Last weekend we had a bit of a mini room makeover in Miss Frugal’s bedroom which involved some furniture rearranging, some cheap IKEA furniture and a revamp of some of the things in there It looks really lovely and with a bit of creative thinking, she has a glamorous looking bedroom without the price tag you’d expect!
It got me thinking about the different ways you can revamp the furniture in your house on a budget so I thought I’d share some of my ideas with you….
1) We revamped our ugly old pine bedside cabinets for the cost of a can of spray paint and it was ridiculously easy to do. We bought the Valspar spray paint and primer in one paint and it worked brilliantly. The handles were just painted with some spare paint that we used on the feature wall in our bedroom!
With some of the leftover paint we gave a charity shop find a bit of a makeover too….
2) If you have scratched wooden furniture then the best solution is usually to consider sanding and re-staining but the quick solution would just be to rub a wax crayon in the same colour over the scratch. Then use a soft cloth to remove the wax from the surface leaving behind a wax filled scratch that you’ll barely see.
3) Make an old saggy sofa more comfortable by getting a piece of plywood cut to size and popping it underneath the cushions to stop the sag. Places like B&Q will cut wood to size for you.
4) Flat pack furniture definitely has it’s uses – especially when you’re on a budget – but it can look very basic! We recently bought a new dressing table for Miss Frugal’s room from Argos and it looked like nothing special when we built it. We added a lovely traditional mirror that my Mam gave me many, many years ago to try and make it look a bit more special but it still needed something extra so we bought some crystal handles from B&Q for about £3 each and added them and it looks amazing now. It looks like it cost a lot more than we paid for it.
5) Don’t be afraid to call in the professionals – they may not be as expensive as you think! I paid someone who I found on Facebook to paint my gorgeous little writing bureau after trying myself and failing. I didn’t want to ruin a lovely piece of furniture so I asked on Facebook for recommendations and found someone who had done similar things that I loved the look of before. She didn’t charge too much and I loved the result – it honestly transformed the bureau.
6) If you’re fed up with your settee then you could get a new one or get your old one recovered if it’s just the fabric that you want replacing but you could save some money and buy some pretty throws and new cushions to give it a new lease of life.
7) Wallpaper isn’t just for walls and if there’s some beautiful wallpaper that you love but can’t afford to do a whole room or even just a feature wall with it then consider using it to revamp a piece of furniture.
Here’s my favourite Orla Kiely wall paper inside a painted bookcase and I might be biased but I think it looks amazing!
8) Create a headboard for a boring bed by hanging a blanket or piece of fancy voile up above the bed.
9) With some fabric and a staple gun you can transform your dining room chairs! I bought some wipe clean fabric from Laura Ashley a few weeks ago and recovered mine in less than twenty minutes.
10) This is an idea that my photo doesn’t really back up as I’m not happy with mine right now. My suggestion here is to buy a plain cheap-ish floor lamp and spend the money you save on a super special lampshade. I have a simple floor lamp that I like to change the lampshade on to match wherever I put it in the house but at the moment it’s in the living room and I couldn’t find a shade I loved in the right colour so I bought the one I have for just a few pounds in the sale meaning for it just to be a temporary measure.
A year later and the temporary lampshade is still there!
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