The Start of a Frugal-ish Project

Saturday, June 13, 2015
    It's been a really long time since I've been on here. I guess we've just been kind of doing the same stuff and it seemed boring to just keep reiterating my grocery list week after week. Even though it did keep me accountable to not going super over budget.

   Well we have a new project...s/he is due in early December. After a few hormone induced meltdowns of "We're renting, we can't paint the nursery!"  and "This won't look like my Pinterest page!" I finally calmed down and realized...baby won't care. So I'm just accepting the wall color for what it is and going with light furniture to brighten it up.

  I have been staying away from most "what you need for baby" websites and articles because I know that I won't really need most of that stuff, but I can be easily persuaded into thinking I need things.

  After looking at some different ideas for changing tables we decided to go with a chest of drawers  with a changing pad on top instead of buying a designated changing table that would be useless after awhile.

 Starting with Craigslist I realized that these little dressers can be kind of pricey. It's also difficult to find them kind of unfinished/shabby. Most of what I found on CL had been painted with Chalk Paint so that's why they were so expensive.
$225

              
                   $185

 $100


 The painted dressers look nice but we wanted a white one so we would be paying that, stripping the paint, and redoing it. No thanks. I saw on Facebook that someone was having a yardsale nearby on Friday morning and had a dresser listed. We went at 8:00am hoping it was what we were looking for. It was EXACTLY what I wanted. The couple we purchased it from also used it for a changing table also.
Jackpot! $40
Then we realized we didn't have a sander. Off to Lowe's we went. Picked up a sander and some sandpaper, total: $70.

 Got the sander home, realized we needed sandpaper with holes in it, went back to Lowe's.

 Returned home to start sanding. Realized the sander wasn't working so great. Back to Lowe's to get a courser grit of sandpaper.


  Still didn't really help. Maybe we just really suck at sanding? I don't know. I checked out some reviews on Amazon and found that this worked great for some people and others had the same issues we had. Overheating, not a lot of power, and the dust collecting bag has a habit of just kind of...falling off.

  Looks like we're going BACK to Lowe's tomorrow to return this darn thing.

  After all of this frustration I realized that I can take the piece to work and sand it there for just the cost of more sandpaper. I just wish I realized this earlier before all of this hassle!