Besides the goblets, I found a ceramic salad bowl that wasn’t precisely the same raspberry as the dishes but close, which I put on the counter and filled with fruit. I also nabbed a vintage-style mason jar caddy—like you’d use for canning—then filled the jars with some gravel and potting soil and planted them with parsley, rosemary, cilantro, and thyme. I’ve never had much space or talent for gardening, so I wasn’t sure how long the plants would survive, but that little spot of green on my kitchen windowsill looked very pretty and homey.
Nan, I thought, would be thrilled. She was always saying, “It takes living things to bring a room alive.” I was starting to see what she meant.
My final and largest project was the living room. My downstairs neighbor let me borrow her portable upholstery steamer. By the time I finished cleaning the velvet, removed the weird black balls from the bottom, and screwed on four new natural wood-colored wooden legs, the sofa looked brand new. That big splash of blue velvet against those pearl gray walls was elegant but so vibrant.
Two apple crates from Minnesota topped with a rectangle of thick glass made a cute coffee table, and I jazzed up the floor lamp by hot-gluing some gray, pink, and white chevron fabric over the old shade. They turned out great and cost me $13.67 to make. It had become something of a competition, trying to see how little I could spend while still getting the look I wanted.
Spray paint is the best friend of a girl on a budget. I used it to freshen up the ugly floating shelves before bolting them to the living room wall to hold books, knickknacks, and family photos. I mounted some smaller shelves on either side of the little bow window that overlooked the street.
That bow window added so much to the space. It was just big enough to hold the pine desk, which I also painted white. I put my sewing machine on the desk and some mason jars filled with thread, buttons, trim, pins, and other sewing notions on the floating shelves and—voilà! Instant sewing studio. It was compact for sure, but efficiently laid out, and I had always wanted a dedicated sewing room.
The final, and if I do say so myself, most ingenious addition to my living space was the idea I had for refurbishing the wicker side chair. Once again, I broke out the spray paint, but this time I used a very pretty green, a color like leaves of birch trees in the early days of spring. Once the paint was dry, I removed the seat, ripped off the old fabric, and recovered it with a yard of sturdy white twill. Then, with yarn from a needlepoint project I started but never finished, I stitched through the evenly placed holes in the wicker chair back to create a pretty pattern of blue flowers with bright pink centers growing on dark green vines. The total cost of the project was only twenty-one dollars, but when I put it next to the sapphire love seat it pulled the whole room together.
In terms of physical exertion, I’m not sure I ever worked as hard as I did during those five days when I was decorating the condo, but the results were worth every drop of sweat and way more than the $530 I put into the decorating. I felt proud of my accomplishment and knew that Jamie would have been proud of me too.
I placed the last picture on the bookshelf—a photo of Jamie and me on our canoeing and camping trip to Bear Head Lake State Park, a honeymoon delayed by a year and a half because of Jamie’s cancer—and stood back to admire the completely transformed and absolutely beautiful space.
“Thank you, honey,” I said, turning in a circle and smiling. “It’s just what I always wanted, a real home.”
Of course, no decorating project is ever truly finished. Throw pillows and drapery panels could come later, when I found a fabric I loved at a price I was willing to pay. And I would keep my eye out for a nice, inexpensive rug to define the living room area.
The biggest ticket item on my wish list was a table, something that could do dual duty for both dining and crafting—I didn’t have room for one of each. It would be nice, too, if there was some kind of storage included, a place to stow crafting tools. But even if I could find one to meet my needs, the table would have to wait. Considering all I’d accomplished, $530 wasn’t much, but until I had a steady source of income, I wouldn’t spend one more unnecessary dollar.
Monica was right—the clock was ticking. Two weeks had already passed since my unceremonious termination from Spector. In two more days, right after Monday night’s Big Reveal for Nan and Monica, I’d start my job search in earnest. In the meantime, there was one more project I wanted to tackle, something I’d been thinking about ever since the conversation in my head, when Jamie told me how happy Z would have been to get his old sweater or hand-me-down shirt.
I went to my bedroom closet, which now finally had space enough so my twirly skirts wouldn’t get wrinkled, pulled out the box of my old fabric, and started searching through the contents until I found just what I was looking for—rosy pink background printed with pastel, pop-eyed owls.
“Perfect!”
* * *
“You’re joking,” Sunny said, as if she really
