Oh GRM Wise Ones, I Have a Question - House Decorating

mtn wrote:

mazdeuce wrote: You can plan the couch and TV, but the throw pillows and area rug sneak up on you.

GAAAA I HATE PILLOWS. If I had it my way, I'd have my pillow for my head, and that is it. We don't have a couch--just an easy chair with ottoman, recliner, and loveseat. If we had a couch, I'd want ONE throw pillow--to be used for wifey's head when she takes a nap. I nap on the recliner. Also pointless are extra pillows on the bed. I'll allow a pillow for between the knee's--that makes sense. But a pillow for decoration is stupid.

We have 6 pillows on the bed, 4 of which are removed each night and placed on top of other furniture or on the floor to create a tripping hazard.

I'd want them for staging a house for sale, that's about it.

ProDarwin wrote:

mtn wrote:

mazdeuce wrote: You can plan the couch and TV, but the throw pillows and area rug sneak up on you.

GAAAA I HATE PILLOWS. If I had it my way, I'd have my pillow for my head, and that is it. We don't have a couch--just an easy chair with ottoman, recliner, and loveseat. If we had a couch, I'd want ONE throw pillow--to be used for wifey's head when she takes a nap. I nap on the recliner. Also pointless are extra pillows on the bed. I'll allow a pillow for between the knee's--that makes sense. But a pillow for decoration is stupid.

We have 6 pillows on the bed, 4 of which are removed each night and placed on top of other furniture or on the floor to create a tripping hazard. I'd want them for staging a house for sale, that's about it.

Sometimes I feel like I should take out a mining permit when I try to get through the pillow pile to the surface of the bed.

Hit Estate Sales, get there early and with cash. You can get entire sets of furniture for cheap. Sure, it's usually old people stuff, but with cloth chair covers and a tablecloth, the dining room looks great. (Buy Christopher Lowell's 7 Layers of Design book. Seriously.) Then you can upgrade later.

Also, convince the wife that minimalist, Scandinavian style is the way to go. Saves a lot of money that way!

Don't be in a rush. The wife and I moved from a small one bed/bath apartment to a 3 bed/2 bath house. We had living room furniture, one set of bedroom furniture, and a small table and two chairs for eating in the kitchen.

Over the course of the next year: Wife's parents gave us the bedroom furniture from her bedroom at home. We bought a dining room table and chairs at a moving/yard sale. Decided that the third bedroom would be and office so we hit up a local used office furniture store for a couple desks and file cabinets.

Total cost of furnishings over what we already had: $600

We've been here almost 5 years. We had grand visions of how we would decorate. The reality though became that we took in a lot of hand me downs and bought very little. We are just now slowly replacing things. The reason? We can't seem to decide on anything we like enough to buy until it's actually needed.

As for cost, you need to just budget what you want to spend. On the low end, you can do entire rooms of furniture pretty cheaply. On the high end, you can spend $10k on a couch. Its really a matter of whether you want short term furniture, or something you'll put in your will.

Nicer furniture stores offer design services once you spend a certain amount, or you can go with an interior decorator. We did the latter and his hourly rate paid for itself with his paint and window treatment discounts.

Also worth noting, when you fill out a change of address form with the post office, Lowes will send you a really good coupon book. It works if you change your address to your current address too.