How I saved 95% on wall Decor

I love you Pottery Barn.

Too bad I have never purchased a single item from you - and probably never will, because you're just TOO EXPENSIVE!!!

I am, however, lucky enough to be the recipient of the world's most awesomest diaper bag from Pottery Barn Kids (yes, awesomest is a word) that a dear friend got for me.

Unless any other dear friends want to buy me something from Pottery Barn (which you are more than welcome to), you will never see anything from that store in my home.

Here are two reasons why:

1. You can usually find the same looking stuff at Ross or Marshalls (it may not be the same quality, but at this point in my life I'm not really looking for longevity)

2. You can MAKE the stuff yourself.

Let's explore Reason #2.

Here is Pottery Barn's Modern Ledge

This is exactly what I was looking for when I imagined this for Levi's new room:



So, off to the Home Depot and Salvation Army I went, and gathered the following materials for my project:



4 ugly picture frames from the Salvation Army bursting with potential: $5
1 6 foot long 1X2 cut in half: $3
1 8 foot long piece of Brick Moulding cut to size and mitered: $10

I gave the poor outdated picture frames a new fresh makeover, and painted all my other materials with some satin finish black spray paint.



Next you take your favorite tool: your handy dandy husband, to attach the 1X2s to the wall. We (I mean He), just used 3.5 inch long screws and hung them directly into the wall.





So then you end up with your anchors. If I did this over again, I would have gone for the the 1X3 or maybe even 1X4. 2 inches was not as deep as I wanted.



The next step entails power tools, although I'm sure you could do this with a miter box and a really strong arm. We (he) mitered the trim moulding so that the moulding fit together like a box:







Then we (he) took a nail gun and nailed these pieces directly onto our anchors. I did not want it exactly flush on top so that there would be a little lip to rest some frames against. (I still need to touch up and paint over the nails, but I'll get to that when my next 1,000 projects are done).



Shield your eyes from the horrible natural wood color blinds. One of my next 1,000 projects is to make a faux roman shade for that window.





The Vision:



Starting to come together:



And that's it! It took (not including paint drying time) probably about 1 hour, and cost only $18 including the frames! Compare that to $90 for only the ledges themselves over at Pottery Barn. Granted, you could probably find comparable ledges at Kohls or Ross for probably about $20 each, but you would still save more than half and be proud of something you created!

And then, for all your hardwork, you can treat yourself to one of these like we did:



If you want to, you could have one the next night - and then even the next night too. But then you'd stop because you wouldn't want to go overboard or anything. Dang it Braums... if you just wouldn't play that irresistible banana split commercial during the Oprah show!

Now all I need to do is the chalkboard paint, the mirror, and get the toy box/bucket/drawer thing that I have my eye on from IKEA and make a roman shade and I'll be done with that wall in that room. Phew.

Next on the list: Adding Architectural interest to the master bedroom using WALLPAPER! What?!?! Wallpaper?!?! Isn't this 2009?

You'll see ;-)