Decorating the College Apartment

Back To School

It's that time again! Here in Georgia most of the kids are back in school so it's time for my home to become "normal" again. My oldest left for her last year of college and moved back into last years apartment. This year she has, yet again, a new roommate which means a new decorating scheme. I happened to have a very large painting of an Italian village at home that I was willing to part with for the girls to have in their living area. The colors in the painting are shades of green, white, brown and blue, so we used this to create the central color scheme.

The kitchen and the den are open to one another so we made sure the colors blended through both rooms. There is a little bar in the kitchen that needed two bar stools so we shopped around in the thrift stores. We were very lucky to find two stools for $10.00. They looked brand new to me and in perfect condition.

I offered to paint the plain wood seats with the exact colors that are in the painting. I thought using random designs that "did not match" with colors that did match would look nice in the room.

Here is a photo of the tops of the stools. I used acrylic paint and a durable, strong clear finish on the top to seal them. The stool on the left looks very yellow in the photograph but more closely matches the green in the stool to the right.

Below are both stools completely finished and ready to pack away in the car for the trip to college.

The random circles were penciled out using a kitchen ramekin and the squares I just did without a pattern, as you can see. They look great in the room, match the painting and the girls seem happy with the final results. Total cost $10 bucks. Thrift stores are great places to hunt around when you are on a budget.

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