How to Instantly Upgrade Furniture

Whether home is an apartment or four-bedroom house, decorating can be expensive. Creating a warm and inviting space with loads of personality for less than an arm and a leg is a challenge for any DIYer. However, if one is willing to scour sales, give secondhand furniture a little TLC and put in some time and elbow grease, decorating on the cheap can be done.

Garage sales, thrift shops and classified ads can be a gold mine for a crafty decorator with a little know-how and a lot of determination. The key is finding pieces with good “bones”, or structures, that can be cleaned and updated to fit the owner’s needs in the allotted space.

Get Only What’s Needed

When seeking out furniture, decorators should have a game plan. The problem with apartments is they’re often tight on space. While DIYers might want to buy everything but the kitchen sink, they need to be careful and stick to the shopping list to avoid a cluttered space.

That’s not to say that one can’t ever veer off course. Shoppers should be open to pieces that can do double duty and be used for something entirely different than their original purpose, such as an armoire that can serve as a TV hutch or a shelving unit to store clothing.

Do DIY Research

Before decorators delve headfirst into a big project, they should make sure they have all the necessary supplies. They should read directions, and buy enough fabric to make a slipcover for the couch and the matching chair. They need to read labels and make sure they’re buying spray paint that works on wicker. They need to measure and get enough wallpaper to cover all the inside panels of the bookshelf.

Small DIY projects can become a big headache when multiple trips to the home improvement and craft store are involved. Enthusiastic decorators should watch videos online and look at photos that show every angle of that Pinterest project they’ve got their eye on to avoid unexpected DIY disasters.

Photo: eyewashdesign