Today we are are doing a Refresh Your Room makeover with Method! They just released their new line of Air Refreshers a few weeks ago and to celebrate we launched a $1,000 “Refresh Your Room” giveaway from Method.  Today we are going to show how to do your own Room Refresh. The idea is to refresh your room in a weekend with just $1000. Our managing Editor, Alison Piepmeyer volunteered her living room for the task. Our challenge was to redo Alison’s living room with $1000. Not a small sum of money but not big enough to buy a new sofa. We just wanted to use the things she already had and update the room with a few new pieces. Let’s get started! The first step of a Room Refresh is to (continued below)

1. RESEARCH. Alison lives in a small one-bedroom apartment on Nob Hill in San Francisco. I had Alison snap pictures of the space. We looked at the pictures and talked about how the room was used, what she loved and what she didn’t like. The first issue was there was a lot going on. There were lots of books up high on the shelf, the hutch had a patterned paper lining the cabinets, and there was an extra rug Alison had picked up from Morocco. The first thing we decided to do was to simply everything. We moved the books to a bookshelf in the bedroom and replaced them with some neutral black and white artwork. We lined the hutch with a plain white paper to make it less busy and we moved Alison’s cute Moroccan rug to the bedroom. Once we did these things we had a blank slate to work with.

The next thing we decided is that some of the furniture scale wasn’t right. For example, the side table didn’t fit in the corner properly and the two tables they were using as a coffee table looked too small for the room. The room also needed some vintage pieces. Most of the furniture had been bought from a store and it needed a little quirkiness and vintage touch to warm up the room. So we made a list of things to look for on Craigslist that we needed to replace or buy: Vintage Club Chair, Neutral Art, Large Coffee Table, Dining Room Table and Chairs, New Lighting, New Drapes, Plants.

The next step of the Room Refresh is to 2. COLLECT. We looked on Craigslist and found a great vintage minty green club chair for $40 (a total score!) and some dining chairs for $200. We made a trip to Ikea and Target to get a few practical items like drapes, drapery rods, pillows, and a lamp. We spent an hour or two going to lots of thrift stores where we found artwork and pots for plants and coffee table books. And we went to some vintage shops where we found the coffee table and wall lamp. We also placed a $250 order on Amazon for coffee table books. Here is how our budget ended up:

Vintage Mint Green Club Chair            $40
Vintage Coffee Table                            $30
Pillows                                                 $125
Ikea Floor Lamp                                   $60
Vintage Wall Lamp                              $90
Coffee Table Books                               $250
Vintage Art Work                                 $60
Dining Chairs                                       $200
Art Work                                              $60
Plants                                                   $65
Curtains and Rod                                  $30
Total                                          $1,010

The last step is 3. Install. Once we had all the stuff purchased we spent Saturday installing everything. You can see we still used most of the items from the old room we just moved them around to the bedroom or as side tables in the living room. The finishing touches are adding green plants everywhere, hanging artwork, putting out new pillows and setting out beautiful books and candles that smell good.

There were some practical fixes – like the black cords hanging from the TV. For those, we picked up a cord cover from a hardware store and attached it to the wall behind the TV. It was so easy and it looks so much better!

The green club chair was a total score. The nice thing about buying vintage is you can get really great pieces for a much better price than new. A lot of times they are better quality and cooler-looking too!

The giant heater is practical, but not very pretty. So we installed white drapes to soften the area around the heater. We made sure to hang the curtain rod all the way to the ceiling and wider than the window to make the room feel taller and to make a bigger impact. We picked up most of our planters from thrift stores. Then we brought them to our Flora Grubb (our favorite plant store.) It’s really important to bring the pots you’ll be using with you to the plant store. That way you can try out different plants to find what plant looks cutest in each vessel.

We started looking for a new dining table, but weren’t able to find one we liked. So, we decided to keep the dining table from Ikea, but switched out the chairs for knock-off Eames chairs that we found on Craigslist. Alison now keeps the table dimensions in her wallet so she can upgrade in case she sees something special at a vintage store or flea market.

We replaced the 2 mismatched side tables with a big coffee table (almost the length of the sofa) for $30 at a thrift store. Then we spent 25% of our budget on coffee table books. It isn’t intuitive to spend money on coffee table books. Most people will easily drop a few hundred dollars on a piece of furniture without thinking but art books fall lower on the list to worry about. I think they are so important for making a space feel warm. We try to buy a new book or two every month to add to to our collection collection and to our living room an interesting place to be. Good magazine subscriptions are good for this too!

Here’s what Alison had to say: I LOVE it! I really wish we’d done this sooner. Until we finished, I didn’t realized how stressed out I’d been about this room (I mean, those TV cords?!) Now I’m just excited to come home and hang out here. I’ve been wanting to fix it up but I’ve been too overwhelmed about everything that needed to be done that I didn’t know where to start. It is so helpful to get another set of eyes on the room to help me figure out what changes would make the most impact. Thank you Method!

And congratulations to our Method Refresh Your Room contest winner: #365 Denise!

Sources: Couch – West Elm, Pillows – Target and Serena & Lily, White Lamp – Ikea, Rug – Crate & Barrel, Various Pots – Thrift Stores and Flora Grubb, Plants – Flora Grubb, Silver Lamp – Vintage, Coasters – Anthropologie, Framed Sketches – Alameda Flea Market, Brass Side Table – West Elm, Antlers – Rose Bowl Flea Market, Coffee Table – Vintage, Coat Rack – CB2, Curtains & Rod – Ikea, Dining Table – Ikea, Eames Chairs – Craigslist, Wooden Stool – Urban Outfitters, Mint Chair – Craigslist, Throw Blanket – Serena & Lily, Green Palm Pillow – Furbish

This post is sponsored by Method. 

Photos by Paul Ferney for Oh Happy Day