who helped skyrocket this post to its current position, you're in luck, because I just happen to have collected several more interesting budget home makeovers to share with you. We'll start, as I did last time, with a budget bathroom redo that I found on a blog called Kruse's Workshop. I can't remember just how I first came across it (it wasn't on either Apartment Therapy or Young House Love, which are my two main sources for interesting room remodels), but it depicts what the blogger calls a "medium scale bathroom remodel" on a budget of $600—and a timeline of only two days. The family didn't move any walls or plumbing fixtures (that would probably have kicked it up to "large scale"), but they retiled the entire room, replacing old, moldy shower tile with floor-to-ceiling white subway tile and replacing the old vinyl floor with new tile as well. Like so many projects, this one grew in scale as it went along, since demoing out the old tile revealed that all the plaster behind it was also moldy and would have to go. But that turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because it gave them the opportunity to remodel the wall, building in a jumbo-sized niche to hold the lady of the house's extensive collection of bath products, which I think is definitely the bit player that steals the show in this remodel. As for the rest of the room, they kept the old tub, but replaced the plumbing fixtures, and kept the old vanity, but gave it a coat of sharp charcoal-grey paint. Topped off with new window treatments and accessories, the room looks like a brand-new bathroom for just a few Benjamins.

Moving on from bathrooms to kitchens, here are several that I came across at (where else) TheKitchn.com, a sub-site of Apartment Therapy. The first one is a quick spruce-up job in a rental in sunny Mexico. This one is noteworthy not because the space looks so incredible in the "after" pictures, but because of how much the tenant has managed to do with a meager budget of just $150. The "before" space is dark and drab, with beige walls, mismatched furniture, and a sink with exposed pipes. She brightened it with glossy white paint, colorful fabric (which hides the plumbing), and some floating shelves—a couple from Home Depot (I guess they have Home Depot in Mexico) and a DIY painted board in a cheerful, vivid blue. She also brought in a long, low table and some wall racks from IKEA (they don't have IKEA in Mexico, but she found them on eBay) to provide much-needed counter and storage space. The finished kitchen is still small, still plain, but it's small and bright and cheery rather than small and dull and depressing. (Reminds me a bit of my first apartment's kitchen, with its teeny-tiny block of countertop that I ended up covering in wood-grain contact paper to make it look more presentable, and its teeny-tiny little eating area into which I managed to squeeze an IKEA gateleg table that folded up against the wall. It was still kind of shabby, truth be told, but it was homey.)

The next kitchen redo is a much bigger room, but its budget is still quite petite at only $500. In the "before" pictures, everything is dark: dark wood cabinets, dark fixtures, dark stone counters, and dark grey paint on the walls. Without actually moving anything, the owners brightened the room from top to bottom, with a lighter paint color on the walls, a coat of crisp white paint on the cabinets (with dark hardware for contrast), and new butcher block countertops (once again, from IKEA) that they actually cut and installed themselves. The homeowner says these new countertops took up "nearly all" of her $500 budget, but they're her favorite part of the remodel. Personally, I think my favorite touches are the DIY pendant lamp, made from a craft-store basket, and the whimsical yardstick backsplash, which she came up with while roaming up and down the aisles of Lowe's looking for something she could afford to install with the dregs she had left in her budget. Necessity truly is the mother of invention! (You can see still more photos from this remodel on the homeowner's site, Ashley Ann Photography.)

TheKitchn.com bills the next remodel as a $500 budget as well, but a look at the more detailed post on the homeowner's site reveals that this isn't strictly true: she planned to do the whole room on a $500 budget, but her husband surprised her with the gift of a new fridge, so her final cost turned out to be $497 plus the cost of a nice new counter-depth side-by-side fridge. These aren't cheap—the ones reviewed by Consumer Reports start at around $1400—so the total cost of this redo was almost certainly over my $1,000 limit for a true budget remodel, but I just had to include it because it is such an AMAZING transformation. The "before" pictures are so utterly plain and drab and dingy, and the "after" ones look like you've stepped into the kitchen of a chic country inn...in Tuscany...in the 1930s. The homeowner painted absolutely everything in this room: the old metal cabinets, the old Formica counters, even the linoleum floor. And when I say painted, I don't mean she just slapped a fresh color on there; she created a faux aged-plaster look on the walls, she stenciled an elaborate design onto the floor, and she redid the counters with a color and faux finish that she made up all by herself. If I set out to do a project on this scale, it would probably take me years just to choose all those paint finishes, let alone execute them. I mean, I am in awe.

Now, to be fair, she didn't actually transform the entire room with just paint. In fact, she brought in a lot of pieces that she already owned, so they didn't count toward her $500 budget, some of which would cost well over $500 to buy. For instance, she replaced the perfectly decent, utilitarian gas range (in fact, from the pictures it looks like exactly the same one we have) with a magnificent vintage stove from the 1940s. To buy a piece like this, you'd probably have to scour antique sites and shell out a couple of grand for it. She also had a really cool old workbench that just happened to fit perfectly into an unused back corner (though she points out that if you don't have one of these lying around, you could always "tear off the counter top of your kitchen island and put a cool old wooden door on top of it, or an old chunky counter from a bar you find in a rehab thrift store or at a garage sale"). But what makes the room for me isn't these big pieces; it's the tiny touches she mocked up on a shoestring, like the fascinating window treatments made of old European grain sacks and the umbrellas that she hung as wall decorations because "I had them in my basement and I was too lazy to go hunt for something better."

What inspires me most of all about this remodel is the fact that she painted her countertops even though, like ours, they have those annoying metal strips on them to hold down the laminate. Every tutorial I'd ever seen on painting over laminate assumed that you were starting with a smooth, bare expanse of counter, so I figured that having those strips in the way meant painting the countertops wasn't an option for us. But if she could do it, who knows, maybe I could too. She says all she did was clean them well, sand them lightly, and then apply two coats of primer, two of paint, the faux finish, and multiple coats of water-based poly. That's not too different from what I did on my bathroom vanity, so...why not? True, I had hoped to get rid of those metal strips because they always seem to trap dirt, but perhaps with a darker color on the counters that wouldn't matter so much.

If you still think it's cheating to include a kitchen redo that didn't really come in under $1,000, then perhaps I can make it up to you by wrapping up this edition with the most absolutely bare-bones budget I've ever seen for any room redo, anywhere. This homeowner, featured in Sunset magazine, perked up her entire kitchen using nothing but paint for a mere $30. No, not $300: $30, three-zero. When most kitchen remodels featured on TV and in magazines involve budgets of five figures or even more, this person redid her kitchen with two. Admittedly, all she really did was change the colors, but the pictures accompanying the article show what a big difference a simple change like this can really make. The space she started with was dark and dated, sporting a brown-on-brown color scheme; the redesigned space, with its pale yellow cabinets and bright blue appliances, looks cheery and whimsical. The article mentions that she also transformed a wall cabinet by removing some doors and "exposing the handsome beadboard paneling," and even turned one of these removed doors into a new table—but there aren't any before-and-after pics of this part of the room, so it's hard to evaluate the impact of this part of the redo. But even the bit that you can see is a pretty remarkable transformation for a mere 30 smackers. Just goes to show how much you can do by replacing money with imagination.

Best Budget Decor, Part 2

It's been about a month since I published my "best budget decor" post, featuring all the best room makeovers I'd seen online on a true shoestring budget—about $200 for a bedroom, up to $300 for a bathroom, and under $1,000 for a kitchen. Since then, I've updated the post twice as I came across new stories about budget renovations that I hadn't seen before. Then, today, I came across a story on the "This Old House" website about its "Top 19 Budget Reader Remodels." One of the featured remodels had already appeared in my original budget decor post, and most of the others didn't meet my strict budget criteria, but there were three kitchen renos that did meet my guidelines, and I thought "Well, this is getting to be a bit much." So rather than continue to tack new stories onto my original post (where they might not be seen by regular readers who have read that post already), I'm adding a second post to cover all the extra stories that weren't in the first one. (If I continue to come across new budget decor stories, I'll save them up until I have enough for Part 3.)

So, since I only found one additional bathroom redo, I'll start with that one. Although I'd already covered several powder room renovations in my original post, I thought this one was worthy of inclusion because it was done on an amazing budget of $100 (and she didn't even spend all of it). To stay within this minuscule budget, the homeowner used lots of creative tricks:

• using beadboard wallpaper to give the look of paneling on a budget
• building a hanging shelf out of wood scavenged from shipping pallets
• modifying her existing light fixture with Ball jars
• covering a dollar-store trash can with rope
• making a simple drop valance out of sale-priced fabric (with a dowel as a curtain rod)
• framing leftover fabric for some cheap art and using it to decorate a glass food jar for a soap dispenser
• and, of course, using what she already had on hand, like leftover paint and accessories from other rooms

All in all, a very impressive result on a still more impressive budget. Man, my $900 bathroom refresh seems so unimpressive now.

Fortunately, I don't have to feel inferior with regard to my kitchen, since I've never actually "redone" it yet. So I still have a chance to match the performance of budget kitchen redesigns like the one that was featured in last month's issue of Better Homes and Gardens. Blogger Shavonda Gardner and her wife took their kitchen from generic to unique by painting the walls, painting the cabinets, converting two of them to open shelving, adding hardware to the others, installing a tile backsplash, and stenciling the floor (!). All told, Shavonda estimates they spent "less than $700" for this redesign. (The editors refer to it as a "refresh," which seems like just the word I'd been looking for to characterize a room redo that's somewhere in between redecorating and remodeling.) Gardner provides more details on her blog, sharing some of the strategies that helped keep their costs down and confessing that the whole project took them over a year. (Nice to know that we're not the only ones who prefer the "cheap and good" approach to home improvement.) This blog entry doesn't show the stenciled floor, but some of the pictures on her home tour do, and she discusses the process in two entries (this one and this one) from last November.

This Old House outlines a kitchen makeover with a still more impressive budget in "A Farmhouse Kitchen Redo for $564." The "before" pictures show reasonably good bones—sturdy cabinets, decent counters and appliances—but the cabinets have that generic builder-grade look and the walls are a very dark, intimidating orange. The owner's "cosmetic tweaks" included a paint job on both walls and cabinets, including "lightly distressing" the cabinet edges, and whitewashing the table's legs to give it a country look. They also added a couple of new storage cupboards in the eating nook and removed the doors from upper cabinets to convert them to the open shelving that everyone seems to love these days. (I know it's supposed to make a kitchen look open and airy, but what are you supposed to do if you don't have the kind of perfectly matched, perfectly organized dishes that you want to keep on display all the time?) Finishing touches included new hardware, molding on the tops of cabinets, new pendant lights, and a wallpaper backsplash. Nothing about the configuration of the room was changed at all, but the feel of it is much more open and modern.

An even more dramatic transformation appears in "The New $967 Kitchen." The "before" kitchen is completely devoid of personality, with its stock cabinets, white laminate counters, and beige vinyl flooring. The owner actually did move a couple of fixtures in this remodel, switching the locations of the sink and dishwasher so that the sink would be under the window—and so that the doors of the oven and dishwasher would no longer interfere with each other. The biggest transformation, however, was made with color. The oak cabinets were refinished in a darker shade and outfitted with oversized stainless-steel hardware; a mosaic-tile backsplash was added in multiple shades of green; new counters edged in stainless steel added a modern look. The homeowners also tucked a couple of shelves under the breakfast bar to store the microwave and other appliances, freeing up much-needed counter space. The homeowners are still saving up for new appliances, but even with their old ones, the kitchen now looks colorful and contemporary rather than beige-on-beige.

The final kitchen remodel, done on a $935 budget, is interesting because the homeowners took a different approach from most: rather than trying to remove "dated" features, like scalloped trim on the upper cabinets, they aimed to "highlight" them with fresh paint and the ubiquitous open shelving. The original kitchen was an undifferentiated white, from cabinets to vinyl flooring; the owners spent the better part of three months scraping up the multiple layers of vinyl to expose and refinish the hardwood underneath. They removed the upper cabinet doors, replaced the lower ones with a dark fabric, and painted the walls a bright robin's-egg blue. The now-exposed interiors of the upper cabinets got a color makeover as well, with patterned contact paper, and the countertops were refinished in black. They also added new hardware and a new faucet, and a butcher-block island from IKEA added more counter space. (The article lists the cost as less than $50, but the price of the same island at the IKEA website is now $400, so the homeowners must have scored a fantastic deal. Unfortunately, the article doesn't explain how they pulled this particular rabbit out of the hat.)

All this has got me thinking about whether it might be possible to spruce up our kitchen on a similarly slim budget. We don't want to make any big changes, but I would like to replace the hideous old laminate counters with their metal edging that seems specially designed to trap dirt. When I first started thinking about this two years ago, my plan was to re-laminate them, but Brian's parents talked him out of it, saying that this is a huge hassle of a job that's almost impossible to do neatly. However, when I priced out new laminate countertops using the estimator tool at HomeDepot.com, I found that replacing them completely would cost nearly $700 (including installation). They wouldn't break the bank, but they wouldn't win us any budget-remodeling prizes, either. So now I'm wondering whether we should be considering other DIY options. Installing ceramic tile right over the existing laminate would avoid the problem of creating waste by ripping out the old counters, but according to this article, it would probably cost more than the new laminate counters. Creating a new concrete counter, the latest trendy option, would be equally expensive and take even longer. And the cheapest option, painting over the whole thing with a stone-look paint, wouldn't work on our old-fashioned counters because of the stupid metal strips. So a true budget remodel—even a cosmetic one—may be out of our reach. Unless there's some solution I'm overlooking....

Best Budget Decor

Since we got access to basic cable service at home, Brian and I have started making a habit of clicking over to HGTV when we have a spare hour or half hour before bed. As I've noted before, my favorite shows are the decorating and remodeling ones, but I often find it frustrating how cavalier they are about budget considerations. Often they don't even mention a budget at all, and even when they do, they seldom talk at all about what they plan to do to stay within it. Instead, in their quest to show a dramatic transformation, they tend to take the attitude, "When in doubt, tear it out," tossing aside old furnishings, appliances, and fixtures without even stopping to consider whether they could still be useful (either in that room or somewhere else). This isn't just costly, it's wasteful.

My favorite room makeovers are the ones that involve a big change on a small budget. To achieve this, the designers usually have to take a more ecofrugal approach; instead of getting rid of everything, they have to start by looking at what they already have and considering how to put it to the best possible use. Unfortunately, makeovers like this seldom show up on HGTV. The few shows that specialize in this kind of design—such as "Designed to Sell," "Design on a Dime," and my personal favorite, "Wasted Spaces"—don't tend to stay on the air very long, possibly because it's harder to get sponsors for a show that doesn't recommend buying lots of new stuff.

On the Web, however, it's a different story. Since a website has little overhead, and since people are always happy to talk about their own lives, there's no shortage of homeowners willing to share their own before-and-after pictures of rooms that they've made over, often on a truly impressive budget. Over the past few years, I've made a collection of a few of my favorites. All of these rooms were redone on true shoestring budgets—no more than a few hundred bucks—and all of them made a dramatic difference with a small outlay.

Tackling them on a room-by-room basis, let's start with the bedroom makeovers. Here's one that was featured as a "Reader Redesign" on Young House Love, my personal favorite DIY blog. This mom started with a complete blank slate of a room and transformed it into a fantastic bedroom for her two-year-old son. From the star-and-cloud cutouts on the walls to the artwork cut from the pages of a Shel Silverstein book, the whole room is alive with imagination. Although the blog itself doesn't mention the budget, the post at YHL says the homeowner estimates it as "under $200" for everything from furniture to art.

Another great kids' bedroom makeover was done by the YHL bloggers themselves, when they redid their 8-year-old niece Olivia's room. For $200 exactly, they turned her uninspired space into a girly haven with furniture, accessories, and color. On this meager budget, they brought in a desk, chair, and dresser, added a padded headboard to the bed, and punched up the art and accessories. My favorite features are the heart-themed bedspread and the collection of "Olivia" books displayed on the shelf behind the bed. A year later, they went back and did Olivia's bathroom as well, turning it from blah to bling with paint and accessories on an even more astonishing budget of just $82.58—the cheapest makeover in my whole collection.

The YHL bloggers have several other cheap bathroom makeovers under their belts as well. Both the master bath and the powder room in their new house have undergone what they call "Phase One" renovations, which basically means cleaning them up to the point that they can live with them while they save up for a full-scale remodel down the road. In the powder room, they significantly brightened up the room for an estimated $110 without replacing any of the fixtures by changing up a few key details (such as the dated wallpaper, mirror, faucet, and artwork). The master bath is split into two sections, a "sink nook" open to the bedroom and the bathroom proper, with toilet and shower, behind closed doors. Eventually they want to turn this all into one enclosed space, but their just-for-now redo in the sink nook has made a dramatic difference on a $200 budget. They painted the walls, replaced the old mirror, and made some modifications to the vanity, but the biggest change was to rip out the old carpet and paint a stenciled design onto the subfloor. But their most impressive bathroom job of all was the powder room they redid for John's grandmother, effecting a complete floor-to-ceiling transformation—floors, walls, cabinets, window treatments, and accessories—for a mere $169.50.

All of these bathroom remodels, however, were on half baths (or, in one case, just half of a bath). The most impressive full bath redo I've seen is this one, from the DIY/design blog "In My Own Style." Thinking there might be a move in her family's future, this cash-strapped blogger decided to update her bathroom on a shoestring budget to make it more appealing to buyers. And boy, is it more appealing! This room is almost unrecognizable as the builder-basic space she started with. She added board-and-batten walls, applied decorative molding to the bathtub, framed out two big mirrors, created a bold window treatment, added new cabinet hardware, and even changed the color of the floor tile—all for a mind-boggling $265. This woman is an absolute DIY goddess.

You may notice that up until now we've focused on bedrooms and baths, while ignoring the big DIY elephant in most homes, the kitchen. With so many big pieces that often need replacement (cabinets, appliances, floors), kitchen makeovers tend to run to big money; Better Homes and Gardens estimates that even a "minor redo" generally costs around $5,000, and an "upscale overhaul" can cost $75,000 or more. And yet this amazing couple in Milton, MA, actually redid their entire kitchen for a mere $645, making the subtle shift from "dated" to "vintage" by undoing an unfortunate 1970s makeover and restoring the kitchen to its 1920s feel. The key to their low-budget transformation was that they didn't move any walls or appliances, instead revamping the entire space with paint and a few key accessories: new light fixtures, a faucet, crown molding for the cabinets, peel-and-stick tiles for the floor, and an amazing slate-tile backsplash that this pair of handymen installed from scratch. My sister's reaction, when our mom sent us the link to the article, was, "I hate these people," but personally, I'd be more inclined to say I stand in awe of them.

As for myself, I can't honestly boast of any room remodels that come close to this level of DIY wizardry. I'm happy with the way our downstairs room and downstairs bath came out, but since we spent around a thousand dollars on each one (plus about $640 for the electrical work we had done professionally), I can't claim I'm anywhere near the level of these true masters yet. I can only continue to watch and learn in hope that one day I may have the skill to turn an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan without having to buy it all new feathers.