Price my space

Nester girl is having a party!

One where we delve deep into our secrets and share what we spent on our spaces. And if the Nester is having a party, you know I gotta show up!

When putting together this post in my head, I realized just how many of the things in my space have already been blogged about before. Ya'll don't mind if I repeat myself? Nah? Good!

My toile side chairs were both found at a thrift store, a couple of months apart. I found one of them a few weeks back, and the other one this weekend. The first one was $2 and the second was $5. I recovered them with my living room curtains (mainly so I could get better ones). I do love the tan toile and I bought it about 5 years ago at Wal-Mart for $3.97 a yard. It's a cotton fabric, but has held up well over the years. Letting it have another life makes my heart happy -- I loved the fabric, but knew it really wasn't serving the windows very well. I used the cheapo $1 a can white paint to give them a base coat, then Krylon ivory satin as a top coat. So it breaks down to:

4 yards fabric - $11.91

Spray paint - $8.78

Chairs - $7

Total - $27.69

The small table in between was the only thing I inherited from my late Aunt Linda. It wasn't left to me as much as I loved the chippy paint and no one else wanted it. She loved all things old and chippy, too. We were kindred spirits like that. The book on the shelf was a gift from DH. It is a leather bound copy of all of the works of William Shakespeare. The basket holding some note cards was a quarter at a yard sale this weekend. So the total for the table was 25 cents.

Oh, and the Florentine magazine rack (filled with my favorite design books) was $1, half price at Goodwill. I asked a dealer how much it was worth, and she said about $100! I was floored!

Total for sitting area -- $28.94

The curtains were a big a-ha! moment for me while trying to figure out how to replace the ones I would take down to cover that new chair. After roaming around the fabric section at Walmart (it's our only fabric place in town) I found some cream and tan ticking, and I bought it for 5 yards for $19.85. It was a dreamy fabric that I loved, but knew it would cost wayyyy too much to entirely cover our big wall of windows. Then I looked in the sheets, hoping for a good clearance deal. I didn't find clearance, but I did find twin flat sheets for $3 each, which were amazingly good feeling fabric. Easy to wash, hangs well - $1.50 a yard! I got five of them, three in tan and two in cream to match the ticking. I also used 3 bags of clip on curtain rings to hang them on screws (another long story) under a valance I made 5 years ago for $10 when I made the other curtains. Total for curtains - $50.79 {which is much more than I actually thought it was.} The windows on either side were found in an alley and I simply taped black & white photos of my kiddos in them with Scotch tape and hung them with screws. {Free art!} The Eiffel Tower in the corner was another sweet gift from DH - he gives the bestest kind of gifts!

The couch is a whole 'nother story. Back in February, DH built one that I dreamt up, although our communication skills were not so dreamy. When you give a girl a cheap chair, then she's gonna need to play Scarlett and rip down the curtains to cover it. And when she takes down those curtains, she's gonna have to have new ones. And when she has a new chair and new curtains, she's gonna be at the end of the rope with the wayyyy tooooo biiiigggg couch. And she's gonna build herself one.

So that's what I did. I used pallets I got at work for the base, some scrap 4x4s left over from the porch we built for Father's Day and some 1x12s I had actually bought for another project. My building bill came to $15, not including the scraps I used or the leftover mistint paint I scrounged up to give it a creamy tan coat. I used a $10 canvas drop cloth for the cushions (which were from our old couch we got for free) and another $3 sheet to cover the $25 mattress we used on the first couch we built. Total for the new "Gina built" couch -- $53. The pillows on the couch have been made one at a time from leftover bits of fabric, including the bee pillow I made just last week.

At the end above the table is the mirror I redid with a yard sale find. Mirror -- $10, topper -- $1 = Total $11.

The ottoman (before pic above) has been changed a bit. I bought it originally for $5 at a yard sale about 2 months ago. I covered it in scraps at the time, but it never really fit right. This morning I realized the new sofa needed a better looking ottoman, so I recovered it with scraps from the curtains. I used the leftover ticking and the bottoms from the tan sheets to cover it much better ('cause I took my time!) It looks so much more serene than the yellow & brown did before. Since I already counted the fabric in the curtains, the total for this was $5.

The table at the end of the couch was a freebie from my favorite cousin, and the lamp was a clearance rack $5 find at TJ Maxx from years ago. The lamp shade was a 50% Goodwill find from yesterday for $1. My beautiful late granddaughter Emma graces a Wal-Mart frame that we picked up for $10. This is normally WAY more than I would give for a photo frame, but we bought it just days after she passed away so that she could always be with us, and she needed a gorgeous frame to match her gorgeous beauty. Table total - $16.

And that leaves the wall above the sofa for last. It was originally over the fireplace, but when we redid the roof earlier this spring, we discovered it needed more work than it was worth. So we capped it off and moved the sofa in front of it to bring in more room. It's odd position always made furniture placement so hard, but it looks sooooo much better when the sofa is in the corner in front of it. The big black frame was a $15 half-price Hobby Lobby find, the gold oval was a $1.50 Goodwill find and the key was dug up at a yard sale for $1 a few years back. Total for art above sofa - $17.50

So the total for my entire living room was $181.23. If you would have asked me before today, I would have told you I spent about half of that. Doing this has really made me realize what I spend. Thanks, Nester, for helping us all keep it real!

Also be sure to check out Rhoda & Between Naps on the Porch

And if you enjoy tutorials & projects, stop back by for Transformation Thursday here at the Shabby Chic Cottage.