The budget-friendly way to upgrade your home – from floors to furniture
telegraph.co.ukBeth Dadswell suggests: “Instead of buying an expensive rug, head over to your local carpet shop and see if they have any large carpet offcuts that you could have whipped to make a rug instead.” Expect to pay from £5 per linear metre for a professional carpet-whipping service, or have a go yourself with a glue gun and a roll of Easybind (£28 for a 5m length from carpetrunners.co.uk).For the outlay of an online course or workshop, you could learn how to master some specialist DIY.
Create Academy offers e-learning around myriad disciplines, from block printing with textile designer Molly Mahon, curtain-making with Gemma Moulton, and even upholstery with Changing Rooms’ Micaela Sharp (above) explaining how to recover a headboard and armchair.
At £127, it costs less than some designer cushions.A decent sofa will easily set you back four figures, but there are more purse-friendly ways to work with what you’ve got.
When the fashion stylist Sarah Corbett-Winder moved house and wanted hers (from sofa.com) to feel more grown-up, she had the seat pads covered in a gingham Ralph Lauren Home fabric, and kept the frame as it was.“I really love the contrast of the two fabrics and it meant that we got a new look without replacing the sofa,” she says.Many local upholsterers can provide estimates remotely with images and rough dimensions, and Plumbs is a nationwide upholsterer that offers free, at-home quotations.It goes without saying that painting is transformative, but it rarely ends up being the hour-long task you’d envisaged.
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