Money Saving ideas when re-decorating your home

Buying a property can be an expensive business and re-decorating it or doing it up can cost even more but turning a house into a home can be cheaper than you think if you follow some basic rules. I have learnt a lot from my parents who have over the years transformed a variety of properties and with each project my mother has picked up some amazing skills which she is now slowly passing on to me.

Here are my top tips on saving money when re-decorating your home

1. Paint is your friend

Get acquainted with it, learn how to apply it and you will be fine. A dreary room can be transformed with a lick of paint, it's such a simple and cost effective way to bring a fresh feeling to any room and there is no excuse to not be able to do it yourself.

Upcycled furniture in the babies nursery 

2. Up-cycle old furniture

We have done a fair amount of this. Our bedside tables were out-dated pine wooden ones which we sanded back and applied some chalk paint and replaced the door knobs and instantly they become useable and stylish bedside tables at basically cost us the price of the paint. Most recently we have up-cycled two pieces of furniture for the babies room, a lovely little chest of draws which we used an antique finish and the other a wooden chair picked up from a tip a few years ago which was a horrible dark dipped varnish finish and we opted for a baby blue finish

3. Learn a new skill

We have done a fair amount of work on our bathroom, perhaps not how we would of done it we were going to stay here longterm as we are planning to sell the house this year and have re-decorated with a young family in mind and therefore needed to stay within budget for this room. After removing horrible carpet floor tiles we brought in a tiller to lay some floor tiles and then the bath started to leak so we replaced that and decided to replace the shower and towel radiator. As the shower and bath were coming out we decided to rip the old wall tiles off by ourself and since my mother had bought a tile cutter we decided to research and learn how to do the wall tiles ourself and we are pretty happy with the result.

4. Research

Before you decided to do anything especially if it requires employing someone to do the job such as structural or electoral work research what you need to be done, get as many quotes as possible as well as well as getting references or seeing examples of their work beforehand so you know they are up to the job and you don't end up waiting your money on a low quality finish

Mr A enjoying the garden

5. Don't overlook your garden or outdoor space

Creating a family friendly garden or outdoor space can be cheaper than you think and I find a lot of people neglect their gardens but really it should be an extension of your home and a place you can entertain during the summer. Over the last year we have tidied up most of our garden, have done numerous trips to the dump, re-painted our walls, cleared the flower beds and planted new flowers, up-cycled an old metal garden table which we use all the time as well as creating a small vegetable patch and with just some hard work we have created a wonderful outdoor space to enjoy this summer.

There are tons of other things you can do to save money from the smallest changes such as making sure the lights are turned off in rooms you are not using to energy saving lightbulbs and you can also apply a frugal outlook to any part of your life wether it be fashion, food, transport and Money Advice Service have over 101 ways to save money this year.

What are your best money saving tips?

Collaborated post