She Sold Her Brown Sectional For $150, Bought Two Old Couches For $100 Total, And Grabbed A $6 Antique Store Oil Painting To Make Her Farmhouse Cozy

For a long time, the farmhouse was perfect beige and white. It looked like the pictures on social media, and it did not feel like home. The creator behind Making Maple Hill says she finally changed course when she realized two things: this was her husband Ryan’s home too, and not everything had to be picture worthy all the time.

A cozy living room with a sofa and armchair

When she and Ryan bought their farmhouse more than nine years ago, it was anything but cozy. She describes it as run down, forgotten and dirty. They have chipped away at it slowly ever since, on a single income for most of that time and without much money to work with.

Her approach is now simple. Her little knickknacks and personal touches matter more to her than how good a room looked when she posted it on Instagram. As she puts it, if she quit YouTube tomorrow, the house would look exactly the same.

The Couch Swap That Saved Money

The best money story in the tour is in the living room. The couple had a brown sectional until about last year. She sold it for $150, then bought two older couches from Facebook Marketplace for $100 total. The couches are old, she says, but they are great, and she loves the pattern on them. She also found a wool rug on Marketplace for a really good deal.

Her advice is to learn how to source things that are high in value but not necessarily expensive, because people are often just selling older items. It takes patience, and sometimes some travel to pick something up, but you pay far less.

Thrifting The Little Things

She calls thrifting everything the best thing a person can do to make a home cozy. An oil painting she grabbed at an antique store the other day cost just $6. The quilt on the back of her couch came from a thrift store a long time ago, and she is sure she paid no more than a dollar or two for it. The afghan was just as cheap.

Those small, inexpensive, hunted items add up over time and make a home feel cozy and collected. She also admits that this takes years. She cannot even say how many types of decor she has gone through in the house.

Warm Light And A Lived In Look

Lighting is her favorite practical trick. She and Ryan joke that they are allergic to LEDs and to the big overhead light, because they never turn it on. They use incandescent bulbs in lamps because they give off a warm glow, warmer than even soft white LEDs.

She also argues that a cozy home is not going to have perfectly clear surfaces. Ryan pointed out that grandma would not have had everything tucked away in a clean aesthetic, and grandpa would have left his pipe sitting out. A home that looks lived in, she says, shows that people have been there a while and collected what is there.

Paint, Not Demolition

Almost nothing in the house has been torn out. She says they have never done demolition. Essentially they have just painted, and everything in the kitchen is paint, though they did replace the kitchen floors with hardwood last year. Her view is that most homes can be cozy if the people in them are willing to get creative and add a personal touch.

In fact, she says that if you took out all of their belongings and furniture, the house would not look like anything special. The things that belong to the family make it feel cozy, warm and inviting.

Learn To Make It Yourself

When money was tight, she taught herself to make things. She learned to make her own candles years ago because soy candles were too expensive. She describes herself as a very beginner sewer who can sew a semi straight line, but that was enough to make curtains. Her back door curtains came from a large amount of green ticking stripe fabric she picked up at the thrift store, and she has sewn kitchen curtains recently too. Custom curtains, she notes, would have cost far more.

She also walks through a fabric bowl cover, which she says any beginner can sew in about 15 minutes of hands-on time:

Turn your largest bowl upside down on the fabric and mark a circle 2 inches wider all the way around. Cut two of these circles.
Put the pretty sides together and sew a 1/4 inch seam around the edge, leaving a 2 to 3 inch opening.
Flip it through the opening and press it with an iron.
Stitch another circle at a 5/8 inch seam allowance around the middle to make a pocket.
Thread elastic through the pocket with a safety pin, sew the ends together, and close the opening.

She likes to dampen the cover and put it over rising dough, or use it to carry food in a bowl without spills. She also loves giving them as gifts.

The Part Money Cannot Buy

Her last point is about food and attitude. She wants her children to remember that their mother made the best rolls and that the kitchen smelled like cinnamon, not how much shopping they did. She says readers have told her they never knew their parents had little money because their homes were so full of joy. Delicious meals and a homemade dessert, she believes, make a home feel safe and warm.

She also says a cozy attitude toward your family matters more than a perfect room. For anyone staring at an empty living room and a thin wallet, a $150 sectional sale, a $100 pair of couches and a $6 painting make a pretty good starting point.

Willow and Hearth