DECORATING your house can be a big, and expensive, job but there are ways to give your living space a pick-me-up and even make it look bigger on a budget.
This is what Lauryn, aka @lauryncp on TikTok did with her hallway as she explained it was used as a “dumping ground” for washing and other house nicknacks.
“Our upstairs landing is really small – it’s literally just a tiny little walkway,” Lauryn began.
She said there was limited wall space and no natural light due to the lack of windows.
She said this means “it can look quite dark and dingy” in the little space.
“I just wanted to clear the area and do something with it… I thought it would just be a nice little project to do,” she said.
She told viewers she had seen the IKEA mirror hack and wanted to try it out for herself.
She was hoping the reflection would attract some light into the tiny landing.
She started by putting tape on the wall to help the paint not bleed and then coated the wall with Johnstone’s Paint Vinyl Matt Emulsion in Steel Smoke, which is £15 from B&M.
She said she didn’t want to make her kids join her on a trip to IKEA – due to it being the summer holidays – so bought some acrylic mirror tiles from TikTok Shop.
These can be picked up for a little as £5 and come in various shapes and sizes to suit your project.
But the hardest part about the project, the mum-of-five said, was peeling the stickers off ready to put them up.
“[It’s] a bit of a palaver when you have long nails,” she joked.
Lauryn added it didn’t take her long at all to do everything, from the taping to the tiles took “about an hour.”
“I’m really happy with how it turned out,” she said with a clip of her placing a vase down in front of the mirrors.
The vase was from Primark and filled with fake foliage.
She concluded by saying the mirrors had definitely helped the bring in the light she wanted.
She told Fabulous it cost her £30 overall to do the mirror wall.
Asked how she got the mirrors perfectly symmetrical and spaced out, she said in the comments: “I measured it out and marked it up but mostly eyeballed it! Just made sure they were straight with the spirit level.”
YOU don't have to spend loads to give a room a new look. Here are five other home renovation tricks you can try.
Kitchen cupboards
One way to give your kitchen a complete transformation for less is to change the look of the kitchen cupboards. There are loads of different vinyl coverings out there to choose from, and it’s a quick and easy way to update your home.
Handles
Another thing you can try that won’t break the bank is to change up the handles. You can pick up relatively cheap handles in DIY stores, or even in the charity shop. Adding new ones to your kitchen cupboards, or doors in your house, can be extremely effective.
Leftovers
Most of us have old half-used tins of paint in the garage, but they’re often forgotten about. However, there may be enough in the pot to paint a feature wall in another room, and you won’t have to spend a penny.
Freebies
It’s worth checking your local Facebook Marketplace, or Freecycle, to see what other people are getting rid of. As they say, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. And if someone’s planning to revamp a room, they might want to get rid of a sofa, or a coffee table, which you could use to give a lounge a new look.
People in the comments discussed how much they loved what Lauryn had done – with even professionals commenting on how good it looks.
“I’m a painter and decorator and it looks lovely [hearts around face emoji],” one person wrote.
High praise, indeed!
Another said: “Love the way you’ve created more space and light with the mirrors.
“You’ve given me an idea to do something similar as I have small space on my landing.”
“Wow, what a transformation. [It’s] lovely [red heart emoji],” someone else penned.
Hats off to Lauryn – it looks so good!
