Make Do & Renew

I've been thinking about my little house the past few days. She's about to get a cosmetic makeover in the form of new paint inside and out, which is exciting and also makes my head hurt when I consider how much work it is going to entail to empty and move all the furniture to make the house painter ready.

(For a start, whose idea was it to buy enough books to fill 7 bookcases, huh? Don't answer that, it was rhetorical. Oh fie my bookish nature!)

I feel like I need to spruce things up a bit in general, as well as making the place a bit more desireable for potential housemates. I've posted grand plans in the recent past about buying new furniture, but the sad truth is that I'm not in a financial space to be able to do that. Especially while I'm paying nearly 50% of my income on double my usual rent. So I'm thinking a little budget makeovering is the ticket. Something like:

• Getting the carpets cleaned. I need to get the bedroom carpets and my living room rug steam cleaned.
  
• Making a new slipcover for my sofa. I can do this, I have the mad skillz required. Also, $100 - $150 worth of fabric (or whatever), and some time spent at the sewing machine, is going to be a lot more doable than forking over for a new sofa. Plus more fun. Well my kind of fun. Fun that involves complicated maths, pattern drafting, making piping.
  
• During a throw out at work I scored two big cork pin-up boards. I'm thinking of covering each of these in a cute fabric and putting one in the kitchen near the phone, and the other in my bedroom. I have a huge collection of postcards and ephemera, so filling them won't be a problem. My kitchen's main colour is a fresh green so I might even go for something like this cute retro print by local fabric studio Prints Charming.
  
• I need file storage and I also have a non-functioning fireplace in my bedroom. So I'm thinking maybe a secondhand two drawer filing cabinet, or some of those plastic box things that take drop in files. Something that can sit in that unused space inside the fireplace, and then I was thinking of making a folding screen to sit in front and hide everything. The local discount shops in Newtown sell really cheap artist's canvases in all sorts of shapes and sizes, so if I bought 3 or 4 tall and skinny ones, of a size that fit in front of the open part of the fireplace, stapled fabric over them or even painted them, and then joined them in a zigzag pattern with hinges, voila! firescreen. Mad, right?

Projects! It's good to have projects.

That's Ms Stewart to you!