How to Stretch Your Decorating Dollars

Looking to stretch your decorating dollars? Here’s some ideas to decorate your country primitive home with a tight decorating budget.

We all enjoy decorating our homes to reflect our style and make our family a cozy place to live. Finding special handmade pieces, just the right curtain or upholstery, or primitive antique and vintage collectibles can all add to your home’s primitive home decor. But you wonder, “How can redecorate when I have a small budget?”

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Ways to Stretch Your Decorating Dollars

Re-purpose

Before you throw out, sell or give away your outdated items consider re-purposing them. Outdated canisters can be sprayed painted with primitive colors. Scratched furniture can be sanded and repainted. Update a couch with new throw pillows or a quilt across the back. If the cushions aren’t what they once were, get new stuffing or foam from your local fabric store. (Tip: get on your local store mailing list for 40-50% off coupons to save on upholstery foam.)

Has your wreath seen one too many windy days? Remove the damaged or faded flowers and bow and replace them with new ones. Sometimes a new bow alone can give a wreath a whole a new life.

Rearrange things you are bored with, moving items around and replacing a few can give your room a fresh new look and feel.

Look for furniture and other items you can re-purpose at yard sales, second-hand store, or from friends and family. Careful though, they may  like what you did to that old dresser, they may want it back!

Quality not Quantity

Spend your money where it counts most. Look for handcrafted primitive crafts that are well made and fit your primitive home decor. A few exceptional unique items can become a new focal piece to your room. You don’t need to crowd the room with clutter. It has a way of drowning the room’s best features. If you notice the farmhouse style, it’s light, simple, and uses a fewer key pieces of decor. 

It’s those special, well made country primitives that you’ll cherish the most. Some of my precious belongings are few primitive handcrafts I found at craft shows. Knowing that a talented crafter put their love and care into the framed paper cut folk art or when pouring the warm yellow beeswax into the antique candy mold to make my cat statue are worth far more than something I bought that is impersonal and imported.

DIY – Do it Yourself

After you have re-purposed the old, brought in some new wonderful primitive keepsakes, now you can fill with some of your own crafts. You may amaze yourself by trying a new craft. Not only it is fun, you could be opening up the door to a whole new passion. You’ll never know if you make your own grubby jars unless you try.

You can start small and simple if you’re a primitive craft “newbie” Take your time and don’t hurry. Look for tutorials here on Prim Mart, our Pinterest boards and elsewhere on the internet. And, there are some wonderful Facebook Groups where you can find people sharing their skills and projects with others. 

Part of the primitive philosophy is being creative with what you have to make your home. You don’t have to buy everything brand, spanking new to make your home what you want to be. Some ingenuity, elbow grease, and creativity can turn your tired old decor into a cozy country decor you’ll love and give you pride. But even with these ideas, there may still be something missing in your rooms’ decor. That’s when it’s time to look for great looking pieces that worth spending some of your decorating budget on.  Online stores are a great place to look for daily deals like at Antique Farm House  Their daily finds are some of the neatest decor pieces I’ve seen and are a perfect match for both country primitive and farmhouse style decorating.