Week 2- the $100 Room Challenge

$100 Dining Room Makeover

This is the third time that I am participating in the $100 Room Makeover Challenge. One Room, One Month, all for $100! This is such a fun challenge started by the lovely Erin of Lemons, Lavender, and Laundry. She started with just one room in her home that she wanted to refresh on a tight decorating budget that anyone could afford. You can read all about that first room and more over on her site- $100 Room Challenge

Who else is taking on the challenge?

Be sure to check out what all of the other participants in the $100 Room Challenge are up to in their spaces with the link up at the bottom of this post. This time around our group has grown to around 30 bloggers. They each have their own styles and are taking the challenge to all sorts of spaces in the home- bedrooms, bathrooms, laundry rooms, closets, entryways, and more all for $100. I know that I am super excited to see how everyone’s rooms all come together. I just love how creative everyone is to get a stylish space with just a little bit of time and a little bit of money with a whole lot of elbow grease!

Be sure to check out my friend Ashlee’s room over on her blog Sweet Southern Oaks. She is making over her spare room, or as she calls it- her Monica Closet. If you know the tv show Friends, then you know what she is referring to. It is just going to be great!

My Dining Room Space

Last week I shared my four-part plan to work on my small Dining Room space. You can read that full post here- $100 Room Challenge: Room Three

Here are the four simple- almost zero cost projects I have planned

While I have made some progress on each of these projects- it is not much, but some. And “Some” is a generous adjective to describe what I have accomplished.

• Project One: Make new curtains.  **washed and dried the drop cloths**
• Project Two: Update DIY artwork with New Scrapbook paper **took down the old paper and started to put up the new **
• Project Three: update and redecorate the odd built-in shelves **cleaned off the shelves and took down old paper**
• Project Four: Takedown OR space out the black shelves better **cleaned off shelves and decided to remove them from the wall!**

So, basically, I have started to clean. Believe me- Cleaning had to happen for this $100 project to get started. It may be January, but a good spring cleaning can happen any time!

It always happens when you start a project!

While this week I was able to start the deep cleaning of our Dining room for this $100 makeover. As it usually happens- I discovered a couple of other projects that were going to need to happen. One was that these two metal chairs needed to be repainted, and fast! I love these industrial style metal cafe chairs. I was able to find them for a song a couple of years ago and made them over with a couple of cans of spray paint. You can see the post all about my love for them here- The Chairs I have been Dreaming of

An added Goal of a $0 Budget?

For this $100 Room Challenge, I gave myself another element to the game- a No Spend January. This is not the first time that I have put myself on a spending freeze, but I have also not tried to redecorate a room on a $0 budget before. Could I do both? Could I decorate and Not spend money? How would that look? So how this works is for the full month of January, I try not to spend any money on anything other than household necessities. And since I have a bigger than it needs to be craft/ project stash to use for this One Room Challenge- maybe I could give it a try. What could be the harm in trying, right?

An unexpected project = $

Hold on, wait a minute! What about the metal cafe chairs? If I love them so much, how did they end up in this horrible state? Well, even though I use them at our dining table- they are outdoor chairs and we used them for a party we had last summer. Then they sat outside much longer than they should have with other metal items on the seats. Rain + Metal = Rust and Discoloration. Learn from me- clean up after that party right away!

So to give these chairs the couple of quick coats of paint that they needed. I did need to get a new can of paint. Darn it! 

But the cost was small- Can of Paint Cost: $5.98  

I only needed the one can of paint, and barely used any of it. So, the rest of the can will be used for another project another time. We will just add that can to the craft/ project stash. It was not money I wanted to spend but believe me, it won’t go to waste.

Now go and check out all of my friends projects below!