Painting and decorating a house on an OS budget!

cleggie

Hi all

i desperately need to paint in interior of my house. We moved in 6 weeks ago and its magnolia from top to bottom!
My main expense will be new lino in the front room, which will be expensive, so i need to make sure i dont spend too much on paint and accessories.

Have any of you painted/decorated your houses on a budget? any tips on how to spend as little as possible?

Things like art for the walls/mirrors/cushions etc i will buy from eBay and other places.

chubbster_1

Avoid the really cheap paint from homebase would be my tip. The coverage is terrible and you won't save money because you'll have to use so much more of the stuff. Instead, buy a huge tin of trade white, and then ask on places like freecycle for any paint anyone's got kicking around and mix up some paler colours using what people offer you and the white Also, if you get given enough for three walls in one colour, look at maybe painting the 4th one in a complimentary colour rather than trying to match it - call it a 'feature' wall

starjumper

We used Tesco brilliant white paint throughout £10 for 5 litres and it's pretty good quality then splashed the colour about with curtains and rugs and stuff. okea is pretty good for slightly quirky stuff and John Lewis had some great rugs in the sale. Good luck!

Pink.

Hi cleggie,

Have a look at the In my home (includes DIY) MoneySaving board as there are lots of professionals who post there offering moneysaving advice on decorating.

Once you've had more input from the Old Stylers I'll move your thread over there.

Pink

cleggie

Brilliant, thanks Pink-winged!

Chubbster- thats a fab idea and so cheap!! Thanks so much!

Star Jumper- any idea when places like John Lewis have their sales?

gingin_2

I have been redecorating a once entirely yellow house from top to bottom in the last year. My tips are to buy good brushes and clean them well after every use, always have a damp cloth to hand and make sure you tape off your walls well. I went over board on tester pots and really I learnt that my first instinct tended to be right.

RAS

Can you buy trades white paint rather than stores?

Or try freecycle. Also may be a good place to get a few rolls of wall paper for a feature wall.

With respect to colours, I would actually suggest that you find curtains or blinds first (try fleabay or freegle and freecycle or charity shops). Then pick one colour from the curtains and do a feature wall in that or if it is pale, do all the walls to match. That way you end up with something coherent.

CH27

I'd be temted to leave magnolia on three walls & paint a feature wall in a bright colour that you can match accessories to.
That saves time & money.
Don't buy cheap paint. It's a false economy.

cleggie

CH27- that was my 1st thought, but the magnolia itself is looking too grubby now and i really want to (if possible) put my own stamp on the place.

RAS- i already have cream cutains for the front room (which i am going to do in creams, brown and natural green) and turquiose in my bedroom which just so happens to match my bedcover, so that room will be just white on the walls anyway.

SailorSam

If you're trying to keep costs down, why buy art for the walls.
If you can't do some simple modern art 'shapes' yourself, get offcuts of material to match curtains and cushions and stretch it over a piece of Mdf.

How About Orange

YORKSHIRELASS

I really sympathise. We havent done much decorating for 8 or 9 years but have no money to do anything so have been trying to make things look nicer without spending much! Its not easy. We have done 2 rooms in Natural Hessian from Dulux which is a great colour. I am quite inexperienced at decorating and my Dad said I should get decent paint which seems to have been good advice so far.

Dont just go to the big DIY stores either. We were surprised to find that our little local DIY shop gets some really good special offers and good prices. They are really helpful too.