#182...quick rental reno

On Friday, I shared the mirror we redid for my friend Heather's new place, and today I thought I would share the rest of the quick decorating we did in her new kitchen and living room.

This is the living room pre-decorating, after we arranged the furniture on move-in day....and here is the newly decorated living room.

We turned an old metal frame into a chalk board, and hung it on a furniture piece that used to be in Heather's entry, and now is serving as a side table for the couch.

For an easy window treatment, I sewed a simple flat panel of fabric that coordinated with the pillows we made for the room, and then simply used upholstery tacks to nail the valence to the wall. We chose to hang it near the ceiling to raise the look of the window.

Here is another shot of her mirror makeover. Now on to the kitchen....

Above is the kitchen on move-in day. Heather wanted to lighten and break-up all of the wood, so I looked online for ideas, and found that many renters cover their cabinets with contact paper that is easily removable when they go.

We decided to try cutting a silhouette of a fleur de lis in the contact paper since Heather is a New Orleans girl, and to give the kitchen some personality.

To make the contact paper cabinet fronts, we took down the doors and removed the hinges and cabinet pulls. Then we cut out a printed stencil of a fleur de lis, figured out our placement, and traced it onto the back of the contact paper. Next, we cut out the silhouette with an exacto-knife on a self-healing mat, and then carefully adhered the contact paper to the door front. Each door was a different measurement, so there was a bit of math to do figuring out the size of each contact paper front and the exact placement of the fleur de lis.

After completing the doors flanking the sink, we decided that we had lightened up the kitchen enough, and decided to simply finish the rest of the upper cabinets with cut out fleur de lis shapes, instead of continuing the silhouette concept.

To finish off the kitchen, we added a valence in a yellow stripe above the window, again held up by upholstery tacks, and we spray painted her clock hands orange to give the room some pop.