How long did it take you to really get your home to be - well, a HOME? How long did it take to accumulate all of your "nicer" furniture? Did you buy it all at once, or in bits and pieces? What are some tips for arranging/decorating on a budget? How did you decide how to decorate each room? Did you have a plan to go buy before you bought everything, or did you just "wing it"?

Our apartment still looks like college kids live in it (well, I guess we are college students, but I'm trying to make it look "home-y") We have nice new sofa/loveseat and coffee table, but everything else we own is cheap cheap cheap and to me it just looks trashy. I just can't get happy with what we have - I know we can't afford the things that will make it TRULY look great, but for now, I still want it to look NICE....KWIM? Hm. Any tips?

my advice is to buy 1 nice thing a month for your house & as you do, throw something out too-In time, it will be all set the way you want it to be sweety:goodvibes

my advice is to buy 1 nice thing a month for your house & as you do, throw something out too-In time, it will be all set the way you want it to be sweety:goodvibes

DH and I are pack-rats :lol I'm getting better though at forcing myself to throw away things that really are not used/needed.

That's a good idea, Thanks! :)

your welcome sweety-good luck & just be patient-It will all come together in time:D

We are still working on it and we have been married about 6 years! We have things that we are starting to get rid of...and finding it hard to do. One advice...stay small, throw out, get rid of! Don't get to looking like our house!

We're still working on our house too...LOL!!!
We JUST bought our old neighbor's 8 piece bedroom furniture less than a year ago. We we move to VA, we plan to buy a few pieces of new furniture for our living room. We've had the same furniture in our living room for over 3 years now. We have a black leather sofa couch and black leather recliner. I want more comfy furniture now...

Buy little accent peices when they go on clearence. Pick out the bigger (more expensive) stuff and save for it. hang onto your money and shop around. you might find a good sale. Holiday weekends are great furniture sales. Look on Craigslist or used furniture stores. You can get some really good deals on stuff if you're willing to put a little elbow grease into refinishing a dresser or a table. Jo told me to go to a unfinished furniture store.

Were just now starting to get some really nice stuff together.

Buy little accent peices when they go on clearence. Pick out the bigger (more expensive) stuff and save for it. hang onto your money and shop around. you might find a good sale. Holiday weekends are great furniture sales. Look on Craigslist or used furniture stores. You can get some really good deals on stuff if you're willing to put a little elbow grease into refinishing a dresser or a table. Jo told me to go to a unfinished furniture store.

Were just now starting to get some really nice stuff together.

That is TOTALLY what I do for holiday decor. :)

When we first got here, we had no furniture what so ever. We went to Rent-a-center, big mistake, don't ever go there. So after they screwed us a couple of times, we went to Mor Furniture (they always have sales and there's no money down, no interest until 2010 for us). They asked if we were lookin for anything in particular, and we told them we needed to furnish our entire house. We got approved for $7200 and we spent $7000. We got a bedroom suite, living room set, dining room set and some extras. If we didn't have any furniture, we probably would have gotten a piece at a time, but I wasn't sleeping on the floor anymore.

I'm still working on getting that whole "homey" feeling. There's not much stuff on the walls, we don't have curtains in the living room yet (we get those when we go on leave), etc. But I'm working on it, it looks hell of a lot better than when we moved in.

Good luck!

Little late on this one, but our house looks like a "home." Nice curtains on the windows, a rug on the floor, family pics on the walls, and a zillion toys EVERYWHERE lol.

My tip is to slowly work out the college stuff...I'm 26 almost 27 and it's finally took me until about 6 months ago to have a house that looked like a home and not just a bachelorette pad. It's hard when you don't have money. I used to be a horrible pack rat but in the past year, I have converted my ways lol. I freecycle everything that I don't want, I might even be considered a little extreme, but I've started to think that less is more lol. (Topeka has a pretty active freecycle group that I recall)

my advice is to buy 1 nice thing a month for your house & as you do, throw something out too-In time, it will be all set the way you want it to be sweety:goodvibes

I agree with you. It took me a long time.

take it one thing at a time...right now our wishlist for our house totals well over 5000..........but what we are doing is buying something small(under 50) off our list each month and also putting at least 50 into the mega fund..then when we have enough, we'll buy bigger things. We luck out too that we can put things on home layaway here and not have to pay interest on them, so we can get a little nicer stuff sooner. Just take it slow and the best thing to do is to get rid of excess stuff and refinish thigns that you already own if you can. I used a tablecloth that I bought on sale for $7 to make a headboard/curtain for behind our bed, now all I need to do is get it hung. It is sooo much nicer and makes a huge difference to me without costing more than 20 bucks...

After 12 years I am still working on it. 3 years ago we got our new big thing for the house. A king size bed. Last year we got the kids bedroom sets and new living room set. This year was a bedroom set for us. I try to do the little things a little at the time but we always try to get something from our taxes. We only were able to start doing that a few years ago we hadalot of debt before then.

After moving so much and being in a very limit budget I learned some things...
Do not buy something "just for now" save the money and buy the one you want and like when you can.
Know what you want to decorate the house/rooms like. When you don't know what you want you just buy stuffs just cause they are cute and at the end they might not even go with the decoration.

Are house is still sorta coming together...most of our furniture doesn't make or isn't a set. :( But it was all free...can't complain. But one day I guess it will all be done, match, and be decorated. :)

I'm still working on it.... a lot of the stuff we have are cheap stuff. Our couch and bed are probably the only stuff that we will be keeping for awhile. :giggle

its taking us awhile. We are just not getting started after 2 months. Im sure it will take me another 3 to get it the way I want it.

I agree just buy one nice thing at a time and im with shaky- don buy things just for now......ive been on my own for a while and have gathered much of what we have over those 3 years....just when we got here, though, we bought our dining room table and some art pieces. I really think art on the walls pulls a look together. Ours look expensive but were really cheap. Big lots and TJ maxx and other store like them have unframed canvas paintings that are much more affordable than the $400 you would pay in a gallery. And our dining room table i am IN LOVE with :) it for me really ties things together- bc now we sit down together every night and have dinner together and that for me is the homey-est feeling :)

Also wanted to add....keep an eye on overstock.com and similar places. Thats where i got my headboard (a red silk wall mounted one it BEAUTIFUL!!) i got it for 70% less than what i saw it in stores- PLUS they have times where shipping is FREE (bc thats the big catch about ordering online shipping can get expensive)...good luck :)

Ian and I bought everything for our living area at once. That was because we found an ACTUAL going out of business sale. They were selling EVERYTHING at half price and it was REALLY nice stuff. So we purchased everything at once as well as for the bedroom (at another time) we bought it in a set. We are both fond of dark wood so it was easy as for as agreeing what went in the house.
I am still waiting for the perfect drapes and rugs but these things take time.

I suggest finding that kind of sale or buying the things you want piece by piece. Another thing is I don't believe on wasting money on something "for just right now" cause when you buy "cheap" furniture it is just that money wasted you can't sell it and get it back. I always save to buy the actual piece I know I want and will keep that will last a long time.

We are still working on it and we have been married about 9 years.. I am happy with what I have and some of our nicer pieces my husband has built by hand.. i agree 1 thing at a time though. I am sure once we buy a house, if we ever get to leave CA, we'll get the furniture we want. I don't want to buy the high end items I want until we are more settled.

I would suggest getting some fake (but real looking) flowers from Michael's or Hobby Lobby and just putting them in a vase with little clear glass beads...it's really cheap and flowers always make things homier! Plus it's much cheaper than buying real flowers all the time!