How to renovate and furnish a room from top to bottom for £700!
Our bedroom needed a lot of work on it; fixing dangerous electrics, repairing poor plaster work, replacing original 1930’s features, carpeting, furniture, soft furnishings and decor. So we need to be creative with our £700 budget and this is how we did it.
See the before and afters below
Budget:
Electrics- £0
Flooring- £370
Paint - £8
Furniture- £60
Headboard - £77
Fireplace- £79
Roman blind- £90
Picture rail- £0
Lighting - £0
Artwork, tapestry and plants- £0
I will expand more on this below!
Decorating is like sewing…PREPARATION IS KEY!
Boring as it is preparing the walls and surfaces makes all the difference. First we stripped all the walls and uncovered some very dangerous horizontal live wires running across the walls which we immediately took out safely.
The plaster was a real mix match of original 1930s plaster and more recent skimming over the old plaster but some of the 1930s paper border was not skimmed over. To avoid to cost of the a plasterer we spent days sanding and filling the walls.
We wanted to replace and original original features so we knocked out the fireplace blocking and replaced the damaged 1930s picture rail.
Antique Fireplace £79
We searched several reclamation yards to find a fireplace that was similar in dimensions to the original 1930s fireplace. I was really pleased with what we found the art nouveau style felt in keeping with a 1930s vibe, it needs work. We need to carry on stripping on the old paint and restore the black into the iron, we need to add a shelf and find something to act like a basket for the base.
Totally worth shopping around as the fireplace only cost £70 and the polish is around £10.
Flooring £370
Good quality materials is a real priority for us so we opted for a 100% wool berber carpet from a British carpet manufacturer. Often we re use carpet underlay where we can but in this room the carpet and underlay were so worn sadly we had to dispose of them.
We used a underlay made from a recycled waste product.
Our carpet fitter is great but old school so I cant give you a link to him or his carpets here!
Paint - £8
We were very kindly donated paint from Crown paints. Crown is our go to paint manufacturer so I was more than happy to be sponsored by them.
We love their scrubbable paint.
We tried over 6 different yellow paints! And finally decided on the Mustard field yellow by Elle decor Crown range. We absolutely love it! We were wary of using yellow in a bedroom as traditionally yellow has been considered a poor bedroom choice colour as it can be unrestful and hinder sleep. We have not found this at all, in our East facing bedroom it makes the room feel really warm, cosy and restful.
For the ceiling we used up some budget white emulsion paint…the ceiling took 4 coats of paint!!
For the woodwork we used up some old white matt eggshell.
The only paint we need to buy was for the radiator and large wardrobe, which we use wikos £8 tin of black satin. I love the black radiator against the yellow.
Blind - £90
I love Orla Kiely upholstery fabric which I brought at a greatly discounted price from my local fabric market Curtain Corner. It was more than a 3rd cheaper than other websites so totally worth shopping around!
I brought loads of it so I also made a head board and will also make some large fabric canvas storage boxes with the leftovers.
To find out how I managed to construct such a heavy working blind head to my instagram.
Furniture- £60
We needed a new bed and found a really affordable clean looking bed here for just £60.
We found a free wardrobe that a friend was kindly giving away on Facebook , which we sanded down and painted black.
We made a simple padded headboard with some of the left over fabric from the blind, you can read about how we made it here.
Artwork and plants £0
We used up all things we already had and then I made the white tapestry from some yarns in my stash!
If your curious about tapestry check out my tapestry workshops on my events page or shop for my tapestry kits.
