Room For Improvement - The £50 room makeover

Moneysupermarket.com have given a handful of creative British bloggers £50 and challenged them to makeover a room in their own houses.

As you know things in our house are a little temporary at the moment. A lot of things are lacking a proper home, whilst others are in places that will serve different purposes in a years time. As a result our own bedroom has been very neglected.

I can tell you that the exact thought process that went into decorating this room was "that big picture is getting in the way, lets stick it on the wall." The end.

So with £50 in my pocket I wondered if I could give our bedroom a bit of modern hotel chic. Painting would have blown the budget completely, so this is what I did...



Ikea Grono light madeover with Washi tape - 80p

These Ikea Grono lights originally cost us about £4 each. They are functional if a little dull. I used about quarter of a roll of washi tape (from this shop on eBay) on each of the lights, adding five strips to each side. It took about 5 minutes.



Duvet cover - £14.82

About six months ago I accidentally put our white duvet cover in the wash with a yellow duster and it came out highlighter pen yellow, I was devastated. I was pretty sure there was absolutely no way I'd be able to afford to replace it as part of this makeover, but with the help of some forgotten Tesco clubcard vouchers and some Quidco cashback, I saved over £20 off the retail price. If you are looking to achieve a similar budget duvet cover, you can pick up similar white ex hotel duvet covers on eBay for about £15.



Cushion covers and inners  - £16.02

Previously our bed decoration had extended to one overgrown feather pillow which was unceremoniously thrown on and off the bed every morning and evening. It's a sad fact that it's actually cheaper to buy ready made cushion covers than it is to make your own! So I purchased two new cushion forms and three covers. Then I cut the yellow cover down to size, used Heat N Bond Ultra (no sew) to affix applique letters and stuffed it with filling reused from a pregnancy support pillow.



Wall art - FREE!

I spent a lot of time browsing Pinterest looking for budget wall art ideas and eventually realised that particle board was the key! Better still my dad is currently doing some building and has loads of offcuts in a skip. However if you rumage in skips for things, you don't get to pick the size of them. I had originally hoped to make something based around particle board that was about a metre square, in the end the piece I scavanged was a lot smaller so I had to come up with a new idea. The fabric I used to cover it is a mixture of recycled shirts and Kona cotton. It's all stuff I had already but even if you were to buy it, you could achieve the same thing for about £5.



Ribba picture shelf & pictures - £18.50

Having discovered my wall art was a lot smaller than I first intended, my last purchase was an Ikea Ribba picture shelf for £8.50 along with two white picture frames (£3 & £6) and a small vase (£1) from Tesco. The mirror and clip frame were things we already had.

And here's what it look like all put together.



And the results side by side...

I must admit this whole project has been a bit of a revelation to me. As well as being a surprise discovering how far £50 can go, it was also (honestly!) a bit of a surprise to open my eyes and see how rubbish our bedroom looked! All of this has been great practice for the dressing our proper master suite when the remodel of the house is complete.

One of the bloggers taking part in the Room For Improvement project will also be selected at random to win £500 of B&Q vouchers. As we will soon have two bathrooms and three bedrooms to kit out, it would be fun seeing how far I could make that go...