I don’t talk about my sunroom much. That’s because it has mostly been a holding area for the dogs where I dry them off before letting them into the house during bad weather.
Until this summer, there hasn’t been much to look at in the backyard. But now that I’ve been improving the landscaping, I’d like to be able to sit out there on a summer evening and enjoy the hard work I’ve been putting into the yard. That means I should spruce up the sunroom.
I enjoy watching HGTV’s “Design on a Dime.” The premise of the show is that three designers come in and completely transform a room on a budget of $1,000. There’s a lot of upcycling of thrift store furniture, sewing and building pieces from scratch. The results are always really dramatic, and I want to see if I can create a similar transformation for $250.
We already have a nice set of wicker furniture in the sunroom that my boss gave my husband and me when she moved into a home that didn’t have a space for it. But the cushion covers are in a really light print, which is not good considering we never taught the dogs to keep off the furniture. I bought yards and yards of home decor fabric on clearance in a dark print to make new covers and coordinating fabrics for throw pillows and curtains. I’ve also been collecting decor for this room at thrift stores and grabbing other freebies when relatives were getting rid of things around their homes. So far, I’ve spent about $150 on fabric, flower pots, a lamp and renting a van to move the wicker furniture. That leaves $100 for paint and wall coverings.
The room isn’t very large, so I picked up a magazine dedicated to decorating small spaces to get some ideas. The biggest recommendation was to paint the walls a light color and use bright and bold accessories and decor to bring color into the room, without closing it in. Since the biggest feature in the room is the wicker furniture, I’m going to use the colors in my fabric as my color palette for the room. I’ll paint the walls a light version of the hues in the fabric, spray paint the mismatched pots, lamp and curtain rod and use extra fabric to make a new lamp shade.
I’ve also seen some pretty cool ideas online for turning common objects into cheap wall art, and I’m dying to try some of them out. And as always, I’ll write about the transformation and share tutorials so you can try some of these ideas in your home, too.
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