Alright, so you want to know more about how I stretched my dollar; here are my top tips:

1. Paint really does do wonders. Right after we painted, the room instantly felt different. So if you want a quick room update, drop the $60 or so and buy some paint!

2. Secondly, shop in your own house! I talked about this a few days ago, but just as a reminder, the dresser that is our new “entertainment center” and the bookshelf that now houses the wine, scotch, and cigar collections were all unused pieces that we already owned!  The bookshelf was just in our guest bedroom closet. It was ugly brown, so we just painted it cream (with a $1.00 can of unclaimed paint I got at Lowe’s) and painted the backs blue (with another can of $1.00 unclaimed paint). The dresser, I didn’t have to do anything to!

3. Craigslist. Craigslist. Craigslist. I purchased the blue accent chair for the seating area, the floor lamp, and the desk all on Craigslist. The chair and the lamp were ready to use as is, but the desk, you may remember, looked like this:

I briefly thought about stripping and staining it dark brown to match the entertainment center, but then I remember how LONG it took me to strip and stain my armoire last summer. So I decided just to paint it! I chose Navy Blue as one of the primary colors in the room, as so many of my hubby’s accessories are, well, Navy Blue! Here’s how it turned out (FYI…the color is actually Navy blue, not royal blue as it appears in the photo):

I knew I wanted a brown leather accent chair to use as a desk chair to tie the office area with the sitting area (where the dominate piece of furniture is the massive leather couch we already owned). I found one on Craigslist for $25. But, I was greedy, and offered $20 (I’m such a tightwad sometimes!), and lost. So then I had to splurge and buy one for $60 at Ross (which has an AWESOME home department, by the way!) I suppose $60 is still a pretty darn good price for a chair, but I was bummed that I had missed out on the $25 one!  I guess I should have taken my own advice and bid full price since I really wanted it!!!

4. Dress up your windows. One of the things this room was desperately missing before, was window treatments (by the way, my hubby HATES the term “window treatments”, he cringes every time he hears it!). There were vertical blinds (ick!) above the sliding glass door, and nothing above the window. Curtains and hardware can get quite expensive, so I needed a CHEAP solution. You may remember that I recently purchased new window treatments for the living room and got rid of these heinous wood curtain rods:

Well, I saved them “just in case”, and I’m so glad I did! I ended up taking a bit of Navy blue spray paint to them.  For curtains, I simply purchased canvas drop cloths at a home improvement store for $10 a panel. And here’s the result:

Not too bad, eh?

And that’s all I’m going to leave you with today. Tomorrow I’ll finish up my Man Cave diatribe, and then I’ll tell you about the plans I have in store for my next project… I can hear my hubby cringing already!