Our Renovation

We renovated our entire bathroom with luxury fittings for £2000*. When buying materials for a project they quite quickly add up so what are our top tips for keeping the price down?

1. shop around, don't purchase everything from one shop

2. look on second hand retailers like Facebook market place, we got our sink and the tiles second hand and they are all brand new! 

3. don't rush. you aren't going to find everything over night.

4. things cost money to make, respect that and know when it is worth spending the money for higher quality items e.g. taps, showers, toilets.

*note we did all the work, fitting plumbing, tilling e.t.c. apart from plastering

Humm good question. We bought this house so we could play with our design ideas and different approaches to design. So, we booked a plasterer to plaster our upstairs bathroom and second bedroom. Then for the master bedroom we went for the thorough prep method which involved over 16 hours of sanding with an electric sander, then a combination of filling, sanding, filling, sanding, filling and sanding followed by sugar soaping before painting, then some more filling and sanding then more paint. Let's just say we should have chosen a smaller room to play with this idea.

The finish of the rooms is very comparable, but we question whether it was worth it for us as we could have spent that time working and more than covered the price of a plasterer. So on the whole, would we recommend the thorough prep method - no not unless you have nowhere else to be for a week.

And so the question arises, why don't we just plaster the rooms ourselves? Well, we do have all the tools and Ben has done plastering before, but plastering really does take a lot of skill and as perfectionists we really appreciate it being done right - we can point out all the imperfections in our house's walls, even the plasterer left some. Nevertheless, our plan for the 3rd bedroom is for us to plaster it ourselves so we will update this thought when we get round to that maybe with a more full blog post with more detailed pro's and con's to help you decide.

We were warned, and we learnt very quickly, that live in renovations are not easy. Patience may be key, but sometimes you just need to paint it white and create temporary fixes (some may call these bodged jobs, but shhh we promise it is temporary). Our kitchen needed this. Most of the appliances didn't work and there just wasn't any space to cook (we love cooking so this was essential!) so we did a quick demo of upper cabinets and a large unit then painted the space white for a fresh feel... and oh was it worth it. Just these simple quick changes made such a difference to our mental status. A few months later we came back to lay some second hand flooring and, however temporary this is, it creates essential head space to be able to keep it clean and keep up with life. more photos over on Instagram