THE THRIFTY CHALLENGE: A few finishing touches.

We're making steady progress on the house everyday and each change is making it feel like our home more and more. It's almost a year now since we bought the house, although only 6 months since we moved in and we only started working on the house in January. Anyway it's clear, I'm a renovation addict and I just can't stop making more and more changes.
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll remember our laundry turned from this to this...

Needless to say, we were pretty happy with the fresh new look. However the walls were looking a bit too empty so I wanted to add some art and extra shelving. While we would like to have big built in shelving in the future and perhaps include another toilet in this room, I wanted to use items I already had (or could source cheaply) to make the laundry a bit more homely.

1: ART

Any kind of art probably works in a laundry but I decided to go with laundry themed art. The frames were from kmart for $3.50 each and the prints came from this post . I downloaded the images and printed them with a matte finish for $1.20 each so altogether the artwork came to $9.40- not too bad for adding a little bit extra to the laundry room. I had tried thrifting for frames for about a month or so but matching white frames are hard to come by and when they are so cheap from the store, I didn't feel it was worth the effort to paint the frames. It's amazing what lovely free downloads are around and I really like how the colours of these prints connect with the existing mint/white colour scheme of the laundry.

2: SHELVING

I am very fortunate to having some fantastic carpenters in my family but whenever I can thrift the perfect item, I do that over taking up their time and energy. I came across a pine shelf at a garage sale in the country about a year back for $10 and knew I could find a good use for it. After giving it a coat of primer and two coats of white enamel, it was in our bedroom on the wall holding up some jewellery. However as the master bedroom has had a bit of a makeover recently (will share soon, I just am waiting for the right light to capture some pretty snaps), I had removed the shelf and realised it would be great extra storage in the laundry and create some visual interest for a very high blank wall.

There is still potential space for more artwork and other accessories but I like it so much more already. Our laundry in our old home had a blue theme so the peg basket shown above is actually our old blue peg basket given a few coats of white paint- recycling whenever possible :)

And speaking of art, I just had to share the newest photographic addition to our art collection. Our darling dog Maisy is a bit of a cutie and when I found a deal online for a $9 dog photo shoot that came with an 8 by 12 print, I just jumped at the chance. I love a good photograph and somehow we'd neglected to print any of Maisy in the last three years. She wasn't quite the perfect model for her little snaps but we ended up with a truly adorable print of her that is now proudly on display in the lounge room, she needs her few minutes of fame and attention before baby comes in 6 short weeks and the baby photos start to fill the walls. I'm stoked with the end result, definitely worth $9!

It will need to move soon from its current location as when the gas heater is turned on, the top tends to get too warm to leave things on- and I don't want to wreck this picture :)

Lisa x

P.s My friend Kirsty asked me to share some tips on fixing up secondhand furniture on her blog this week.