Master Bedroom Makeover on a Budget ~ Life with Holly

When we moved into our house, the master bedroom was, well, alright. It was fine. It lacked character however, as the original fireplace had been removed at some point in the past and it was a bit boring. We decided to put a fireplace back in (just as a feature) and then gave the room a general update so it was less bland and boring. Here’s how we did our master bedroom makeover on a budget.

This is the before, taken from the estate agent’s details as bizarrely I don’t have many pictures of how it was before we started! It’s a bit bland…

Our first job was to source a Victorian bedroom fireplace. Good old Ebay came up trumps, and we paid £35 for this beauty. Unfortunately it wasn’t so beautiful when we got it, being covered in years of paint and general mank. Mr R took it upon himself to strip all the crap off it using paint stripper and a wire brush. We then gave it a coat of grill blackening paste and this really brought out the detail. We then attached it to the wall. I’ll do a more in depth blog post about how we refurbished this Victorian bedroom fireplace. We put it in the middle of the chimney breast rather than to one side as the original would have been purely because that would have annoyed me. I like symmetry!

We then had to get rid of the headache inducing swirly black and white wallpaper. This was easy – we just painted over it. I wasn’t sure it would work, but quite frankly I couldn’t be bothered stripping the wallpaper off so thought I would give it a go. Knowing my luck stripping the walls would have brought chunks of plaster off with the paper, and it would have become a much bigger job than I wanted it to be. A couple of coats of Farrow and Ball‘s Downpipe covered the swirls perfectly and you can’t tell it’s wallpaper that’s been painted. A bit half arsed, but it’s only my bedroom so I don’t care.

That’s Holly’s book on the bed, by the way. Mr R and I are slightly more advanced readers!

We had a rejig of the furniture, swapped the wardrobe and chest of drawers over, and the room feels a lot bigger and brighter now. When we first moved into this house we bought a cheap nasty wardrobe from Ikea that has served us well these last few years but is crying out for a revamp. If anyone has seen any amazing inspirational wardrobe hacks, comment with them below PLEASE!

I ordered a new bed in the Feather and Black sale – it was a total bargain and I love it! We had had our old swirly Ikea one for about a billion years. It was time for a new one. We gave the old one to British Heart Foundation. They even came and collected it from us! They’ll be able to sell it to raise funds for the charity.

I added a few new accessories from H&M – I love their home range and that they have a Conscious range of cotton products. I don’t know if you saw Stacey Dooley’s BBC1 documentary on fast fashion? It was a definite eye opener and has made me rethink my buying habits.

We also added in some house plants too. They’re gorgeous little pops of green and seeing them when I wake up reminds me to look after them!

We kept the light fitting as I love the chandelier but changed the curtains from a weird brown corduroy which had been faded in one patch by the sun to some black out ones from La Redoute in their sale.

All in all, this has only cost about £340 (£200 of which is the bed) if that, and has given us a bedroom that feels more like a calm sanctuary than a crazy squat or dumping ground. It still needs a few bits tweaking though. I’m dying to transform the Ikea furniture (I’ve changed the drawer handles but that’s as far as I’ve got) but not bad for a master bedroom makeover on a budget!