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Decorating a house on the cheap!
Floofy
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
The basic situation is this:
Me & the boyfriend moved into a nice smallish terrace house together last July- it's rented, so major changes such as repainting are out for the most part. It's clean and fairly modern (came fully furnished) but very very sparse still- I've gone from being crammed into a teensy little bedsit in a house with 6 other students to having a whole whopping house to play with.
So I was wondering if anyone had suggestions for cheap, effective, nice things that'll make it less of a box-for-living-in and more of a home. I'm in the UK if it helps. Main issues are the walls being horribly bare, but I've been living the student-poster-covered looks for a little too long and I'm trying to get a bit more grown-up looking. If that makes sense!
Cheers
Me & the boyfriend moved into a nice smallish terrace house together last July- it's rented, so major changes such as repainting are out for the most part. It's clean and fairly modern (came fully furnished) but very very sparse still- I've gone from being crammed into a teensy little bedsit in a house with 6 other students to having a whole whopping house to play with.
So I was wondering if anyone had suggestions for cheap, effective, nice things that'll make it less of a box-for-living-in and more of a home. I'm in the UK if it helps. Main issues are the walls being horribly bare, but I've been living the student-poster-covered looks for a little too long and I'm trying to get a bit more grown-up looking. If that makes sense!
Cheers
Floofy on
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The prints themselves I actually got at a convention in the US, signed by the artist, for three dollars each. I've also bought nice art before from country fairs in the UK. So I'd definitely recommend those for cheap art (I also grew friendly with one artist who ended up giving me a piece of original artwork for free!). Lastly, two of my uncles are artists (one professionally, one on the side) and they sell a lot of artwork by throwing open-house sales with other artists.
You can get anything from odd quirky endtables to odd quirky couches to odd quirky lamps to odd quirky paintings to odd quirky mugs to odd quir... you get the idea.....at places like these.
It's a cheap option, and buying things like this - that you feel are just right - will make the house a home. Much more so than some mass produced stuff from IKEA that sits around in a million other houses.
Anyway, have you considered a rug on the floor? I'm not going to suggest a Persian, there is also all sorts of rugs with a modern design. It can really bring some colour to a room.
Also, I haven't seen anyone suggest that program that allows you to blow up images to ridiculous sizes and print them A4 by A4, it's like the grown up alternative to posters nailed to the wall. I forgot the name of the program, though.
What kind of style do you like? Do you even know? If not, the HGTV website the Designer's Portfolio, which lets you look through pictures of a bunch of different kinds of rooms. It organizes them by style so you can figure out which one is right for you. For example, I tend to prefer Asian and Modern spaces.
Art.com is also a good place to start looking at different kinds of pictures to get a feel for what you really like. I've never bought from there so I can't vouch for it, but it really lets you dig around and find some cool stuff.
For paintings in progress, check out canvas and paints
"The power of the weirdness compels me."
Also obligatory Rasterbator link. Can make some pretty good big wall coverings with it.