MoneySupermarket have a ‘Room For Improvement‘ challenge to do exactly that – improve a room in your house on a budget. We were given £50 to make up a room of our choice, and naturally the room had to be H’s.

We rent so we were a little restricted with what we could do, although then again a lot of it was making £50 stretch and make a significant difference – and I think we’ve done well.

One thing her room has been lacking is storage – and space. When her friend stayed over on a sleepover we had to move a lot of her room out of there due to lack of space and it seemed silly. Living in the corner of her room was the nursing chair too – easily the most comfortable chair we own, but for an almost four-year old’s room? It has to go.

When the weather is colder you can really feel it in our rooms, we have no central heating, just a vent which pushes warm air out – so we chose some paint to give her walls a warmer feel. Dotted all over the walls were nails and hooks from previous tenants, so we removed all of them, filled in the holes and repainted them in a warm yellow – it makes the room feel nicer too – also gone are the marks from the walls where things have bashed it.

I’ve collected Dick Bruna postcards and put them in Ikea frames, trying to keep a fairly basic colour scheme for her room – so we bought more of the 3M frame stickies to avoid blu-tack like stains or making too many holes in the wall – we need more though, which has taken us over budget. They’re great, and do hold some heavy frames, although need multiple stickies to hold them on (some have fallen off, hence the bare-looking walls!).

Shaun added some ideas to a Pinterest board I created so we’d have ideas of things we want – and two stood out. The wall with the various picture frames in all shapes and sizes is something which can grow over time (so we don’t need to put up much right now). I bought some frames in Tiger (£2 each) and have put hama beads in one, and a wooden H letter I bought in another.

The dolls house shelves jumped out at me as a brilliant idea – we’re still only part-way as we need to look at what to use on the outside – I used the sticky plasticy paper Tiger have in store (£3 a roll, you get a lot) and some that I already had. We need to cover the outside of the shelves so that will happen when we have time.

Then there’s the bunting – made from scrap fabric left over from when we bought H’s curtains and fastened together with things we already had – the colour scheme fits in with everything else in there.

So, the cost:
Paint – £18
Wall stickers £6.99
Tiger paper for covering shelves £3
New picture frames for room £4
New Ikea storage shelves £20
Two drawers for shelves £5
3M sticky pads £3
3M hooks £2

Total spent : £61.99

and here’s the result…. she has so much space now, and most importantly of all those awful plastic tubs of toys can be emptied and maybe even freecycled and we’ll have space in our spare room. Now THAT I like a lot. We’re not finished but given this was started properly last Sunday night, I think we’re doing really well.

* Things still to do – put toys into the storage, put the pictures on the walls, finish covering the shelves, add wall stickers

We were given £50 to complete this challenge, thank you MoneySupermarket!