The music room has been “all done” for a little bit now and we have been enjoying it. This room has been a storage closet for far too long.
In the spirit of inter-webs oversharing, I wanted to do a budget break-down to see what our little make-over did to the pocketbook.
Furniture ($145 subtotal)
Shelving unit (3 piece) – Craigslist score – $60
Wooden chairs (2) – Free in the alley
Black vinyl & chrome stool – from a hotel liquidation center – $10
White and wood Gap sweater drawer – from a different liquidator – $75
Accessories ($168 subtotal)
IKEA magazine bins (3) – $20
Target Missoni stash box – $12
IKEA clip lights (3) – $36
Black floor lamp – college gift – free
New lamp shade from Target – $30
Guitar hooks (2) – $30
IKEA faux sheepskin – $10
FLOR area rug – found at St. Vincent de Paul – $30
Art ($160 subtotal)
Blues Guitar Player artwork – gift
Omaha train poster – from an antique mall, way back – $60
Johnny Cash, bird flipper, won in an auction – $100
Supplies ($48 subtotal)
Blue paint (2 gallons) and some paint supplies – $40
Black spray paint – $4
Painter’s tape $4
Having a place to store your husband’s clunky, large musical equipment so that it looks good — priceless.
Grand Total: $521
So . . . not the cheapest room make-over ever but really most of these items we have bought over the last few years or were lucky enough to be gifted or acquire for free. It is funny to me that I spent more in the accessories and art category than the furniture category — that’s not typically how interior designers operate. However, I do have a matched pair of alley chairs in the basement waiting for reupholstery. . . So once that happens, the furniture part of the budget will jump up a little more. JT suggested a home upholstery job, which might keep costs down but maybe not nerves and tempers. We’ll see.
The biggest impacts in the room were probably the wall of storage ($60) and the sapphire blue paint ($40). So even if I had just dropped that $100 to start out with, the room would have been on a good step towards being done. That’s the little take-away for me. Sometimes I have a tendency to not want to start a project until I have all the bank set to finish it up the way I want. So then I never really start on projects! With this one, I just jumped in and got it started. It will be a work in progress but the paint and the storage made it feel enough like a new room to feel like Phase One of the makeover was complete.
Living Analog 