Making a Rental a Home

So, due to the whole credit business and the deal on the house falling through, Hubby and I are going to be stuck in the rental for the foreseeable future. (Check out the back story here.) At first, this was really upsetting to me. The house we are in now is small and only has two bedrooms. The walls are all off white (or as I like to call them dirty white). I spent an hour scrubbing our small bathroom walls one day and went through a huge amount of supplies. The walls still look dirty.

The second bedroom seemed ridiculously small. It housed our office with a desk, large bookcase, display cabinet, futon, and a jewelry armoire and it seemed jam packed. All I could think was where are we going to put a crib? Hubby told me everything would be fine and that we'd just move furniture out of the room. All I could think was where in the hell are we going to move it to?

We have two enclosed porches, one on the front of the house and one on the back. The front one is my "craft" (or chaos) room. I had a lot of stuff jam packed in there as well. Hubby thought we could move the futon and the computer desk in with the craft stuff. I was not buying it, but Hubby, it turns out, has better vision than I.

Not only did the futon fit, but it made a nice place for me to sit down and work on small things like jewelry in front of the t.v. The computer desk fit nicely on the other end of the porch. All of my crafting supplies and surfaces fit around everything else.

As for the bedroom (soon to be the nursery), the crib fits in there perfectly as well as an armchair (which I'll eventually replace with a rocker). The tall bookcase stayed and another small bookcase came in for baby storage. There is even room for a dresser/changing table.
I've started decorating a little bit. I'm trying not to go overboard, since we still don't know if it's a boy or girl. (See discussion on color schemes here and here.) I've been mostly sticking with the black and grays, since that will go with either color scheme.

Now, I know these descriptions are better with pictures. I'll show you the current status of the nursery, but it looks bare and undecorated right now, so be wary of that. As for the craft porch/office, you'll have to wait until I can finish reorganizing because it's a total disaster right now! ;) All right, enough disclaimers, on with the pictures:

Corner with the crib:Opposite corner with armchair (also note some of Hubby's "office" decor is still on the walls. This will get relocated if we have a girl!) :


Tall bookcase that stayed:

The final corner with display cabinet and room for dresser/changing table:

Since all this, I've been reading on various blogs ways to make even a rental feel like your home. Nobody does this better than The Nester over at The Nesting Place (see what I mean here and here) She even has a post about being brave and painting the walls in your rental here. Her attitude is don't ask if the landlord never said not to and if you have to paint it back when you leave so be it. (Now granted, The Nester is talking about painting the walls a neutral color). Now, if only I could convince my Hubby this is a good philosophy....

I'll keep you all up to date on rearranging our house (with more pics I promise!) as I can. (Read: if I have the baby tomorrow, you're SOL for awhile!) ;)

Do you live in a rental? Have you? What did you do to make it a home?

Happy Crafting!