Decorating on a Budget Is Top Priority for Many Renters

RISMEDIA – A recent survey conducted by Apartments.com indicates interior design and home decor is a hot topic for renters. According to the survey, ninety percent of renters will decorate when moving to a new apartment; of these renters, eighty-one percent will decorate within the first three months of their move.

The biggest decorating challenge facing thirty-eight percent of survey respondents is staying within a budget. Other renter decorating challenges include: not having enough space (23%), need help with organization (12%) and unsure of what colors to use (12%).

The Apartments.com survey found that the majority of renters, 65%, plan to spend $500 or less on their decorating budget while 18% of respondents will spend between $500 and $1000.

But decorating does not have to break the bank, as Eva the Shopping Diva, shopping expert and blogger from ShopLocal, gives this shopping advice for renters decorating on a budget:

- First try a small yet important room, like the bathroom. Simply hanging a new shower curtain with a gorgeous pattern can really change the look of the room. Add a great bath mat that compliments the pattern and a new look is born.

- Re-covering old dining room chairs or a worn-out ottoman are easy ways to subtly change the style of a room. Select a fabulous fabric and use a staple gun to give old furniture a new life.

- Wall decals are a snap to apply and if you get tired of them you can easily peel them off. You can get very creative with this great alternative to wallpaper.

For more information, visit http://living.apartments.com and/or http://www.shoplocal.com.

Source

Chic Junk

It’s Not Junk: It’s Chic
By Bonnie Britton
Monday, March 19, 2007

Repurposing for your home can mean anything from thinking of a new way to use a piece of furniture to turning junk into imaginative furniture and decor. It’s a way of life for some.

It’s a way of life for some.

Steve and Jim Kelley star in the popular HGTV show “Junk Brothers.” Taking a tired, burned-out electric stove and tricking it out for use as an outdoor grill is just one of their junk-to-die-for projects.

“There’s stuff we do on the show that’s over the top,” Jim says. “But there are parts of what we do that can be applied to everyday things.”

Sue Whitney and Ki Nassauer, editors-at-large and columnists for Country Home and JunkMarket Style magazines, are goddesses in the world of turning garage sale finds and trash into treasures.

“We really like the green aspect about recycling and reusing rather than putting it in a landfill,” says Whitney. “People with $3 million houses are (repurposing).”

So are interior designers. Annarie Cox of Annarie Cox Interior Design in Indianapolis moved to a new home and didn’t want to get rid of some cherished pieces.

So she removed the upholstered back portion from a mahogany ottoman and placed an unused piece of black marble on it for a top. She and husband Howard hung a gold-leaf pier mirror over it with the bottom resting on the base.

“Use and reuse your treasures throughout life for real pleasure and great joy,” says Cox.

TV’s “Junk Brothers” use their treasures to help others. They got their start in a family business, restoring fine antiques in Ottawa.

Now they scour neighborhoods for junk that’s been set out as trash, spirit it away in the night, and return it on the eve of the next trash day, repurposed.

That takes imagination, says Steve. “By brainstorming and bouncing ideas and a little trial and error, you never know what you’re going to get.”

Whitney and Ki Nassauer’s book, “Decorating JunkMarket Style,” and magazine are proof that castoffs can be turned into decorating items and furniture with cachet. In 2000, they started JunkMarket, a retail business, and now appear on HGTV’s “Country Style.”

They met as hockey moms in Minnesota and discovered a mutual passion for the throwaways at flea markets; soon they found themselves traveling the country looking for items they could transform.

Whitney says her children used to make fun of her, but now they understand her passion for making a house look great without spending much money.

The magazine and book are filled with how-to projects. Iron vents and woodblocks become a decorative ladder shelf. Mechanical games, predecessors of modern pinball machines, look great on walls as art. Vintage faucet handles mounted on factory thread holders hold fresh laundry. An upside-down birdcage easily transforms into a planter filled with cocoa matting.

Whitney estimates that over the years they have repurposed “thousands” of items, and jokes that she does it even in her sleep.

A 1930s truck door proved a challenge she couldn’t work out, though.

It was too heavy. She wanted to turn it into a case with a TV behind it. “I just had to say OK, can’t do it.”

A round grate that used to surround a stove vent is transformed into a candle-holder with the addition of a hurricane glass.

REPURPOSING TIPS

Got junk? Here’s some advice for repurposing household items.

From Jim Kelley and Steve Kelley, the Junk Brothers:

Have fun with it.

Ask questions.

Stay within your skill set.

Make sure the piece is functional when you’re finished.

From Sue Whitney, half of the original JunkMasters:

What stops most people is lack of confidence. Style and design is about your inner person. Start small. Take a glass lampshade from the 1930s, turn it over, put it on a base and make a fruit bowl.

If you look at something, forget about what it was and think about what it can be. As soon as you say, “This is not a steering wheel,” it’s a lazy Susan.

Old wire collapsible laundry baskets are great because you can use them to hold towels or kids’ toys. Slap a piece of glass on them and use them as a side table.

Watch for vintage fabrics. With ’60s or ’70s fabrics, stick to less bright colors and they’ll become more timeless.

If you’re going to make something from a drapery panel, buy one that’s soiled or with a bad spot. You’ll pay less and it still will serve your purpose.

Source

Cristina @ Kohl’s

Blending Latino cultures
Cristina Saralegui kicks off collection
By VIKKI ORTIZ
March 10, 2007

In between the demands of her popular Latin talk-show, monthly magazine and daily radio program, Cristina Saralegui makes time for her other passion: decorating her home.

Saralegui, who has 100 million viewers worldwide and is considered Univision’s Oprah, loves the process of filling rooms with eclectic furniture and decor. She has furnished her 10,000 square-foot Miami dwelling with influences from her hometown of Havana, colonial Spanish times and the Mediterranean.

And although Saralegui has no formal training in interior design, she immerses herself in history books that explain cultures, eras and styles as part of her decorating process.

“The research part kills me – I love it,” Saralegui said in a recent interview.

This month, Saralegui’s home décor ideas become available to Milwaukee-area home decorators – and those around the country – with the launch of the Casa Cristina Collection at Kohl’s Department Stores. The collection features bedsheet sets, bath towels and table linens, and ranging in price from $7.99 to $269.99.

She shared some of her thoughts on decorating and on introducing a home collection under her namesake with the Journal Sentinel.

• On defining her signature style: Saralegui doesn’t like to confine herself to one style, but rather enjoys pulling influences from all Spanish-speaking countries. When picking panelists for her program, “The Cristina Show” – she flies in panelists from Spain, Chile or anywhere in Latin America. She likes to use the same approach when picking influences for her home décor.

“What we have basically done with the show is what we have translated in what we’re doing with home products. The show concentrates on the common denominator of the 23 countries where Hispanics are from,” she says.

• On how to decorate a home on a limited budget: “The most important thing is quality,” says Saralegui, who noted that in her culture, people buy furniture built to last for generations. When a family member goes to buy a piece of furniture, the mom, the grandma go along to ensure it’s good quality.

Saralegui says she lived by that rule when she furnished her home decades ago, and was proud when her daughter got married and took her bed to her first home.

• On the time you should allow yourself to decorate: “You do like a bird. You nest,” she says. “It’s an ongoing process of self-realization. It’s a way to see how you’re maturing as a human being.

“As you grow, your house grows with you. . . . it’s really important that you don’t think of it as a project or as a job. You think of it as something that you love and you enjoy.”

• On design elements she has used in her own home: Saralegui has one room in her house she calls her “Florida Room,” which is enclosed in glass and features an enclosed garden for which the temperature is regulated. The rest of the house is also tropical with a lot of greens and orchids.

Her living room furniture is beige – the type of pieces that worked “when my kids were little they could go in with tennis shoes.” She likes woods and nubbiness in materials. And one wall is covered with masks, which she collects from various countries.

Saralegui collects antique crosses, which her fans have given her through the years. But she also likes to mix all the various eclectic pieces together.

Her husband is into meditation, so she bought him an antique altar and Buddha statue.

• On the role of color and patterns in her designs: Saralegui prefers colors related to terra cottas, mosaics, oaks and wines. She also likes different stripe patterns. She discourages people from reverting to stereotypes when considering a Hispanic influence in their home. “We are not only about chili peppers and flamingos,” she said.

• On why she chose to partner with Kohl’s for her home collection: Saralegui, who also has her own line of furniture, mattresses and lighting, wanted to work with a company that would allow strong input in the designs that would be carrying her name.

“They’re growing very fast,” she says. “This will give us a way to expand our brand.”

Source

Drapes On The Cheap

Drapes on the cheap, if you can’t sew
Saturday, February 3, 2007

Despite appearances, I am no Suzy Homemaker. For one, I don’t sew. My lowest grade in school was in 8th-grade sewing class. I made a crooked orange dress. All the buttons fell off after the first washing. Worse, I had to model the monstrosity in a school fashion show. I’m still in therapy.

My home-economics teacher, Mrs. Lasansky, told me she was happy I was doing well in English, and counseled me to pursue any career but homemaking. All through high school and college, I hemmed my pants with masking tape, which was not the only reason my mother called me a disgrace to the family. But all of this was good training for my guest-room drapes.

The story of my guest-room drapes is a tale of what happens when a cheap, determined woman who can’t sew finds a fire sale and a glue gun.

No layers of froufrou

The guest room’s large window had wood blinds, for privacy and light control, but needed drapes to look finished. A friend recently told me that her interior designer gave her a bid for living room, dining room and family room drapes. The bid was $27,000. “Is that too much?” she asked me. Hack, gasp, wheeze. Let’s see, do I want drapes or a Hawaiian vacation?

I was determined to dress the guest-room window for next-to-no-money. I knew the fabric I wanted: the same coffee-brown toile as the room’s duvet cover. And I knew the style: simple, no layers of froufrou. These were bedroom drapes, not a baptismal gown.

When I saw that the catalog company from which I’d ordered the duvet cover had put the discontinued matching sheets on fire sale for $29.99, I snapped up two full sets. I’d need two top sheets, one for each side panel. (Sheets, with four finished edges, can be your best friend if you don’t sew.)

At the Great Indoors, I found iron rods and rings that attached with clips. No sewing required! I got clips styled like black iron leaves, two tie backs, and brackets that would extend the rod more than four inches from the wall to clear the header of my wood blinds.

Back home, I hung the hardware myself, which made my family nervous. If I ever want complete solitude, all I have to do is walk through the house with a hammer and ladder. My husband gets an urgent business call. The kids go to their rooms and turn up their music, and the dogs dive under a bed.

Tacky but victorious

Next, I clipped on the drapery rings, hung the drapes and brought my family out of hiding to admire my handiwork. “Looks like you hung sheets,” they said. In the honest light of day, the sun showed through reminding you of a cheap woman wearing a thin dress and no slip. They needed to be lined. Crestfallen, I worried that I might have to hire a seamstress.

But desperation spawned another idea: At a local bedding outlet, I bought two ivory full-size flat sheets. I glue-gunned them to the patterned sheets using nickel-sized dots of glue every six to eight inches. I put a few dots of glue down the sides of each panel. On the window again, the lining gave the drapes the body and opacity they needed to look like the high-quality drapes they’re not. Total cost: $161.

Making drapes with a glue gun might seem tacky, like hemming with masking tape, but I bet even Mrs. Lasansky would be proud if she could see these drapes.

If you can sew, move on to Dear Abby now. But if you can’t sew and want to make an inexpensive window treatment, here’s a recipe for Marni’s Glue-Gun Drapes:

The panels: Find sheets you like, twin or full, depending on how wide you want the panels. I like double-gathered, so if you want to cover 40 inches of wall, get full sheets, which are about 80 inches wide.

The lining: Get two flat ivory sheets and glue the backs of the ivory sheets to the back of the main sheets. To avoid puckering, use dots of glue, not stripes, and don’t glue the bottom edges. If you make a mistake, you can easily pull the sheets apart. The look is truly seamless.

The hardware: Buy an adjustable rod, brackets, clip-on rings, and tie-backs (optional). Measure and mark with a pencil where screws will go. If drills make you nervous, tap a nail (use one slimmer than the screw) in the wall where you want screws, then twist the screw in. Hang your rods, and attach drapes with clip-on rings.

If you want to get fancy, glue on some fun trim. Then – brag!

Marni Jameson is a nationally syndicated columnist. Contact her via www.marnijameson .com.

COST

Drapes (two sets of sheets) $60
Extendable iron curtain rod $40
Brackets $20; clip rings $15; tie backs $14 $49
Two ivory flat sheets $12
Total $161

Source

Trash to Treasure

Designers Turn Garage-Sale Finds Into Gems
By BONNIE BRITTON
February 02, 2007

Repurposing your home can mean anything from thinking of a new way to use a piece of furniture to turning junk into imaginative furniture and decor.

It’s a way of life for some.

Steve and Jim Kelley star in the popular HGTV show Junk Brothers. Taking a tired, burned-out electric stove and tricking it out for use as an outdoor grill is just one of their junk-to-die-for projects.

“There’s stuff we do on the show that’s over the top,” Jim says. “But there are parts of what we do that can be applied to everyday things.”

Sue Whitney and Ki Nassauer, editors-at-large and columnists for Country Home and JunkMarket Style magazines, are goddesses in the world of turning garage sale finds and trash into treasures.

“We really like the green aspect about recycling and re-using rather than putting it in a landfill,” says Whitney. “People with $3-million houses are (repurposing).”

So are interior designers. Annarie Cox of Annarie Cox Interior Design in Indianapolis moved to a new home and didn’t want to get rid of some cherished pieces. So she removed the upholstered back portion from a mahogany ottoman and placed an unused piece of black marble on it for a top. She and husband, Howard, hung a gold leaf pier mirror over it with the bottom resting on the base.

“Use and re-use your treasures throughout life for real pleasure and great joy,” says Cox.

TV’s Junk Brothers use their treasures to help others. They got their start in a family business, restoring fine antiques in Ottawa. Now they scour neighborhoods for junk that’s been set out as trash, spirit it away in the night, and return it on the eve of the next trash day, repurposed.

That takes imagination, says Steve. “By brainstorming and bouncing ideas and a little trial and error, you never know what you’re going to get.”

Whitney and Ki Nassauer’s book, Decorating JunkMarket Style, and magazine are proof that castoffs can be turned into decorating items and furniture with cachet. In 2000, they started JunkMarket, a retail business, and now appear on HGTV’s Country Style.

They met as hockey moms in Minnesota and discovered a mutual passion for the throwaways at flea markets; soon they found themselves traveling the country for items they could transform.

Whitney says her children used to make fun of her, but now they understand her passion for making a house look great without spending much money.

The magazine and book are filled with how-to projects. Iron vents and wood blocks become a decorative ladder shelf. Mechanical games, predecessors of modern pinball machines, look great on walls as art. Vintage faucet handles mounted on factory thread holders hold fresh laundry. An upside-down birdcage easily transforms into a planter filled with cocoa matting.

Whitney estimates that over the years they have repurposed “thousands” of items, and jokes that she does it even in her sleep. A 1930s truck door proved a challenge she couldn’t work out, though. It was too heavy. She wanted to turn it into a case with a TV behind it.

“I just had to say OK, can’t do it.”

Source