Q: I’d love to see a glimpse of how you two plan and budget for projects. We both work full-time jobs and have a house that needs a lot of TLC. With our busy schedules, there doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day or days in the weekend. That being the case, I’d love to see how you guys do it. -Lisa

A: One of the projects we have coming up in the near future is a guest room re-do. When we first got the house, we had no idea what our style was, and the current state of the guest room reflects a mix match of styles and left over furniture from our apartment. In light of that, we’re going to try to bring in the modern rustic style we’re aiming for with a plank wall (more on all of that here). Since this is one of the next projects we have up our sleeves, we’re going to use this as an example…

STEP 1 // TALK IT OUT. We’ve been talking about doing a plank wall for a long time, but this past weekend we finally sat down to officially plan it out. We usually try to sit down and talk about big projects like this together because A) this makes the lines of communication better when it comes time to actually do the project and B) two heads are better than one. Most of the time, Ash catches something I don’t or vice versa. We make a good team like that.

STEP 2 // MAKE A LIST. CHECK IT TWICE. Once we’ve talked through the project from A to Z, we make two lists: a to-do list and a need list. The to-do lists consists of the major steps we have to accomplish in order to get the project finished. The need list is everything we’re going to need for the project – right down the the very last drill bit. If we come across something we already have (in this case, we already have some stain, polyurethane and brushes on hand), we still write it down so we’ll be sure to double check we have enough before we take a trip to the hardware store.

STEP 3 // TAKE A PRE-SHOPPING TRIP. With our new “need list” in hand (with notes of what we already have), we like to take a quick pre-shopping trip to our local hardware store to check out the prices on stuff we aren’t sure about (like lumber and specific hardware). In our experience, we’ve learned that if you’re doing a larger project, getting a real price for everything is essential. If we were just buying one or two pieces of lumber, it wouldn’t be a big deal if we were off by a dollar or two. For the plank wall project, we’re buying 20+ pieces, so being off by $2 per board would mean we under- or over-budgeted by $40 – which may make a big difference in our budget for the project. Do that enough times over the course of a project, and things add up fast.

STEP 4 // BUDGET & SCHEDULE. Once step three is done, we have a good gist of how much things are going to cost, and we can get an accurate idea of how much the project total is going to be. That’s when we take a look over in our Finance Binder, get a good idea of what our finances look like and schedule a weekend that’s good for us financially and time-wise. Some bigger projects will take some saving up to do as we make it a point to pay cash for everything. That’s when we make a note in our binder to set aside X number of dollars for X project.

STEP 5 // GET TO WORK. If you’ve got everything properly planned, this really is the easy part – even for larger projects. You already know how much everything is going to cost, you’ve scheduled your time to the best of your ability, and you’ve got all the materials on hand and paid for. Just rock out, get it done and try to have fun.

I (especially) love knowing how things are going to go before I get into them, so planning ahead is great for my sanity. On top of that, if you’ve really done your homework, everything should be relatively stress-free. Sure, doing all the planning takes some time, but it’s great to be able to say, “Hey! I figured this might happen, and I have a fix,” when something goes wrong. It makes the whole process a thousand times less stressful.

Ashley here! After realizing our “system” is the same for all of our projects (even when we’re just decorating an area of the house), we came up with a fun and handy “DIY Project Worksheet”. You can download our design for free here. Each sheet prints two worksheets – making them the perfect size for stashing in your purse or folding in your wallet. Happy planning!

Lumber photo from here.

Q: I live in Zuni, VA — a small town between Suffolk and Petersburg. I have enjoyed your blog for awhile now and wanted to ask you a question. I would love to visit flea markets in or near Richmond, but I don’t know where to go. Do you have any suggestions? … -Brenda

A: This question crosses our inbox every now and then, and when we got Brenda’s email yesterday, we thought it was about time to make a post about it. For some reason, it wasn’t really until we started blogging (and reading other blogs) that we got interested in visiting local thrift / antique stores. These days, it’s one of our favorite things to do when we have the time, and we’ve even bought some of our favorite things in the house from them. If we go out of town, we find ourselves searching for area thrift stores to check out while we’re at our destination (like this super awesome place I went to in LA). There are a lot of interesting thrift and antique stores here in the Richmond area, but here are the places we stop by most often…

Cold Harbor Antique Mall: This is the antique mall we stop by most often. This is our go-to place for small accessories and random accent pieces (like antique cameras and wood crates). The store is divided up by “booths” and their vendors often have awesome sales. They keep their stock rotated really well so no matter how many times we stop by, we always see new things. I talked more about shopping there in this post. Click here for directions.

Governor’s Antiques: This place is huge. Seriously. Huge. They have everything imaginable–old gas pumps, stop lights, huge concrete yard ornaments, old doors, marble slabs, massive estate furniture… the list goes on and on. In the past, we’ve found their prices to be a little on the high side, but it’s still worth the trip just to see the massive amount of… stuff! Check out their website here.

Class & Trash: This place is a new favorite of ours. The prices are very reasonable, and they have a great collection of fun, funky pieces. The few times we’ve visited the store, we’ve noticed they have a lot of pieces that could easily be transformed into furniture or fun decor elements with a little bit of elbow grease and some DIY know-how – like old doors that could be used as a headboards, barrels that could be side tables and carts that could be turned into coffee tables. Check out their website here.

Love of Jesus Thrift Store: There are two Love of Jesus locations (one on Nine Mile Road and another, larger store on Midlothian Turnpike). The Midlothian Turnpike location has a really good rotation of furniture – we’ve spied some really great mid-century buffets that we wish we had a space for. The Nine Mile Road location is a pretty good size, too, and is the one we go to most frequently between the two. Their prices are ridiculously good (like the frame for our laundry room chalkboard… for $1). They even have a corner of the store where you can buy whatever you can fit into your cart from a designated area for $10. Check out their website here.

Caravati’s – Technically Caravati’s isn’t an antique or thrift store (it’s actually “architectural salvage”), but they have a ton of great, old items.  They have a huge collection of doors, fireplace facades, mantles, columns, slabs of reclaimed wood and what I’m sure to be the largest amount of ornate door knobs I think I’ve ever seen. If you’re looking for larger architectural items with some character, this is the place to go. Check out their website here.

McLawhorn’s Red Barn Antiques – This place is pretty awesome because not only do they have interesting things (like a great collection of old books, which Greg loves), but the building itself has a lot of history. It used to be a very popular general store back in the very early 1900′s and the current owners love telling people about the history. They have a vintage coke cooler in the middle of the store, and they hand out free Cokes to customers.  We actually bought the green dresser in our utility room from here, and we brought you guys shopping with us in this post. Check out their website here.

If any of you Richmonder’s have a place for us to add to our list, let us know in the comments. We’d love to add a few new places to our normal stomping grounds. For those of you outside the Richmond area, please tell us your favorite area thrift stores in the comments. You just might help another reader find exactly what they’ve been looking for! Oh, and be sure to check back Friday for our winter brunch recap. We have lots of photos, details and recipes to share!

Love of Jesus Thrift photo found here. Carvati’s photo found here.