Would you decorate a rental or just put up with it?

woodsey2002

It's a tough one, I've done it twice, first house we rented after returning from abroad was actually on a rent to buy contract so from day one, we treated it like our home, stripped and redecorated all the bedrooms, bought new curtains etc etc at quite considerable cost. We had the landlords full written approval but the whole thing turned into a disaster and we left 3 months before our tenancy agreement was up, money down the drain..landlord got a beautifully decorated house to move back into, not the pink filthy shithole, he rented to us.
House number two, long term rental or so we thought, again spent time money and effort making it look amazing, 6 months later landlord decides to sell, onto number 3..one year on, haven't done a damn thing, barely even unpacked, drives me insane and makes me miserable most days but I don't want to get too attached again, one day something will come for sale that we love and would be happy to part with 500K for but until that day I'll put up with what we have. I live here but it's not my house.

paddy's_mum

poppysarah wrote: »

Where did you buy your wallpaper and paint?

£3 a roll is the cheapest I think we found paper - would love to know if you found cheaper.

Wickes, item number 168266. A 40 metre Jumbo roll at £7.14 each.

Paint from any d-i-y store's own or budget range. Focus are closing down and only yesterday I saw that they had all sizes and colours of emulsion paint at silly money eg 10 litres white emulsion for £9.99.

I also keep an eye out for ends-of-range paint or people chucking out leftover pots and tins. As long as it's cheap as chips, and a water based pale or neutral paint, you can mix up all the odds and ends in an old tub or barrel of some sort (10 litre emulsion tubs make good mix'n'store) and have enough to use as the undercoat to seal and prime newly applied woodchip in at least a couple of rooms.

I've lost count of the number of nieces, students or FTB's that I've given this almost free basic paint to ... hope that helps.

celyn90

poppysarah wrote: »

Where did you buy your wallpaper and paint?

£3 a roll is the cheapest I think we found paper - would love to know if you found cheaper.

For paint, look to see if you have a local community recycling project or a scrap store - our local scrap store gives paint away for a donation as it can't be recycled. It is opened, but mostly hardly used. We bought enough to do the whole house in the colours we wanted - plus all the sundries like wood fillers, radiator paint, varnishes, sealers, exterior masonary paint and wood stains for £15 (which was more than their suggested donation). All the stuff we had was good brands as well and all was fine to use (I used to work in the labs for a refinish company, so I'm super picky when it comes to paint!). It's worth looking - there is an article about scrapstores in the june 2010 issue of uk handmade; it's not an easy link, but it's on page 16 (use page turning tab at the top to navigate through the issue)

http://content.yudu.com/Library/A1nxbr/UKHandmadeSummer2010/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yudu.com%2Fitem%2Fdetails%2F171211%2FUK-Handmade-Summer-2010

cel x

Eton_Rifle

pinkshoes wrote: »

In general, do men really care that much about house decor, or is it just a female thing??.

I'm a man and I'm the one driving the redecoration!

I know pink was historically a 'male' colour but times they have a-changed!

allybee101

If it's one or two rooms with horrific wallpaper I'd ask the LL if I could redecorate. I'm renting and to be honest all I've done in the last 19 months was get permission to put curtains up. When I moved in the house had vertical blinds in lounge and bedroom, the curtains made such a difference to the heat retention.
The curtains will be staying when I leave (I'm in the middle of possibly buying my first place and the windows are much bigger) and they were put up well in the first place (with assistance from my wonderful step-Dad) so I doubt that they will have any reason to complain.

The walls are all magnolia so nothing offensive. But I would have asked to paint if it was vile.

Geenie

Apricot wrote: »

I would have to decorate, it needn't be expensive and a year is a long time to live with something that you hate.

Why?!!

Can't you put up with something for a year?!! Try 30 / 40 years of marriage and see what compromise has to be made with that to succeed! :cool:

Seriously, a year with dodgy walls is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

crumblepie

When I moved into my rented place the landlord had painted everywhere magnolia. The tenants before me had painted downstairs a dark terracotta colour that took three coats to cover. landlord wan't amused as he repainted everthing back to neutral. As I'm here long term (he has no intention of selling, he's had the place 30 odd years) I asked if I could paint and he said yes just no dark colours! I haven't spent a fortune but I'm not a magnolia type of person and had to put some colour on the wall.

I've been in other places though on short lets - 6 or 12 months and not been able to change anything. I have fond memories of striped wallpaper not been straight on the wall that I had to live with for a year.

Bullion_Baron

No way I'd spend my hard earned improving the value of somebody else's house! Save that extra money up for a place of your own!

Catblue

Am I the only one who equates a vile interior with a landlord who just can't be bothered? Who maybe has very little money, time or inclination?

If a landlord can't be bothered to paint a room that is shabby then how quickly are they going to respond to real problems or repairs? Not very quickly, that would be my guess.

Everyone on here is saying how cheap and easy it is to redecorate a room so that it looks great. All true. So how come the landlord isn't doing it if it is so cheap and easy?

I've rented a few places in my time - if it isn't pristine when I do the first viewing then they are not getting my money.

Tiddlywinks

Reusegirl wrote: »

Most areas have a scrapstore and some of them do have paint but they also do paper and wallpaper as well as arts, crafts and play things. You can go to the scrapstoreuk.org website and do a search for your local scrapstore and see if they do paint or you can go to the community repaint website and do a search there if its specifically paint you're after.
The London scrapstore Work and Play tend to have wallpaper or you can wallpaper in old marketing materials.
I saw a cloakroom beautifully papered in a repeat pattern of pages from a company's surplus old financial reports - looked amazing and costs pennies for paste!

Why resurrect an old thread just to recommend this website? Maybe because ALL of your posts so far are just to simply mention the site. Why?