Redecorating On A Budget

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

February 9, 1999 / 10:51 AM EST / CBS

Linda Watts was so tired of her boring living room that she budgeted $50,000 to redecorate it. Then she hired Laurie Ward, who helped her get the job done for a few hundred dollars. CBS This Morning was there to learn some secrets from the budget decorator, who swears you can get the dramatic results of a full redecorating job without spending a fortune.

"My mission is to tell people that everyone can have a beautiful home without spending a lot of money, and that's really the truth," Ward says. "Shocking, but true."

Ward runs Use-What-You-Have Interiors, a New York-based decorating service with an unusual twist. Instead of buying new furniture for her clients, she works with what they already own and suggests inexpensive touches to correct common decorating mistakes.

Living room "before"

"It's really extraordinary to see what kind of difference you can make with a small budget," says Ward. "It really isn't about how much you spend, really. It's about correcting the ten most common decorating mistakes."

For client Linda Watts, a boring living room led her to consider buying all new furniture. She explains, "I was told by some decorators that I needed to throw everything out. But Laurie said you don't need to throw everything out, we can just add some stuff to it."

Stuff that Laurie knows how to find. So, braving rain and New York traffic, Laurie and Linda went shopping.

Matching lamps and colorful accents, says Laurie, is an inexpensive way to change the look of a room. So is correcting common mistakes. Among these mistakes: lining furniture up against the wall; placing table lamps at the back of tables; cluttered bookshelves; highlighting unattractive radiators; and positioning seating too far apart for conversation.

Laurie showed Linda how to rearrange the room to really show it off. First, furniture, art, and accessories are cleared out. Then, the bookshelves are neatened up to look more formal. Porcelain accessories are grouped nearby to create the dramatic effect of a collection. To counter the room's long and narrow shape, the rug is repositioned, and the couch hides the radiator.

New places for the chairs and coffee table help create a "conversation area." The desk is moved away from a wall. Next, pictures from other rooms in the house were brought in to decorate the walls.

But, says Laurie, one wall will remain blank, because "every room needs a blank wall to rest the eye."

New purchases move in, old accessories find new homes, and colorful accents help brighten the look. Finally a chenille throw is added , so that Linda can curl up and admire her new, yet familiar, living room.

So just how diferent can moving the furniture and adding a few accessories be? "I can't even believe it," Linda says. "I can't believe this is my living room! My God! It's just incredible to me. Just a couple of changes, you know. I'm feeling thrilled!"

Use-What-You-Have Interiors charges about $300 to make over a room, and has designers around the country.

Linda Watts had budgeted up to $50,000 to redo her place, but only spent a few hundred dollars on accessories. With the money she saved, she's planning to take a nice vacation with her husband.

To visit the firm's Web site, go to www.redecorate.com.