My name is Erica and all this started with a new house.
New House
I'm 27 years old and live with my friends/roommates: Katie, Jarred and Andrea. Katie is the owner of our house and we prefer to think of ourselves as an alternative family. Katie and I moved in July 2013 and were shortly followed by Jarred in August 2013. Andrea is a new addition to our household after we made over the basement and we stuck the boy downstairs. Now Katie has wanted a house for awhile, actually we both did, as we had talked about buying a house and living in it together since we were 18. Almost 10 years later and we were finally getting our wish. After searching what felt like endlessly, Katie settled on this house as it met the criteria we were searching for. It was in the town we had grown up in, it was within the budget, it had three bedrooms and three bathrooms with a basement that could be used as another bedroom to accommodate all the roommates she would have living with her, and most importantly, it had a huge deck and a nice backyard. She was sold and I saw fantastic potential even if it looked like every other house on the street, in the neighborhood, in the whole town! See where we live there are only a handful of layouts to choose from in a certain price range. Certainly there are very nice houses around town and if we had all been independently wealthy we could each drop half a million and get something semi-unique. Sadly we are not, but luckily I am armed with an excellent attitude and motto. It goes like this:
You don't have to have a million bucks to live in a house that looks like a million bucks.
Out of all our friends, I think Katie and I grew up in the most similar houses and families. We both have parents that think white is a color. (Not in my house!) I was 18 when my mother finally relented and let me paint the hall bathroom at their house. It turned out great!! And I was hooked. For years I had been feeding my creativity by watching Trading Spaces and other home improvement shows on TLC. Also, Katie and I's mutual best friend, Erin, had parents that weren't afraid of color or paint and I got to help Erin paint her bedroom (ragging...ugh I hated it even then) and the spare room next to hers. Shortly after the bathroom, I had a fit one day and won the years long battle of Let Me Paint My Room. That turned into a small makeover. I painted, bought new furniture, and changed out the ceiling light for a fan (why aren't there ceiling fans in every bedroom?!). I'll never forget my dad's face when he walked in the first time. The look of awe and the quietly whispered, "Erica, this looks really good" awakened a hunger for praise I never knew I had. Ask any of my friends to this day and they all know that when I'm doing a project and I'm really excited about how it's turning out, your reaction better be off the charts. I need it. I demand it. And usually I have to call Erin to come over and give it to me.
So on July 1st, Katie and I went to the new house and entered through the garage door and made our way up to the living room. I came armed with new locks and tools and Katie came armed with what we now refer to as her "Paper Pinterest". I learned that day that Katie had not called the utility companies to switch service and I immediately chewed her out and made her sit down and start calling around as I went about changing the locks on the house. I was changing the locks in her room (she has a door out to the deck in the master, LUCKY!) and when I returned to the living room to do the front and back doors I found her in the middle of the living room floor with pages from magazines on the floor all around her. Huh....wha....."Um, Katie...what is this?" She told me that she had been saving pictures for years of what she wanted her house to look like. I was in shock. I can't describe to you how many pages there were or how many different styles and that was just for one room! How was anyone supposed to translate that into real life?! So, she started explaining to me what this picture was and that one and I latched on to one picture. It was from a Pier 1 Imports magazine and showed a bedroom with beautiful blue walls, a dark cherry bed, and white bedding with navy blue waves and Koi fish jumping around. It was peaceful and beautiful and colorful all at once. Now my decorating almost always starts out in the rooms you're going to spend the most time in. Since Katie and I both had full sets of furniture for our bedrooms and that would be the hardest place to decorate once we had really settled in, I decided to start with that picture. Now you have to understand something about Katie. Until this last year, I'm pretty sure she thought the internet just existed for paying bills or booking flights. She knew not the resources one could acquire on the internet. I asked her about the picture and she told me that she REALLY wanted bedding like that (also Katie is more than slightly obsessed with nautical/ocean decor) and I asked why she just didn't get that bedding. Her response (and it's still her response to this day and can be a struggle between us) was that it was too expensive if you bought it from the store. FROM THE STORE?!?! BAHAHAHAHA!! THE STORE!!! HAHAHA hooooooooooo hehehe...oh wait you're serious. Have you tried eBay? No I don't use eBay. I wanted to die. Didn't use eBay?! Some of my best purchases were from eBay! Well that set me off on an internet search to top all internet searches. I had to prove to her that she could get exactly what she wanted and get it cheaply. I found the entire set. On eBay. For $120. Mission accomplished. We ordered her the bedding set and set off for Home Depot for paint.
That was our first day in this house and the first day on my journey to giving Katie the beautifully decorated house she saw in her magazines pages in real life. I was just supposed to stay a couple months until her roommates could move in, but after we got going on this project and that project there was no stopping and I became the new roommate. We're getting ready to celebrate a year in the house and the changes that have occurred still blow my mind. We are a fixture in our neighborhood, known for constantly doing projects, often having to stop in the middle of working (lately in my case, I have conversations while up on a ladder) to have a friendly chat with a neighbor out walking the dog or getting the mail to explain how we do what we do. Or what the next project will be. A couple months ago, Katie was feeling the financial stress. She was convinced we had spent thousands of dollars on these projects. Our roommate, Jarred, assured her we had not and typical Katie (remember how she saves things) she went and added up all the receipts. And you know what? We had given this entire house a makeover for under a thousand dollars!! Is everything done? No, at some point the carpet will probably be replaced with laminate wood flooring and the kitchen will get a serious makeover, but you can bet it will all be done on a budget. People will ask who we hired to do our hardwood floors (um we did, because that's how we roll and btw it's laminate) and probably wonder how much the new cabinets cost (it's called paint y'all but don't it look pretty?) and we'll smile and be happy to explain how we cut corners and did it ourselves and got a finished product that looks like we hired professionals. Also, we've painted the exterior since that last tally so we're over the thousand mark for decorating now but I can happily tell you that it looks like we (read as Katie) spent much, much more. The more projects we do and accomplish amazing results the more people tell me I should do this as a living. Well, I'm not sure how to get that started really and I'm not sure I want to turn a hobby I love into my daily grind, but I do want to share with others just how easy it all is as long as you arm yourselves with a few things. They are this:
1. Get really good at searching for things on the internet. Craigslist, eBay, Pinterest, Google, etc...whatever works for you there are so many great deals out there and great ideas!
2. Get a Purdy paintbrush. Notice I didn't say a paintbrush. PURDY. I use a 1.5" for cutting in and have a friend that uses a 2.5". To each their own. But love and treat it right as almost all of my projects involve painting something.
3. Bulk up your tool collection. I'd like to think I'm above average in this department without being macho man impressive. I own more than one drill, three different types of saws, have a decent drill bit set, and one super Craftsman kit that has everything in it (Thanks Dad!). You're going to need tools. You can buy as you go or do as I do and ask you're loving, tool-knowledgeable family member to buy them for you as gifts. Again thanks Dad!
4. A need to try new things!! This is the biggest part. Until this house, I have never built shelves, installed a new door and frame, or made over garage doors (my latest and I think my best project yet), BUT they really weren't that hard to do! It surprised me too! Especially the door. And now I'm like, "Yeah, let's just put in a door. No big deal." And then bask in the glow of awed adoration.
Okay, so remember this picture?
Now it looks like this!
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