One
small change you can make that will cost only the cost of a roll of wallpaper (if that) is simply to wallpaper a nook, rather than an entire room or even a whole accent wall in your home. Christiana Coop of
Ferm Living shared images
on her blog of a San Francisco apartment styled by
Eden & Eden's Rachel Eden. Rachel chose to wallpaper one wall in a small nook of the otherwise predominantly white-walled apartment with
Ferm Old News Wallpaper ($94) behind an industrial, stainless steel cabinet.
Melissa from
Sugar City Journal recently made a
small change to her staircase that carries a huge visual impact. She scanned a damask fabric into the computer, then digitally enhanced it in PhotoShop. After printing the pattern on paper, she glued the sheets together, laminated them, and then used Modgepodge to glue them to her stairs.
If you're dismayed by the prices of accent rugs these days, or just looking for an inexpensive solution to pull a room together while you look for the perfect one, I have the answer to your problem-o. Stop by a cheap home furnishing store (Ikea, Bed Bath & Beyond, a local outlet) and pick up two or three small cotton rugs, which you can find for
$2 to $10. Then, tape or stitch them together to create a larger accent rug, which would normally cost you upwards of $100.
DIYer Paul Smith spent several weekends constructing shelves for the odd, recessed space on either side of his fireplace. He cut wood to size, drilled, glued, clamped, and painted, and came up with something amazing. Here's what it looked like about halfway through the project.
I've offered you some inspirational
small changes that involve
switching out hardware or painting an accent wall, but you don't have to spend money to see some big results! Take a look at my list of ways you can improve your home without spending a dime.
Do you have some
small changes to show off? Or maybe they're big changes, like
Jessamae22's first (very successful!) season as a gardener.
Show off all of your home updates in my group on TeamSugar called
Su Casa, where readers can share snapshots and stories related to home decorating, crafts, organizing, and gardening.
Natalie of Technology Drive
hung fabric panels adjacent to her bedside table "to enclose the bed area so it didn't feel like it was floating between the living room door and the open closet/hall." This
small change successfully delineated bed, giving it a cozy, canopy-bed-like feeling, but is actually a really simple project. It's also a really attractive update; the cherry-blossom pattern of her fabric panel brings an interesting visual element to an otherwise simple room.
What girl doesn't long for a big walk-in closet? Well,
Haze decided to make that longing a reality when she and her husband remodeled the child's room, located directly off of their master bedroom, and turned it into a walk-in closet. This is definitely much more than a
small change, and I admire Haze's hard work and impressive results!
Since it's
Small Changes month, I'm a huge proponent of any simple fix-ups that make a huge visual impact on a room. One of these is switching out your hardware, be it
finials on your curtain rods and lamps, knobs or handles on your cabinets and drawers, shower curtain loops, switchplates, coat rack hooks, or the numbers on the front of your house. Particularly if you're renting, and have little flexibility in terms of adding color to your
walls or updating old appliances, reassessing your hardware situation can really help you personalize your home.
I spotted this neat trick on
Martha Stewart and was once again impressed with all the clever things you can do
with an embroidery hoop! Here, Martha has transformed a traditional, hanging, drawstring laundry bag into an ever-open one by tightening a large embroidery hoop at least 14" in diameter around it. This keeps the bag open so you don't have to wrangle with it, but still allows you to hang it, keeping it off of the floor and at eye level.
