RENO DIARIES | COST SAVING DECOR IDEAS

Renovating your home is a costly exercise – regardless of where you fall on the budget spectrum. Costs can easily escalate during what you may consider to be just a simple makeover. There are renovation costs that become unavoidable, and if you’ve been through something similar you’ll know how easily the available funds are depleted, leaving you with a much smaller pool from which to buy the furniture and decor for your newly renovated space.

During one such project, our designer Claire used some clever cost saving décor ideas to help stretch the budget and help the client achieve the overall look and feel she was after.

1. No Built-In Closets

As a cost saving measure, the clients decided to forgo built-in closets and install open concepts. This was especially cost effective as the steel brackets were made up by a friend  of the owner’s and the melamine shelf was simply cut to measure and placed on top. The idea was to have built-in closets installed at a later stage room by room, when the budget allowed.

2. Ikea Malm Dressers

These simply but extremely versatile chest of drawers are available bye from Kids Living, and in this project were used throughout the home. Because of their simplistic design they can pretty much fit in anywhere, be it in a hallway, master bedroom, walk in closet or kids bedroom. They can be spruced up with your own choice of knobs or pulls or simply left as they are.

3. Repurposed Lighting

Instead of purchasing all the light fittings new, Claire repurposed lanterns used at the client’s wedding by removing their handles, inverting them and hanging them down the centre of a long hallway to create a feature and detract from the length of the hallway.

She also bought concrete flower pots, inverted them, cut out wooden rounds for the top and hung them on either side of the bed, replacing the need for bedside table lamps.

4. Alternative Bedside Pedestals

Rather than purchasing pricey pedestals, we decided to use open storage boxes bought from Weylandts. They serve the exact same purpose, take up less space and cost a fraction of the price of a traditional pedestal.

5. Framed Prints

For something a little different and far more cost effective than purchasing art, the clients bought these unusual images from Shutterstock, printed them and placed them in frames from MRP Home.  There are so many images to choose from in stock image libraries, but this couple decided on abstract metro maps from all the country’s they visited together.

6. Floating Desk

Instead of purchasing a ready-made desk, Claire had the carpenter make up this simple floating desk design to fit the space perfectly and save the client a fair amount of money.

7. Up-Cycled Sideboard

This Sideboard was bought off the pavement outside a second hand furniture store. With a few coats of black paint, it solved the problem of a TV that was mounted too high and was the focal point on the wall.  The total cost was under R2000.