'Clever Decorating Ideas' my arse!

[Zaphodsotherhead]

Anyone else tired of the 'House Interior' magazines with articles headlines 'How clever decorating ideas turned this dingy two bed terraced house into a light, bright modern home' - that, when you read on, you realise it's not 'clever decorating ideas' that have brightened and modernised the place, but rather a £25,000 extension, a £10,000 conservatory and a complete demolition of the entire back of the house?

I've recently moved in to a tiny terraced cottage, which can be quite dark. I'm picking up these magazines and realising that my best bet is just to leave the lights on all day.

Anyone else?

Yeah, it over occurred to me that I could spend 20 grand and make my room look much nicer! What can I do with 20 quid though?

I stopped buying for the same reason.

FWIW I put lots of glass and mirrors in dingy small rooms to reflect light. Not sure if it really works but makes me feel better.

I wish there were magazines that dealt entirely with room makeovers that you could do simply with paint, paper and accessories, rather than dwelling on 'statement pieces' which nobody with children and pets is ever going to use, or 'room accents'. The only accent my room has is a faint North Yorkshire one.

And yes, mog, mirrors are my friend too. It's an oddly laid out room, very long and little natural light gets to the far end, so in the evening when the sun has moved out of the room, it's like a Hobbit hole!

I get a couple house magazines per month so I know what you mean. This one is a bit more realistic though.

pocketmags.com/your-home-magazine

YES! I remember this. I'd forgotten about it. Went through my phase of it in about 2003. It's still bloody going on is it?! Annoying and patronising and depressing all in one.

There are loads of home instagram accounts now which are fab for affordable ideas! In some cases £20 can go a long way.

We just 'redecorated' our little girls room by adding wall stickers which cost £6.50 and it's made a real difference to her room.

when you read on, you realise it's not 'clever decorating ideas' that have brightened and modernised the place, but rather ...
clever photographer's lighting. Everything is brightly lit as if we are in some sterile clinical setting. Or the afterlife.

I know it’s counterintuitive but we had a super dark living room in our old house, we painted it bright white, had mirrors etc but it still felt dark. When we moved the new owners painted it navy blue which we thought sounded horrific. It actually looks beautiful and has “embraced” the darkness iyswim.

I eagerly bought the magazines back then hoping for wonderous wisdom for doing up my little tumble down old cottage. However it turns out that the basic principals of:

• light colours make walls and ceilings recede and
• strong colours make walls come in and
• mirrors bounce light and
• 3 kids, 2 dogs, 2 cats and 11 guinea pigs take up lots of room no matter what cushions you choose

are all i really needed to understand. And i understood all that perfectly well already

3 kids, 2 dogs, 2 cats and 11 guinea pigs take up lots of room no matter what cushions you choose

Ugh yes, we’re thinking about putting ours up for sale so I’ve been going around tidying up the scuffs on the walls and cleaning bits that seem to get forgotten and when I was looking for tips to make it appeal to buyers it was all put your furniture in storage and rent smaller furniture to make it look bigger, replace carpets if they look tired or move your office out of the third bedroom and put a bed in it, which is all very well but the house is only worth £200k so I’m not sure I want to spend a fortune on removals, storage and furniture rental!

Try the DIY on a budget facebook page.

Other than the over use of fablon, there are some pretty good ideas.

@Zillaindie

And glitter. Dont forget the glitter...

.......or the zigzag accent walls made with tape........

Does anyone remember 'scumbling'? Been there and done that too ...

Yes. I don't really need 'cheap decorating ideas' as such, the house was immaculate when I moved in, but it's the misleading magazine headlines that really upset me. I just have to do a few little bits! And buy some new furniture now I've found out that my glorious Victorian bed takes up 9/10ths of the bedroom...

But it's the articles that pretend that the houseowner is strapped for cash (when virtually all of them are Interior Design people flogging their own wares) and they are 'decorating on a budget'. Their budget just always seems to come in the tens of thousands! I mean, who spends fifty quid on a cushion!!

Totally agree OP - I normally assume what when things say 'on a budget' they mean a small budget, otherwise what's the point?! It seems a bit disingenuous to me. The reason I look at these things is because I'm poor and I can't afford to spend £150 redecorating one room so I need ideas on what I can do with less. Designer interiors or £2000 makeovers are totally useless to me other than to say 'ooh that's nice, look what you can do with loads of spare money 🙄'.

Same thing with that 'How to be mortgage free' programme. It actually made me quite cross because as someone will probably be stuck renting forever I thought it might be nice to see ideas on how you could go down a non traditional route to actually being able to own a home. Converted shipping containers, tiny homes, horse boxes, recycled materials, that kind of thing.

Nope. What we got was:

Step 1 - Sell your mortgage paid off house in an expensive area.

Step 2 - Use your huge profit to build a brand new house from scratch! Congratulations, you are now mortgage free!

Or alternatively:

Step 1 - Ask your rich parents to buy you a field you can build a home on and then get them to fully fund the build. Well done on being mortgage free!

🙄 So not helpful!

@Lemononachair you are so right!

I find it with all those 'how to save money' articles and programmes. When I was desperately, grindingly poor I'd read and watch them all and end up just so pissed off. They'd have things like 'stop buying takeaway coffees' - I would have killed to have had the money to buy takeaway coffees in the first place!

What they really should be called is 'How to Save Money when you are a Profligate, Overspending Arse Who Already Has Plenty and Just Doesn't Realise It'.

Exactly! The advice is always things like:

Make your own lunch instead of buying it every day
Stop buying takeaway coffees
Don't eat so many takeaways
Shop around for your utilities and phone contracts to get the best deals etc etc

I never buy takeaways or coffees because I can't afford it. I eat for free from the leftovers and work and often take home the out of date food so I can save money on dinner too. I have the cheapest utilities I can and don't have Sky (or similar) or broadband. Again, because I can't afford it.

The only 'luxury' I have is Netflix and the occasional bottle of booze - not exactly enough to furnish a whole house if I chose to spend it on decorating instead!

All that aside though, I am currently redecorating using paint that people on FB were giving away for free. I've even got some wood and metal primer to repaint the tatty tv unit and rusty oven in my place so fingers crossed it goes well!

All I've spent is a few quid on filler, scrapers, a cheap roller and sandpaper from Asda.

It's a bit like the "5 minute craft" things that pop up on facebook.
They look fine until you realise:
a) They will take far more than 5 minutes
b) After 24 hours the glue will have popped off in 3 different places, the raffia will have unwound and the lollipop stick will have fallen off to the floor and stuck permanently there as the glue wasn't totally fixed.
c) the items used will cost more than buying one new
d) no one ever really wanted a toothbrush holder in the shape of the Eiffel tower anyway.

Ooh, that sounds exciting as a project!

I'm still waiting to see the first room painted entirely in 'patchwork' using only tester pots.

Although the Readers' Homes in Your Home magazine is more practical, they still only seem to feature people who are Interior Designers or Make up Artists or people who have use of colour ingrained into them, rather than a milkman or a cleaner or 'real' real people.

And they all seem to have four bedroomed Victorian houses in South London, or five bedroomed country houses somewhere picturesque. It's easy to be 'experimental with colour' when you can sleep somewhere else if it doesn't work out.