The Modern Home Economist: Budget Home Decor

This week as I've been doing work on my own home, I thought it might be fun to not only show you my photos but share a few from vintage magazines.  Home is the essential ingredient in home economics and making home a cozy, inviting place to be while on a budget takes real skill.  That's why I intend to share so many things that would naturally be included in a home economics course.

This week I'd like to share with you our new porch.

John and I are big fans of having our coffee outdoors on summer mornings, picnics, etc.  Last year we stopped at a restaurant that had a big covered porch and we ate our lunch there.  It sparked a conversation about how much we enjoy eating al fresco, and how much we regretted the small floor space of our front porch.  We decided to think about what we could do to improve and enhance our outdoor spaces.  I started with the purchase of a nice iron table and four chairs from a flea market that went on our front patio.  We put up a big umbrella (Aldi's for $30) and that was a start but as summer came on it was just too sunny even with the umbrella.



This porch is the fruition of thinking and planning and saving and working hard to pay off the loan we took from ourselves to buy a car.  We determined what we thought we could pay for a porch and then called my carpenter brother to get a quote.  He was finally able to schedule the work these past two weeks.  He's still working on it.  Today he came and power washed the floor and siding.  He'll be painting the decking this week.    We are sure to get a lot of use from this porch.

I've been working on the living room and master bath this week.  I will share the photos of the finished areas of the living.  I bought slipcovers for my old chairs and ottoman.  We had  a big windfall one year and I bought the chair and ottoman from a home furnishings store. I paid a lot of money for those two pieces but I've enjoyed them. The fabric was looking very worn and frayed after 8 years hard use, though.  The wing back chair is a true quality piece of furniture made of hard wood and is very heavy.  I paid only $5 for it, purchasing it from a friend of mine.  It had passed around her family for years starting with her mom, a sister, a brother and then herself.  Now I've had it for 5 years and it's still going strong.  I covered it with some curtain panels I found and liked and then stripped that off this past year.  I finally found cotton duck slipcovers that I could afford through Overstock.com.

Sorry for the blurred photo of the chair/ottoman.  I thought I'd gotten a better shot.

Here's a few vintage magazine ideas that instruct how to wall paper and how to recover a lamp shade. Great instructions for a diy task that will work as well today as well as they did back then.

I found the next piece in a 1950's magazine.  Given the popularity of Chevron stripes today I thought this quilt pattern would be just as useful today as it was modern back then.  Just change up the colors and you've got a piece that fits perfectly in today's homes.

Here I show the new arrangement of items atop my bookcases.  This task was super easy and very inexpensive as in FREE since I used only items I had on hand.  You can see the old upholstery on the wing chair and that's not original.  The original was a red corduroy!

 

Are you working on any projects to make your home more comfortable, or to make it fit your family's needs and style better?