A new bathroom, all for under £10 (Painting & Decorating Hints & Tips)

Member Name: Scooobydooo

Product:	Painting & Decorating Hints & Tips
Date:	08/03/04 (2753 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice and clean, cheap, budget

Disadvantages: none

When we moved into our new house, it was quite in a shocking state and if I could have uploaded some pictures of our house last year, you would have said what the heck did we buy it for. Whilst most of the problems were only cosmetic rather than structual.

We had ploughed most of our savings into the house and consequently all our other savings are tied up for another two years yet so we cannot access them, so we have a budget on each room and tried to stick to it.

At first when I saw the bathroom, I thought rip the lot out, new bathroom suite and tile, when the estimations came in, I was horrified and this had to go on the back boiler.

Now the people who had had the house before were not the cleanest of people and there was damage and dirt every where.

The paper was either overlapping onto the ceiling or about 5 inches under the ceiling and tiles were coming off the floor. The toilet had limescale in the bottom of it and the bathroom was a pale pink in colour which stood out a million miles from the dark terrocotta wallpaper.

So I had to rethink the costs and allowed £100 to make it clean and presentable and tidy and no more...However things started to take a different twist on the bathroom.

We went to Sainsburys Homebase and we saw a pale pastel wallpaper at £8.99 a roll with little bits of gold in it and this was well under our budget, but first we went to a bargain place and whether god was looking down on us, there was the same wallpaper. They obviously buy end of lines and the such.

They charged us £1.50 for 3 rolls of wallpaper that was idential in everyway to the one we had seen. So this saved us a fortune.

That night I stripped the walls to find a beige wall and this then give me some sort of home that if you buy a pale paper, then the bathroom suite would not stand out and look an eyesore.

I threw a bottle of bleach down the toilet and scrubbed and scrubbed and the limescale
came off the toilet. Not a nice job but hubby had long disappeared and it had to be done.

When I was decorating I always find it really hard to get the wallpaper perfectly to the top of the wall in line with the ceiling and on many occassions have stuck a border around the top of the paper to hide my imperfections. however this time, I bought a cheap pack of craft knives which cost me £1 for around 10 different sizes. In there was one that was triangular and it had a blade in it. Once I had wallpapered the top I got the triangle and run it across the top to give it a perfect finish. Once I was happy with this, I used the otherside with the blade on it and it worked a treat. All the wallpaper was immaculate.

So we finished decorating the walls and this looked really nice and I was so chuft with the results. The only other problem was the over painted tiles we had and the flooring and the curtains.

Well one day, whilst in the bath, some water splashed on the tiles and a bit of the paint come off. Intrigued to see what the pattern was like underneath, I got my nail brush and scrubbed hard and underneath were some nice pale pink tiles. I then got a bit carried away and spent the next two hours, stark naked in the bathroom scrubbing away all the old paint and cleaning the existing tiles. I was really suprised and it worked really well together with the paper and the bathroom suite. So this saved us quite a bit of money in retiling. My bathroom was at last coming together and it started to look nice.

The only thing that was letting the room down now was the horrible floor tiles and most of them were lifting up so I took them up quite easily and underneath was some nice lino and good quality. After a couple of hard scrubs on the floor it come up but it had been damaged and would only last for a short time.

Whilst out shopping I noticed that an ex catalogue shop had opened and I decided to go in and have a nosey. Whilst in th
ere, I saw some parque floor tiles for £1.99 for a pack of 10. i bought 3 packs and returned home and they just fitted perfectly and really made the bathroom look nice.

So by now I had got my Wallpaper, tiles and floor tiles all for £8. The only thing that I needed now was a pair of curtains so I went to the shops to have a look and they were on average around £20 for the bathroom. I could not see any that would match my decor, so I thought I would leave it. On the way back from town, I popped in the local charity shop and lo and behold there was the perfect beige and pink curtains to match. Brand new never been used and so I went to pay for them. They cost me a staggering £1.

So everyone is now seeing our house been transformed and cannot belive how smart the bathroom looks and how nice and clean it is. We then bought two little baskets on wheels for £1 to put all the stuff in the bathroom in.

We put up a couple of our existing bathroom things that all matched and now it looks really nice and clean and bright and where once I just wanted to rip it out, I am now quite happy to leave it in.

So that is my story of how we did our bathroom for £10.

1)My tips would be search around bargain shops for decorating papers and tiles.

2) Do not be in a rush to throw things away when you can recycle them.

3) A good quality wallpaper is always best, this would have cost us £8.99 at another shop.

4) Craft Knives are understated and you could have bought 3 packets for the price of an average Stanley Knive.

5) If you buy budget wallpaper, make sure you have enough as if it is end of line, and you run out, tough!

6) If you have to patch up, make sure you decorate the main walls first and then patching up can be done out of sight places.

7) If you have a out of fashion bathroom suite, rather than make it stand out, blend it in. This has worked brilliant for us and I have just done the s
ame for a friend who when she moved had a green suite.

8) Especially women all have lots of bathroom stuff, keep them in trays off the shelves as it makes the place look cluttered and unsightly. I have two baskets which sit under the sink and at the side of the toilet and it is hard work training the husband as I quite often find that he puts the things back on the shelf. As one says, slowly slowly catch the monkey.

9) To get nice trim edges use a triangular craft knive.

10) This is a good tip that Ii learnt from a decorator. For example if you are decorating a room with blue paper and the backing is the familiar cream colour. Get a felt tip the same colour and at the ends of the wallpaper whilst it is in the roll, colour the ends with it. This then saves problems if you are not the best at matching up where you would see the underside colour of beige.

11) If you accidently rip the wall paper and your only option is to rip it off and start that piece again. STOP and think. What you do is get a piece of wall paper and seperate the backing from the front. It is a fiddly job but takes less time then putting up a new strip and it really works.

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