Our original bathroom

As far as rental bathrooms go, ours is pretty good. It's nice and big, gets a good amount of natural light, and everything is (more or less) in working order. The paint colour is not my favourite - a custardy yellow - but from what I can tell is reflective of 1940s bathrooms. Our landlord recently updated the vanity, shower, and tiles in black and white. My other gripe is that it gets so, SO cold in there with the tiled floor.

So, what can we do with a black, white, and yellow(ish) colour scheme? We decided on keeping it simple, and making all of our decor black and white also. Our to-do/get list includes:

• Replacing the mouldy old lace curtains with some simple sheer ones.
• Building some end tables for either side of the vanity on which to put some pot plants.
• Making something artistic happen on the blank wall above the bath.
• Getting a rug for the floor to save my freezing feet.
• Getting some colour-coordinated bathroom decor and homewares (towels, soap dispenser, etc).
• Sealing the bottom of the shower with silicone to stop the troublesome leak!

And of course, we need to do all of that on a budget! 

Watch this space!

Introduction

For the last two years my husband and I have been living on a pretty strict budget. I'm sure many of you can relate to how we got into this mess - job loss, going from two incomes to one, having more debts than one income can cover, etc. Sometimes life throws you curve balls and you've just gotta deal with it. Add to the mix our son who was born just over a year ago, and you can imagine that budgeting at our house is a serious affair.

I'm not saying that we're living in poverty or anything. Sure our finances are pretty tight and there have been a couple of times when our family have rescued us, but we count our blessings every day and we're well aware that we have a lot more than some people.

For the last few months things have been on the up. The dear husband got a (well deserved) pay rise, and I got some work as a casual academic. Our debts are slowly but surely getting paid off, and we're now in the exciting position to be able to start devoting a little of our budget to home decorating.

Currently we live in a three bedroom house that I would guess was built in the 1930s or 40s. It has Art Deco styling throughout, and there is a particularly beautiful Art Deco ceiling rose in our living room (see below image). I think that at some point in the sixties it must have been partially renovated/redecorated, which resulted in some pretty questionable decorating choices. The kitchen, for example, has a pale green linoleum floor, pale yellow tiles on the splashback, retro wallpaper lining the cupboards, and a horribly patterned orange and brown valance curtain on the window. And more recently the landlord revamped the bathroom with black and white tiles, but kept the original custard coloured walls. Luckily for me, the rest of the house is painted in a neutral custard cream colour.

The Art Deco ceiling rose in our loungeroom

As we're renting, when it comes to decorating there is only so much I can do - painting, light fixtures and flooring are out - but I can do some styling. I think the trick will be working with the colours I've got (as far as the walls/floors go), and finding decor that will complement and enhance our living spaces.

I started a few Pinterest boards that 1) show examples of the colour schemes of the rooms I'm working with, 2) give examples of what decor might work well with those colours, and 3) enable me to collect links to items I like and see how they work together. (You can find a link to my Pinterest pages in the navigation bar.)

My decorating must, above all, be affordable. I am a huge fan of places like Target and Kmart, because they often have cheaper alternatives to items that would be expensive elsewhere, and have some surprisingly on-trend homewares. Online shopping is another great place for bargains, as long as you're a bit savvy,

Hopefully our home decorating will achieve our goal of looking great without hurting our pockets!