Ideas please for sprucing up a new house with no decorating budget!

[Bakein]

We are hopefully moving into a new house soon, and it's not in a terrible condition but we will need to repaint (inside and out), put down carpets and curtains.

We also have next to no furniture of our own so the place will look empty! Does anyone have ideas for sprucing up somewhere new on a budget?

My first thought is to paint everything white and do without carpets and curtains for a while. I would have to put blackout blinds in the bedrooms but we could go without in the living rooms.

What have you done first when moving in somewhere without much to spend?

Our local b&m store has some really nice soft furnishings and accessories and it's really cheap!!

We have got a lot of our furniture second hand through eBay, house sales and charity shops. In fact I think the only new furniture we have is a nest of tables (reduced!) and dds changing unit!

I have to disagree with the magnolia. When we moved in everything was magnolia (new build 10 years ago) although it's a warm colour after a while it makes the room look dingy.
I have slowly repainted most of the rooms white and added colour with accessories. it looks so much more brighter and really opens up a room.
Everyone says it does look so much better.

You also have to be careful with trade paint, make sure it's wipeable, the stuff used here wasn't and the cloth would take the paint off along with the mark.

OP, buy cheap second hand furniture and paint it. But make sure it's solid wood and not mdf and it will last for years. Most of my furniture has had a re vamp either from new or stuff that was bought or given second hand. Some of it is 15-20 years old and I just repaint it when it looks a bit shabby.

this

I have attempted to post a link for you - I think this is a really good example of how white paint and colourful accessories work. Much of the furniture looks second hand. I love it!

Charity shops,we have got some amazing furniture for our house from a charity shop,all solid wood,older furniture in excellent condition.We have a table,a larg bookcase,a unit and a television unit,the television unit you can store the television inside.The furniture all looks amazing and came to well under £100 for all of it.

All the charity shops where we live have curtains in them,most have furniture and all have vases and ornaments,we've also bought those from charity shops as well.

Jumble sales and carboots usually have smaller items for the home as well.

Freecycle,preeloved,freeads all usually have household items on them and lots of them are very often free as well.

With the paint,quite a few times I've bought the diy stores own brand white elmusion and then added a tester pot or two and mixed up my own paint.I buy the color I want but in a darker shade and then mix well,bamboo canes are good for mixing paint,you can either mix in the pot the emulsion comes in or if you want more than one color places like b and q sell buckets for 99p.I always make sure I keep a few empty jam jars filled with the paints I've made(5DC in the house)incase any areas need touching up in the future.

Cheap frames(99p shops,£ shops all sale really nice one's)filled with favorite pictures or posters,samples of wallpaper or a sketch or painting.

Large mirrors and soft furnisshings can be picked up really cheaply from charity shops and shops like dunelm mills,the range,b and m,homebargains,matalan,supermarkets.

It's worth taking it slowly, you will spend less money in the end overall. Even cheap bits all add up and you will rarely get anything back for them.

We rushed into our first house in July [10 yrs ago now], ripped out functional but horrid carpet, stripped back and varnished floorboards [surprisingly expensive actually to hire the equipment, buy the sanding sheets and tinted varnish is up to £50 a can]. Then we FROZE our arses off and spent a small fortune heating the house

In the 8 yrs we lived in that house our needs and tastes changed quite a lot. It became really important to have carpet on the stairs when we couldn't move a muscle without waking DD1. We decided to be authentic to the period of the house and bought stuff which we now dislike but is far too expensive to give away [we'd get peanuts for it].

So it can be a good thing to be in your current position. So long as you are warm and dry, that's the main thing. Painting everything white is a quick and fairly cheap solution to brightening everything up but people often give paint away or you'll be offered furniture which will look better with a completely different coloured room.

Top tip. Buy or borrow a sewing machine and learn how to make your own curtains. You will save yourself hundreds of pounds both in curtains and heating [if you bother to put in winter lining].

Oh cheesydibbles, what have you done to me with that link! Now I will never get any work done...

mac12 come join me in the land of Pinterest ... its a wonderful place... You will never work again...