House list update!

You may recall that I have a lovely list of house goals for 2012? Well, I am pleased to report that I have actually completed three of those goals!

Goal: Sell the futon in the office.
Goal: Find a suitable futon replacement.
Goal: Hang the Dark Side of the Moon picture (this was actually one of last year's goals. Oops.)

The futon in the office, which was inherited from Geoff's mom, was just too big for that room. I don't have a good picture of it in the whole room, but it basically took up the whole wall, and most of the room when it was set up as a bed. So, after much discussion with Geoff, we decided to sell it. I listed it on Craigslist for $100, with the goal of getting at least $75 out of it. When no one bit, I was planning on re-listing it for $75 when the listing expired. Before I had a chance to do that, though, someone offered $75 and wanted to pick it up ASAP! I'll take it!

There was much debating about what we wanted to replace the futon with, because I did like having that second bed as an option. In the end, however, we decided that it was best to put Geoff's huge beanbag chair in there, along with a small bookcase with all his gaming magazines and books.
We only have one bathroom, and our couch (while we still have it) has a pullout bed, so that's an option in addition to the guest room. I don't intend to have that many people staying here anyway, because it's just too small for more than 2 extra people, especially with only 1 bathroom.

Anyway, here's the office with it's new arrangement! Much better. The bookshelf, by the way, is another Craigslist find. It's heavy duty and seriously looks brand new, and it was only $10! Score! Although it is particle board, it's the same color wood as the desk, so it matches and that makes me happy.

Meanwhile, in the den/TV room, we had a big open spot where the bean bag used to be. No good.

I decided to move the two bookshelves (one from Craigslist a while back and one from Geoff's childhood bedroom, painted black to match everything else) into that corner. They have movies and our other DVDs on them, so it only made sense to put them in the corner near the TV.

Next to them is my knitting basket (picked up at Goodwill) and, out of sight is our Wii balance board.


This opens up the areas where the bookshelves used to be for a place to drop Geoff's laptop bag, my banjo and my purse. You can see the before in the link above, and here's the after.

I have a hard time with this area, as it's slightly narrow due to the placement of our couch, and it's also right in front of the garage door, where we come in and out. I'm a little afraid it will become a dumping area, but we do need some place to put those things, and hopefully I can just stay on top of it.

Finally, here's the Dark Side of the Moon poster!

I let Geoff take care of this, because it required measuring and leveling, and it was a big pain, but now it's done! Only took us a year and a half.
So there you go! I love rearranging because it makes everything fresh and new! Plus, we sold something and only bought one thing, so in the end our rearranging profited us $65 (after the $10 bookcase). I'll say that's a good use of our Sunday afternoon.

What do you think?

Two new (to us) bookshelves!

When we moved into our house, Geoff's mom sent a truckload (literally) of things from his room for our house. There was a lot of things we didn't need, but there were also a lot of really useful things in that truck. One of them was a (short) solid wood bookshelf that held our movies. Gradually, however, we started to expand our DVD collection until the poor little bookshelf couldn't hold everything!

I had the perfect spot for the bookshelf and I wanted another one about the same size to put next to it, so I started scouring Craigslist, to no avail. Do you know how difficult it is to find a bookshelf that is about 4 feet tall? So when I finally found a black one, I jumped right on it. Since the TV stand and the other large bookshelf we have in the den are both black as well, I decided to paint the original wood one.

(Geoff took this picture with the camera on the wrong setting for what we wanted, but I thought it looked so cool that I kept it.)

I love it! They fit perfectly under the window, and even though they aren't exactly the same size, but the smaller one (the one I painted) is the perfect size for my Pleasant Street sign.

{As a side note, and in case you are wondering, that is the street I grew up on, and that sign was my Christmas present right before I got married. In my hometown they are working on replacing the old wooden signs with new, reflective ones. For a donation, you can replace the old sign with a new one and keep the wooden sign! It's one of my favorite things we have here.}

We still have a little more room on the taller shelf and plenty of room under the TV stand for more DVDs, which is good because we really enjoy watching TV on DVD which is what most of our collection is!

So what do you think about my repurposing both a hand-me-down bookshelf and a used one?

Frugal mish-mash

The other day I bought this shredder off Craigslist. It was $15.
Now I know what you're thinking. Seriously, Megg, you only saved $10! That's hardly worth talking (or blogging) about! Well, perhaps, but the truth is, I've actually been wanting to get a paper shredder for a while now! Partially for all the personal information that we get in the mail (but don't need to keep) and also because of our compost, which we are working on putting together for this summer.
I'm ashamed to admit that I also wanted it because The Frugal Girl talked about her shredder recently and I wanted one too. Also, I enjoy shredding. (Please tell me I'm not the only one!)

My friend Elizabeth wrote a really good post about Ash Wednesday this week. While I didn't grow up "practicing" Lent by giving things up, it is something I've developed and taken part in over the years since I've become an adult. Elizabeth has decided to give up meat, which is an excellent thing to do for both your body and your wallet. Though I don't think I can give meat up completely (I don't like beans enough!) I think I will actively give up meat on Fridays. Once a week is an easy way to start, and buying meat is, for obvious reasons, not something that is always budget friendly.

Seriously, I love being frugal. It doesn't hurt me, it doesn't (usually) put me out, and it leaves me with the freedom to choose to go away for a few days with my best friend, when she comes to visit next month. Honestly, I'm not sure why I waited so long to be frugal!

Learning to be handy

I have never really been into refinishing furniture, or fixing or repurposing things. I did paint a dresser once, but that's about it. I have an old steamer trunk at my parent's house that I swore I would fix up that hasn't been touched in years. All this changed, however, when I got married, wanted nice things, and realized we couldn't afford them quite yet!

You all know my obsession with Freecycle by now, right? Well, I have to admit that when I can't get something for free there, I will also check out Craigslist! Because if I can't get something for free, might as well get it for cheap, right?

Our coffee table (which only happens to be clean for this picture, normally it isn't!) was my first Craigslist find. I absolutely LOVE the baskets underneath, and for $65, can you really go wrong? I tried to find a similar table online to see how much it cost, and the closest I could get was this one, which I don't even like and which is almost $300! So I was very happy with this find. It didn't even require any touching up!

However, our end table, which I decided was another vital piece of furniture we needed, did.

I can't really complain, because for $25 we got a matching-style table, but it definitely needed a little bit of work. The top was scratched pretty badly, and the legs weren't the same color as our coffee table, which was nothing a little spray paint couldn't fix.

Happily, a friend of ours is doing a lot of work in her home, and we were able to use both her expertise and some of her tools to work on the table!

So we sanded, finished, spray painted and glued (there was a loose piece of wood on the bottom of the table).

And finally had something we were happy with!

It didn't turn out as shiny as our coffee table, but I'm OK with that. I put a coat of Old English on it, screwed the legs back on, and now it sits happily next to our Freecycle couch! I even got a new table lamp with wedding gift cards for it.

All in all we probably spent about $60 on the table, which includes buying it and the materials we used to work on it, however, most of those we will be able to use again (we didn't use all the stain, for example). Plus, I searched for this online as well, and the closest thing I could find was this, which is just as much as the new coffee table!

Maybe I could make a living refinishing furniture...