Home Renovations = My Spring Fever

Like I stated in my post last night, I'm ready to remodel my house and move out of the "whatever, it's free" decoration style. My kitchen is nicely decorated, mostly because my grandma decorated it for me before we moved into the house. We rent from them, so she took it upon herself to put grapes in my kitchen. I'm not too fond of grapes, but it works. The rest of the house is a mixture of free furniture and seventies decor. My grandparents lived in this house during my childhood, so when they decided to rent to us, my grandma took it upon herself to try to restore everything to the way it looked when they lived here. Of course, because we rent, we can't go changing things drastically, but because we rent from family, I can change small things after getting approval. Until I'm ready to sit down with my grandmother to explain to her why change is good, pink in the dining room is driving me nuts, and the wallpaper in the bathroom is peeling, I'm going to change the things that I can do without her approval. I have made a list of the things I'm going to change first.

1. Window Coverings- I want new blinds, preferably wooden or cloth shades, plus it's time for new curtain in a few rooms. Most of my curtains work nicely, and my grandmother made most of them, but a sea foam green valance on the french doors does NOT work.
2. Ceiling Fans/Lighting- Almost every room in our house has a ceiling fan. NONE of them match. Half of them don't work properly. The one in the dining room has a light that works if you jiggle the cord a certain way, but the fan died 2 years ago. The one in my office is so old it has 1 speed, and pulling the cord again just makes it rotate the other direction. Almost all of them are showing bare bulbs because the light covers have randomly broken or vanished over the years.
3. Rugs- We have linoleum through the entire house. Thankfully before we moved in my grandparents were nice enough to remove what carpet was left. I didn't want allergen filled shag carpet from 30 years ago. They put a nice fake hardwood linoleum in my office that actually looks nice, but the rest of the house is varying colors and textures of linoleum from the 80s. I can't change the floors but I can find area rugs big enough to cover almost the entire room.
   
4. Chair/Couch Covers- Even though most of our furniture is free, it's still nice. A lot of it still looks practically brand new and was well taken care of before we received it. The only problem is all the colors don't exactly match. Our couches are a cream color with hints of red and blue thrown in, but our recliners are all different colors. We have 1 red, 1 blue, and 2 dark brown leather ones. I'm on the hunt for couch and chair covers that I can use to balance colors without eating up my budget or having to buy new furniture.

I still have to try to do all of this on a reasonable budget, so if anyone knows of any good discount places, I would love to hear about them.