West - The $50 Home Makeover: 75 Easy Projects to Transform Your Current Space into Your Dream Place--for $50 or Less!

Avon, Massachusetts

CHAPTER 1
Before and After

CHAPTER 2
Semi-Handmade

CHAPTER 3
Upcycling

CHAPTER 4
Simple DIY

The world is full of decorating books. Ones that are filled with beautiful rooms decorated by high-end designers on outrageous budgets. Books that make you feel like your home, and maybe by extension you, will never measure up. Books that make decorating seem like a mysterious thing that you need a degree and a few initials after your name to do properly. Books that transform a rational woman into a crazy lady who isnt fun to live with because shes trying to make her home look like a magazine shoot 24/7. This is not one of those books.

My dear, talented friend, Shaunna, has written a decorating book for you. A real person, on a real budget, living in a real house. This is a book for the mom who craves a creative outlet, but only has five minutes to complete a project to satisfy that craving. This is a book for the newlyweds who want to make a bunch of hand-me-downs and thrift store finds look a little less like a bunch of hand-me-downs and thrift store finds. This is a book for the people who want a wow-factor kind of home without breaking the bank.

But even more than thatmore than the creative ideas, fun projects, expert painting tips, and inspirational picturesShaunna gives you permission to try and fail. She encourages you to put things into perspective. And youll close this book at the end, feeling that youve just made a new friend. The kind of friend who dishes her best secrets and tricks with you. One who gives you the push to try something new and cheers you on. One whos willing to share her perfectly imperfect life and home with you. Thats the kind of decorating book youre about to read. And youre in for a real treat.

MARIAN PARSONS, author of Inspired You, creator of Miss Mustard Seeds Milk Paint, and
blogger at Miss Mustard Seed

Writing this book is surreal for me. It shouldnt be; I go through the same writing rituals almost daily for my blog. But Ive dreamed of writing a book since I was a little girl, thinking up stories of mermaids, lagoons, and adventure. If you had told me that one day Id write a blog for hundreds of thousands of readers about life, design, DIY projects, and the general imperfection of it all, I would have laughed you out of the room.

I was a late-blooming DIYer. The crafting, painting, and decorating came later for me. After college, I married the goofy love of my life and promptly decorated our new home the way everyone else decoratedthink commercial/matchy-matchy/brown furniture. Theres nothing wrong with brown, but there is something wrong with surrounding yourself with a space thats not wholly you.

A few years later, after having my second child, I found myself craving more life, more inspiration, more everything for the little family I so cherished. On Christmas Day in 2009, I sat surrounded by crumpled wrapping paper and love all around. The need to write was so overwhelming I could taste it, and with that, the blog Perfectly Imperfect was born.

I really thought I was writing for me (and maybe for my mom and dad), but you know what? People started reading real, live humans that were not related to me. It was thrilling, humbling, mind-blowing.

My husband, Matt (who youll see a lot of in this book), and I were in the middle of an attic renovation, and we were going with our gut in the decorating department, even though we had no formal training in architecture or design. We created our writing room, playroom, and home theater, and they were completely us. Creating those rooms on a budget led to an entire home transformation.

These makeovers are what got our blog moving around the World Wide Web, and theyve been featured by (pinch me!) The Nate Berkus Show, Better Homes & Gardens, Cottages & Bungalows, Flea Market Style, Design Sponge, The Pioneer Woman, Apartment Therapys Color Contest, Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, and Tori Spellings EdiTORIal, to name a few.

Somewhere in the middle of all that hoopla, it hit me: You can have the home you want now. It may be a work in progress, but you can create spaces that are completely you and that inspire you every moment of every day. Our homes matter. Our families share everything there, and those moments become our lives. So where we share themit matters.

Perfectly Imperfect then became a mission for us to empower you to pick up a paintbrush or a nail gun to create the home you want now. To go for it, and celebrate lifes imperfections. and create amid them anyway. You are what this is all about. Your homes, your lives, your families, and the imperfect beauty that lies within them all.

Because we fell in love with inspiring our readers to create their own havens, we opened a retail shop, Perfectly Imperfect (no surprise on the name), in our hometown square in Troy, Alabama. Soon after, we made our decor available in our online shop (www.perfectlyimperfectshop.com) and the rest, as they say, is history.

It has been some time since we opened our shop, and to say that we have been blessed is the understatement of the century. We continue to meet readers and customers, one after another, and with each encounter the drive to keep doing what we love grows.

There are big things on the horizon at Perfectly Imperfect, including the publication of this book, and we are so excited to see where it all leads. So come along with us for this part of the journey its going to be a good one.

Do you love every room in your home? Or do you have rooms that seem dark and outdated, or furniture that doesnt reflect your style anymore? Do you dream of creating a home that feels exactly like you, but dont have the budget, the time, or even a clue where to start? This book will help you stop dreaming, and start doing.

Here youll find 75 of the very easiest, most affordable, most high-impact projectsall of which can be completed with $50 or less. These simple projects will help you squeeze every last drop of style out of every cent, so that you get big improvements, but not a big bill.

This isnt a book about how to style your grand piano or pick out granite for your butlers pantry. Its a book for the real world, where youre stuck with a hideous chartreuse wall your landlord wont let you paint over, or youve spent your last penny on a home to call your own but that straight-out-of-80s kitchen is now also yours. Its about working with what you have to make your dream home a reality today.