Anyone who has ever tried to makeover their house, or even a small part of it, knows that there can be significant cost involved. Cost savvy shoppers will always keep an eye out for the best deals, scope out the sales and are masters at the coupon game. But what if you could renovate most of your house entirely FREE? What if you could makeover the ENTIRE thing without it costing you anything more than a little gas money? I'm here to find out if that's possible, and I truly believe that it is.
If you have never used the Freecycle group on Yahoo, you have no idea what you're missing. The premise behind this service is that people throughout your local area join the group, then offer up items for the taking that might otherwise just be taken to the landfill. It gives these items a second chance at being useful, even if their current keeper no longer has a use for them, and keeps them from piling up unnecessarily in the dump. It also gives others in the group a shot at picking up some pretty neat stuff completely FREE.
There is no selling allowed. No bartering, trading or negotiating. The deal is... if you ask for it, you pick it up. If you offer it, someone else comes to get it from you. It's really that simple, and over the last few years of using this service, I have been AMAZED at some of the things I have been able to get. When I heard a story on the news of a single mother whose apartment had been completely gutted by a fire, I was able to get beds, bedding, clothes, appliances, kitchen items, personal care items, and furniture to give her a new start in her new apartment with her six kids. All it cost me was a little time asking for the items, arranging for pick up, and then transporting them from the homes they came from into her new place. It's really pretty awesome, when you think of it.
This got me thinking. If I could give that woman a whole new start, why couldn't I give my little condo a whole new look? We have been talking about selling it for awhile now, but it needs a fresh face before we can put it on the market. New paint, new floors, new lighting fixtures... things like that. There are lots of people who will put left over construction materials up for grabs, and all you have to do is go get it.
Our whole place is only about 900 square feet. We have 2 bedrooms, one bath, a tiny kitchen and the living room. We live in a condo complex, and our building consists of 3 attached units, so we don't have much of a yard to worry about... just a small flower bed outside the front door and some rock area behind the building.
I'm going to be kicking off this little project by going to pick up a free quart of paint. ACE Hardware is having a free paint promotion today, and giving away one free quart per family that stops in. That quart would probably be enough to paint the part of my kitchen that won't be getting tiled as the back splash behind the stove and over the back counters.
I will be posting pictures as I go, to show the before and after effects of what we are able to get done. I am going to be using Freecycle, as well as any FREE product promotion I can get my hands on. There are so many ways to get leftover stuff or promotional stuff for no cost at all that it's kind of silly to pay for it until I have no other option. Here's to the most adventurous summer project I've ever taken on!!
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