People vs. Pinterest

I don’t worry a lot about Pinterest. Sure, I’ll check it out if I’m looking for something particular like a cool birthday invite, or a hundred ways to reuse a toilet paper roll, but for the most part I’m unmoved by the whole thing. Yes, that is a nice looking coffee table made from a pallet and an old sled, but in the time it took you to make it, I’ve watched the entire Season 9 of Grey’s Anatomy, so there.

It takes a LOT to get me motivated.

Which is why I try to avoid my friend when possible. I mentioned that recently I went and spent some time with my friend, Mantamy, at her beach house. Her house is decorated beautifully but it turns out she MADE a lot of the cool stuff herself, like the headboards, and DID a lot of hard stuff herself, like staining the decks. Looking around at what she was able to do, I started thinking, what if?

Then I had lunch with my friend KitKat who has been taking beat-up houses and renovating them to resell, and she started talking about how much you could do with a little paint and some hard work and I was like, I can do ONE of those and I started thinking, what if?

Usually, I just lay down till the feeling passes, but this weekend my mom and her business partner, plus my sister and somewhere between 1 and 3 of her friends, are coming to town and I figured they’d probably like to be able to find the bed, so I decided to do some low-cost, low-effort work around the house.

I started with the living room. I’d purchased some curtains at a yard sale and while they are orange and match my couch, once I put them up, they looked more burgundy. So I:

• Bought two throw pillows from Walmart
• Dug out some burgundy spray paint out of the garage and painted my cross
• Dug out some flat-black spray paint out of the garage and repainted my coffee table

I like it.

Then I went to work on the spare bedroom. I’d bought some twin beds a few months ago, but nothing in the room matched. The beds were brown, the shelves were white, the bedspreads were meant for twin girls around 7, and Moon had gotten rid of her black armoire and we’d stuffed it in there, too. Work done:

• Bought .99 cent glossy spray paint and painted bookshelf
• Painted shelves on wall
• Painted beds
• Bought two bed-in-a-bag sets from Walmart
• Bought two pillows from Target
• Bought black curtains from Walmart
• Took 5 bags of clothes out of the room and to Goodwill

While it’s true that the sheets have a thread-count of about 12 and are so thin JD says if anyone toots in the bed it’ll probably rip a hole in them, it still looks a thousand times better than it did.

Moon’s room needed to be freshened up more than anything. Work done:

• Touch up the walls (paint in the garage, no need to buy!)
• Bought new curtains from Target
• Hung a new chandelier (gift from my friend, Fran)
• Furniture rearranged per Moon’s request

Moon’s room 3 days before the ladies are due.

Love the new chandelier! When my friend, Fran, called and said that her father-in-law was remodeling his 1960’s house and she was wondering if we wanted his light fixtures, we said YES. She sent us 4 and another one is coming soon. The only problem with them is that the painters decided to paint the ceiling BEFORE taking the fixtures down, so I had a bit of cleaning to do.

Which leads me to the kitchen. The biggest thing our kitchen needed was a new stove. I’m not one to rush out and spend money on appliances, but for the last year, our stove has had a problem. Mainly – it wouldn’t turn off. You have to unplug it to get it out of BAKE mode. I’d been looking online at the outlet stores but it was tough to find a black, gas range that was near us and not expensive. Last weekend I walked into Best Buy, and there was my stove! It was about $200 less than the outlet store. Score! Work done:

• Installed new stove
• Removed and painted the hood with .99 glossy, black paint
• Bought a quart of paint and retouched all of the cabinets
• Cleaned and hung new light fixture (Thanks, Fran!)

My favorite – the new, free, fixture!

The bathroom got a rug, two hand towels and some touch-up on the woodwork. The runner is from Target. It really ties the room together does it not? (Name that movie!)

My bedroom got nothing, but my bridge partner recently gave me her awesome comforter, so I’m happy with it and the only person who MIGHT sleep in there with me is Tania-the-Mad and she’ll have other things to worry about besides how decorated my room is. Like how I’m going to pay her back for all the times she wouldn’t let ME sleep with HER.

Now, all that’s left to do, is clean the whole house and wait for the gang to arrive. And if any of them start talking about DIY projects, I’m throwing them out on the street. OUT ON THE STREET.

I’m not even kidding. Thanks to Mantamy and KitKat, I can barely walk!