Home Interiors: How to get a five-star look on a budget
The living area in Jennifer Sheahan's house. Picture: Moya Nolan
Making a house a home is a wonderfully exciting process. Property papers, magazines, Instagram and Pintererst are amazing sources of ideas — especially expensive ones!
But when your head is turned by something out of budget it can be heartbreakingly frustrating.
Don’t give up! There’s always a way to get what you want if you just get creative. Here are some ways that I achieved the look that I wanted with items I couldn’t afford.
Can we all just stop for a minute and gape collectively at the price of bathroom vanities. Why are they so expensive? I trawled bathroom showrooms online and in-person to find a reasonably priced unit that I liked the look of but I just couldn’t find what I was looking for within my budget. Enter Ikea. Sprucing up an Ikea unit is the easiest way to affordably get something that looks gorgeous, with a bonus of it being custom designed to your home.
In my case, I got the Godmorgon unit for €129 and added beautiful brushed brass handles and legs from Superfront, at an additional cost of €112, bringing my total to €241 — a bargain compared to anything decent I had found and perfectly matched to my bathroom design.
Another great option for bathroom vanities is to look for second-hand cabinets — Adverts or DoneDeal have plenty or check out the NCBI Home shops.
Then you can repaint and add your own handles to create the perfect unit for your bathroom.
Working with a small space meant the optimal bathroom design for my home was a wetroom.
Wetrooms negate the need for enclosed showers which frees up a lot of space in a small room. They’re also expensive. Luckily my builder had a creative solution — he sunk an elongated shower tray and very slightly slanted the floor tiles in front of the shower — this is barely noticeable but it means the water runs back into the shower rather than pooling on the floor.
All this together meant I could get away with having just one shower screen instead of fully enclosing doors, and has successfully opened up the bathroom at a fraction of the cost of a wet room.
I’ve covered wardrobes in previous articles but this was one of the biggest sticker shocks in my budget. My wardrobes needed to fit under the awkward space of the eaves of my dormer roof extension and so I couldn’t save money by getting flat-packed wardrobes. Instead I went for a wall-mounted storage system in place of wardrobe interiors, and had the wardrobe doors made to fit the space. The resulting cost was less than a third of the cheapest built-in quote I got for built-in sliding wardrobes.
I bought the Elfa system — the Ikea Boaxel is another great affordable option. I ordered mirrored sliding wardrobe doors made to measure from Woodworkers in Harold’s Cross in Dublin at a cost of €440, and my builder installed them for me. They look as good as the most expensive mirrored sliding wardrobe doors I saw.
If you have the skills and tools to customise ready-made wardrobes this can be a great option to save money too — ikeahackers.net has a wealth of tutorials and DIY guides available to help you fit a standard-size wardrobe into your space. Finally, adding you own handles to plain doors is a great way to add expensive look to your wardrobe at a fraction of the cost. Superfront, Dowsing & Reynolds, and Buster & Punch all have beautiful options.
You can get cheap garden furniture and you can get gorgeous garden furniture, but it can be difficult (though not impossible) to get both of these qualities in the same item. This is one of the rare times where I feel I would have saved money if I had more space — I have seen some really nice outdoor lounge sets for great value but for me, finding furniture that looked good and also fitted neatly into my tiny 2x2sqm garden was fruitless.
We used leftover tiles from my downstairs bathroom to create a gorgeous bench — this can be a brilliant way to save money because tiles usually have a minimum order quantity and therefore you’re likely to be left with extra. Using them to tile outdoor areas such as a bench, wall, or tabletop is a great way to save and brings your design aesthetic through to your outdoors.
Just make sure they’re suitable for outdoor use — you may need to add a sealant.
Leftover materials also went into making my outdoor dining table — in this case, the spare planks of cedar from my dormer extensions cladding. I also got the outdoor dining chairs I love by spray-painting €7 folding chairs from Ikea.
I really admire good lighting and appreciate lighting designers — dramatic, beautiful lighting can be a very worthwhile investment.
If it is out of budget though, LED strip lights can be highly effective at minimal cost — usually around €10 per meter — plus they consume far less electricity than traditional light bulbs.
LED strips can be set right into your plasterboard for high impact, or used to uplight shelving for a more subtle effect. Look for warm lighting and add diffuser strips for a cosy and elegant look.
We'd love to hear your money-saving hacks for creating expensive-looking items. Email homeimprovement@examiner.ie
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