Home Away from Home

While I'm in college, I live away from home. I live in a house, so I have the ability to decorate my room however I want. I got to completely transform my room this year. Here's the process I took -

Here's how my room started out:

 

All white walls, brownish carpet, wall of closet doors and a built in heater cover. I took a few steps to really transform the room and make it mine.

Step 1 - PAINT! Paint is a fairly cheap, easy way to brighten up the room. I chose a bright color to make my room look bigger. I only painted two walls. All four would have made the room close up and seem small.

Step 2 - Carpet Remnants. They're cheap, they're big, they'll cover the ugly, already existing carpet. I used carpet that I found in my basement. So in my case, it was free! Even better on a college kid's budget.

Step 3 - Furniture. My suggestion: garage sales. DIY furniture projects are a cheap and easy way to decorate a room. All the main furniture in my room came from garage sales except for my dresser, chair and mirror. The dresser had been in my basement for years and the chair came from a local consignment shop. I got the mirror on clearance because it had a small piece knocked out of it. Nothing a little silver paint can't disguise!

Step 4 - Accessorize! This is my favorite part. I have tons of little nick-knacks and books. I love playing around with them all until it just comes together. I'll make a post next week about small DIY decorating ideas that I have used in my room.

Here's the final product!

 (excuse the blurriness of the last photo - great iPhone quality!)