Accessorizing A Teen Room On A Budget

All of the important elements for Justice's room are complete. The furniture, bedding and curtains are ready and waiting. From the start I've been picking up inexpensive accessories for her room as I've been out and about. She already had some of her own. Plus an impressive menagerie of stuffed monkeys. So I didn't want to clutter things up too much.

To start with I went shopping through my late grandmother's garage. It's where nearly the entire family throws their cast offs. I found a pretty basket with flowers that matches our color palette. Also, a little wooden shelf.

Free arrangement

Free shelf

One day Justice and I took a trip to The Dollar Tree for inspiration. I love looking around there, keeping an open mind and then repurposing things I find. We got a cute silver look tray, three candle holders and three votive holders.

Pretty!

To hold odds and ends. Like make-up brushes, hair accessories, etc.

These will be used near her desk to hold tacks and clips

Another great source for cute things is the $1 section at Target. Where I found very cute office supplies and a little tin to use as a pencil holder. 


Girly office supplies

Magazine holders

Nana had a frame on hand that is all wood and unfinished. On painting day, I added it to the pile of things to be painted. Then later embellished it with some monkey buttons I found and a flower that Nana crocheted to go with the lamp shade. I also covered a button with one of the fabrics. Then finished it off with a picture of little Justice.

Inexpensive craft store frame

Painted and ready to embellish

What a cutie!

Money spent:
$7.00 at the dollar store
$10.00 at Target
$3.25 monkey buttons

Coming up soon is the completed room and final total. So exciting!



A Dresser Redo

Justice had  a hand-me-down dresser in her room. I think I mentioned (too many times to count) that we have a tiny budget. So replacing it was out. That means paint and lots of it. We started with this:

Before

Then we lightly sanded it to rough up the surface enough to hold the primer and paint. After sanding we gave it two good coats of primer, Kilz oil-based. We allowed the primer to dry for several days before painting.

Sanded and ready to paint
 

Already looking better with primer

On painting day, we filled up the paint sprayer with Olympic paint in Aqua Bay. I highly recommend the paint sprayer for a no streak finish. It's well worth the investment if you do a lot of painting. Paint goes much further with it too. I love this thing so much that it's difficult to get it out of my hands once the painting begins. It covers so nicely and so quickly.

Pop Pop gets a minute with the paint sprayer

The dresser was missing one knob. It consisted of four pull handles and originally eight knobs. It was decided that it would look more updated to change them out completely. We happened to have a set of oil rubbed bronze knobs in the workshop. Before we painted, the holes for the original hardware were filled in with pieces of dowel and wood filler. New holes were drilled in the center of each drawer. Fresh new updated look.

Gorgeous new dresser!

Money spent:

 $6.00 for the primer
The paint was purchased on a previous project.