Mrs. McFrugal

A college friend of mine recently asked me to help her with some design issues in her living room. She and her husband have 2 young boys, so the room also needs to function as a family space with plenty of storage. Here are a couple pictures of her living room: Amanda told me they were thinking about getting a sectional to replace the sofa and recliner, and moving the glider into their son's room. She also said most of the toys and the changing table would also be going upstairs. One problem is that the room is long and narrow, and interrupted by lots of doors and windows. Another problem was figuring out a nice way to display 4 pieces of art that her father-in-law painted. Here are some products I found that I think would look great in Amanda's living room. They're all from affordable places like Target or IKEA, because I like moodboards with things in them that normal people can actually afford :)  1. These curtains from IKEA are $27.99 per set. I w...

So, while we were installing the base molding in the downstairs bedroom, we discovered an interesting fact about the back wall of the closet: there are no studs! Somehow, they attached drywall directly to the cement foundation wall (there does at least appear to be a vapor barrier between them, so that's good!). As a reminder, this is what the closet looked like before:  And here it was with all of our stuff in it...as you can see, it wasn't well organized, and we half-expected that sagging bottom shelf to collapse at any moment. We had big plans for installing a fancy closet organization system, and had even spent a full day driving to and from various home improvement stores in town, trying to find the perfect system to fit our closet and maximize the storage. So once we discovered the "closet quirk", we had a couple of options to consider. One option was to either build out the wall by adding studs and a new layer of drywall, but this would require driv...

I finally got around to taking pictures of the downstairs bedroom!! It's been done since right before Christmas. Our first overnight guests were my sister and her husband and kids. Come on in... First, let's talk about the bed. Penny thinks it's very comfortable!   It's a double bed that we bought from my former roommate when she moved to NYC and sold all her belongings. We didn't get a headboard because I have that old window frame hanging on the wall behind the bed. The ceilings are low in the basement, so I didn't want the walls to be too busy. The duvet cover on the bed is one that I picked up on clearance from West Elm for $20. It was originally a king sized, so I had to sew it down to a double-sized duvet. I don't have any pictures from that process, but basically I laid the comforter on top of the inside-out duvet and pinned around it, then I just sewed along the pins. Once I confirmed that the comforter fit inside, I cut off the excess f...

Yes, I do realize that February is a bit late to be posting goals for the year....which brings me to my first goal: 1. Blog more regularly. Here are the things I really want to tell you all about, but I'm just too dang lazy: The basement bedroom - it's finished, I just need to clean it up and take pictures The basement bedroom closet - it's all organized and super-nice Guest bedroom - I've changed some artwork above the bed Guest bedroom closet - we added an organization system The shadow box I made full of mementos from our wedding Master bedroom - we've repainted and settled on a color scheme/decor theme 2. Pay off my last credit card. I'm so close!!!! 3. Save up our monies for the new couch in the basement. I would like to have it by the time the temps start to rise in the summer, so we can spend more time in the (cooler) basement. 4. Finish the basement stairs. They are currently still carpeted and hideous. Also, Penny likes to chew on the car...

Ever since we renovated the basement and tore out the bookshelves that had been there and replaced them with our built-in desk, our books and DVDs had been in boxes in the garage. We were able to pull out a few of the books to put on our new shelves in the basement guest room (reveal coming soon!), but the DVDs still hadn't found a new home. So, a couple weekends ago we decided to clear out the closet in the living room. There are 2 closets in the living room...one is a coat closet by the door, and the other is a random closet on the other side of the room. It has a strange raised floor--we're not exactly sure why. It is above the stairs to the basement, so maybe it has something to do with that. Anyway, up until this point, the closet had housed extra pillows for the couches, dog food, brooms, and the vacuum. Once we emptied it out, this is what it looked like. We removed the shelf and hanging pole and were left with this: It became evident that this closet had ...