How we furnished our house!

Furnishing our house!

Hey guys!


Alyne here <3

So, in case you missed it, recently YOLO! (you only live once) has become a fad among the younger generation. It's something that is exclaimed post doing something out of the norm . As Jack Black so eloquently put it "I'm fairly certain YOLO is just Carpe Diem for stupid people."

Wisdom from "Words with Friends"

In other news! Cameron and I are proud home owners renters! Woo! Our lovely two bedroom, one bathroom, and one awesome kitchen home came UNFURNISHED! Thusly, we must acquire furniture. So here is how we did it on a budget (in case you ever move into an unfurnished place)!

So! This is how we did it, but of cooourse it will be different for everyone. Just mold it to your lifestyle! We'll go room by room.

Who doesn't love a lumberjack in red Ray-bans?

KITCHEN / Dining Room Total: $285.00

Ooobviously the most important rooms in the home. Our kitchen is, luckily, adorable so I didn't have to do too much! Our kitchen came with a fridge and dishwasher (which I keep using as a drying rack since I haven't had a dishwasher since leaving for college 6 years ago - haha) so pretty much all I had to get were appliances and a dining set.

Kitchen Aid

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       My "must have" appliances were a Kitchen Aid and  Blendtec. I never expected to get them this quickly (since they are so EXPENSIIVEEE) but LIFE IS GOOD and within two weeks of moving in I had them both. The Kitchen Aid was found by Cameron. He was a sleuth and went to a million Deseret Industries (a thrift store in Utah) and had given up hope when on Christmas Eve he found a beautiful yet dirty Kitchen Aid Classic for $125.00! These normally cost at least twice as much. He spent some time cleaning it up then gave it to me all wrapped up for Christmas.

Blendtec Blender
        The Blendtec was found through scouring KSL, Utah's classifieds. Just check your states classifieds or craigslist for things like this. I found a guy who was offering his blendtec for an Ipod Nano. Did we own an Ipod Nano? No! So we texted him and were like, "Sooo if we buy you an Ipod Nano is the Blendtec still available?" and he was like "Absolutely!" So we used our last Target giftcards from our wedding and bought an $160.00 Ipod Nano. TURNS OUT the guy works for Blendtec, and was super awesome and nice and ended up giving us a BRAND NEW Blendtec instead of the refurbished one, with two jars and a 10 year warranty! So for a few Target gift cards, we got a $500.00 Blender! Needless to say, I was ECSTATIC and still am! I love it and use it all the time. So grateful. You're all welcome to come over for smoothies whenever :)

Kitchen Table and Chairs
     Okay, so we lucked out here! But I bet a lot of you could too. Cameron's family had an old kitchen table with chairs in storage. It was the set he grew up with! Upon discovering our home was unfurnished, they said we could use them! This table was even in Germany when his Grandparents and Dad were stationed there. So history in the kitchen! Wooo! *since this was originally written, we got white cloth placemats at Ikea!

Hot Food Coasters
      Cameron took me out behind his families home in Saint George, Utah and took some slices out of a felled tree. This was the result!

Coaster Cupcakes!

Office Total: $133.00

Desk
     Cameron got his manly man-ness on and decided to build his own office desk. We decided to skip out on felling our own trees, and bought all the wood at Lowes for around $78.00. Then the nuts, bolts, screws, and other sundry tiny metal items added up the rest. We bought a sander at a thrift shop in Mesquite for FIVE DOLLARS and kidnapped his Dad's tools for the weekend (thanks Jeff!).

Choosing the Wood

Nailing together the frame (in the kitchen turned workshop!)

Laying in the final piece

The Finished Product!

Tada!

Chair
     Weeeell, SO, we don't exactly have an office chair yet. BUT no worries we'll keep you posted. Or maybe we'll steal a hard kitchen chair to use until we procure one? His goal is to get one of those ergonomic mesh ones. Fancy time! UPDATE: Office chair procured! Ikea! $ 39.99

Filing Cabinets
     Again! Cameron's find. These babies are left over from one of his "Exploits on the street!" He saved them from the depths of a dumpster at one of his old jobs. Also, the filing cabinet may or may not be temporarily filled with clothes due to the "dresser situation" (See: dresser, below.)

Living Room $10.00

"Television"
     Actually a projector! This was a sort of wedding gift to us from a friend of Cameron's, who got it on KSL for around $30.00! That's a steal, because projectors can cost up to $1000.00! (Thanks Shane!) We also built the shelf it is standing on, which cost around $10.00 for materials.

Couches
      A KSL dream. A Christmas Miracle. An act of kindness. Essentially we found these couches on KSL, then Cameron was like, "Sooo I know this is probably TOTALLY lowballing it, but would you be able to sell me the one couch for $40.00? If not no worries!" And the guy was like, "Okay sure, Merry Christmas!" THEN we finally borrow a truck from Cameron's gracious cousin, head to Lowes to buy rope and a tarp (to protect from the snow snow everywhere) and via text KSL man offers to throw in the matching love seat for $20.00! We of course agreed, then once we got to his house, we were all chatting as we packed up the couches, and they were like, "We forgot we have an Ottoman! Do you want that too?" So magically we fit a full sized couch, large two people love seat and an Ottoman in this tiny Toyota pickup. Cameron goes to pay him, and the man goes, "Don't worry about it! We remember what it was like to be Newlyweds, you can just have them." !!! SO NICE! We hope we can be like this once we are a little older. We want to be those cool older people who help other people out. Anyways. There you go. A KSL great act of kindness!

Mirror
     Cameron noticed that his cousin had this cool mirror just lying around, and found out it was on clearance at RC Willey where his old room mate works! So we headed over there, and luckily he had saved one in the back for us. It cost $10.00, and they usually cost over $50.00. UPDATE: Mirror has been moved to bedroom and paired with a white glossy glassy shelf on blocks to create a boudoir for moi!

Coffee Table
      We were going to have Cameron build a coffee table, or look for one on KSL, or create one out of cardboard boxes covered in scarves (see: side table below) but then some close friends of ours mentioned that they had an extra coffee table and that we could have it!! Amazing! It is SO CUTE. Classy I mean. Whatever. Haha. Anyways we looove it. It's a great centerpiece for the room. Thanks Em and Jon! We are getting great use of it :)

Side Table
      we have two side tables! One, as I mentioned, is literally a cardboard box with a basket lining that I threw over it. I actually think it's really cute :D The other is MUCH more classy, and was procured by the handy Cameron! Off he went again into the great backyard in Toquerville, and sawed about a foot and a half off of a felled tree. Then we brought it home, sanded it into oblivion, and tada! Side table!

Speakers
     From Cameron's family, they were going to the D.I. so he saved them!

CD/DVD player thing
      Acquired by Cameron from next to a dumpster.

Bedroom Total: $50.00

Mattress, Bed Frame, and Boxspring.
      All came free from KSL! I think we really lucked out because I'm guessing everyone got new home stuff for Christmas, and was just trying to get rid of their old stuff in the week after. We had to borrow trucks and make a few trips up to Salt Lake City to get them, but totally worth it! The mattress is a Posturpedic by Sealy, and the bedframe was originally from Ikea.

Dresser
    Much like unto our office chair, does not yet exist! But fear not, that's what the linen closet in the hallway right outside our bedroom is for! As we do not yet own a bounty of linens, sheets, and blankets galor, we are using it as our dresser! Repurposing at it's finest.

Comforter
    Like...50.00? At TJ-Maxx! It's Ralph Lauren. Cameron really wanted a white comforter so I gave in instead of making us get some crazy ruffled one.


OKAY! So I wrote this post AGES ago and then drifted away and never posted it! So here it is! There may be some math errors but...we'll all survive. Hopefully this will come in helpful for you if you ever need to find ways to buy or get furniture but can't afford the sticker price!

xoxoxoxoALYNE<333 (with contributions from Cameron)

Our most recent family photo...

p.s. I know people have asked for cheap travel blog posts and I wrote one but it was just getting crazy because it's so detailed! SO I might just end up having to make a video/vlog explaining it :)