Emily came down from Columbus last Sunday, stood in the doorway of her old bedroom and said, "Oh, Mom. It's so you." I decided to take that as a compliment.
The room has been mostly empty since we cleared it out last spring. For a year it held her old full-size bed, a dresser and three boxes of things I could not decide about. In March, after we made our last mortgage payment and I stopped feeling like every dollar had a job already, I finally decided what it should be. A sewing room, with a place for Emily and Nate to sleep when they visit.
I gave myself a budget of $350. I came in at $340. Here is where it went.
The money, line by line
- Paint, $96. Two gallons of a soft gray-green and a quart of white for the trim, plus a new roller cover and tape. The walls were a purple Emily picked in 2008.
- Primer, $28. One gallon. More on this below.
- Secondhand cutting and sewing table, $45. A solid wood table from a church rummage sale in Springboro, 30 by 60 inches. Greg added felt pads to the legs.
- Daybed, $110. Used, from a family in Lebanon who listed it online. Metal frame with a trundle, both mattresses included. The old full-size bed went to the spare room at Mom's condo.
- Ceiling light, $39. A flush-mount LED fixture to replace the old single-bulb globe. Greg installed it.
- Task lamp, $22. A clamp-on daylight lamp for the table.
That is $340. My sewing machine, the chair and the shelving were things we already had. The chair is from the kitchen. The shelving was in Josh's closet.
Paint and light made the biggest difference
If I had to do this again with $150, I would spend it all on paint and the light fixture. The purple was dark and the single globe was sad. After two coats of the gray-green and the LED fixture, the room looks twice as big. On a gray April afternoon I can thread a needle without the lamp.
The fixture is rated at 15 watts. The old globe had a 60-watt bulb that Emily used to leave on all night. At about 9 cents a kWh, that is not a big savings, a few dollars a year. But it is one more room that is not quietly costing us money.
What I would skip next time
I would skip the primer. The man at Lowe's said dark purple needs primer, and maybe it does in some cases, but the paint I bought was a paint-and-primer combination, and after one coat of primer and two of paint I had a third of a gallon of primer left. In hindsight two coats of paint alone would have covered it. That is $28 I could have used on a better chair.
I would also skip buying the daybed from more than 20 minutes away. The Lebanon family was very nice, but it took two trips in Greg's F-150 because the trundle would not fit with the frame, and I spent about $9 in gas on a $110 bed.
The guest part
Emily and Nate are the only overnight guests we really have now. They come down maybe five times a year. The daybed with the trundle sleeps two, not luxuriously, but fine. Nate is 6 foot 2 and says it is "totally okay," which in Nate means his feet hang off. I bought a long pillow and told myself that counts.
Emily's reaction mattered to me more than I thought it would. It is hard to repaint your daughter's bedroom. It felt like erasing something. She saw it differently, I think. She said it looked like a room somebody actually used, which her old room had not been for years.
What is next
Josh's room stays as it is for now, a plain guest room. His graduation is this weekend, then Indianapolis in June. I have quotes on the roof this month ranging from $11,800 to $14,500, so any more room projects are on hold until we decide about that.
For now I have a room with a door that closes, a table big enough to lay out a quilt and a cat who has decided the daybed is his. Biscuit has not been invited. He does not care.
