How to Save Money in your Living Room Makeover! Make Change for Less: DIY Home Renovation Tips

The only thing better than completing a home makeover is still having money in your bank account when you're done. The team at Suncorp challenged me to create an epic home transformation but do so on a budget because as one of Australia's largest financial services, they're all about helping their customers be smarter with their money. So challenge accepted Suncorp. I'm going to show you how I made a big change for less starting right here in the living room. So here's what my living room looked like before. And here's what my living room looks like now. To make a huge change in this room by doing just a few cosmetic upgrades and I honestly can't believe how different this room is now. I totally love its new look. I really wanted it to be more cohesive with a sophisticated and elegant feel and I'm really happy with how it turned out. But what exactly did I do and how did I save money in this makeover? Well, I'm going to show you. I want my house back a bit better. New timber floorboards will instantly make your living room look 10 times better but new timber floorboards can also be really expensive. So I decided to just take advantage of what I've got and update my existing floorboards. I hired a sander, I stripped them back and then I stained them with a whitewash finish which created a really nice light and modern look. What's it time for? My brain is not working anymore. It's time for painting the floorboards. Tell you what, it's not going to be as hard as sanding the floors. I bloody hope not. Labor-intensive, yes, but it saved me thousands. How good do these floors look? Oh my gosh, it's changed it completely, hasn't it? All up, this new timber floor cost me $110 to hire the floor sander and corner sander, $50 for sandpaper, $114 for the whitewash floor finish and about $20 for the painting equipment like new rollers and trays. That's a total of $294 for a brand new timber floor. Pretty good if you ask me. Alternatively, if you don't have timber floorboards that you can update, then take a look at different veneer flooring options. That way, you can get the look that you want without paying the price tag of the real deal. I'm so excited. Should I go all the way down? I'm so excited. Yeah, let's just do the whole thing. I'm so excited. I'm going to grab the other brush and start cutting in because you got ahead of yourself and started painting the whole wall just to see what it looks like. Brand new walls are great, but painting over existing ones is a hell of a lot cheaper. Plus, it's the quickest, the easiest and the cheapest way to completely transform your space. If you're wanting to make a big difference, then be brave and opt for color on your walls. Looking for my hero color. I need a hero till the end of the night. I mean, sure, fresh white walls is always going to look good, but if you opt for a bold feature color, it will instantly transform the look of your living room. This was Suspects, which we had to pull out from the lineup. You wanted Undersea. I wanted Enterprise. Who won? Me. I wanted to create a more inviting, cozy and moody aesthetic in this living room. So I opted for a dark, dusty blue. Now, I'm not going to lie to you. I did freak out a little bit when I first saw this much color on my walls. And I was freaking out about the color on the wall because of the dark orangey floorboard situation we had before. But stripping that back has made this make total sense, which I knew it would and I had to back myself, but I was having like minor heart palpitations. But once everything else came into place, it was perfection. If you are still a little bit nervous about painting color in your living room, then start with just one wall, one feature wall, and then you can go from there. Plus, if you don't like it, you can just paint over it. I can't stop looking at the new lights. They make such a difference. They're so grand. There's nine of them. Lighting is crucial to creating an inviting interior. And it's the difference between an okay room and a, oh my God, I love it room. Research and have a think about what sort of lighting you want in your living room. But if you're wanting to save money, which we are, then don't change the current position of your lights. If you want four new down lights and a wall sconce, I'm sure that's going to be a great idea. But if they don't actually currently exist in your room, then it's going to cost you a lot of money. You're going to need to hire a sparky. You're going to have to wire up all those additional locations. Plus, you may even need to modify walls and ceilings for additional wiring that you might not know about. Now, I only had one single pendant. So I just decided to change this. It was easy to switch over and it was amazing just how much a brand new feature pendant was able to transform and elevate this interior. If you're like me and you've just got one pendant, go bold and make it count. Choose a design that makes an impact as it will dictate the feeling of your room. If you've replaced your existing lighting and it's still not providing enough light for your room, then bring in some additional light with either floor or table lamps. These are easy to move around and you can position in any room of the home without needing to pay for a sparky. When it comes to furniture in the living room, your couch is arguably the most important feature of this space. But you can't just go out and buy a new couch every time you want to upgrade your interiors. My advice, if you want a new look without tossing your furniture in the bin, just fake it. The easiest and cheapest way to update your couch is by changing your cushion covers and other decor pieces like blankets and throws. By adding new colors, shapes and texture to your existing couch, it will immediately give it a different look. When it comes to choosing new decor pieces, have a look around and think about what else is going on in the room because you want to choose complementary colors. For example, I brought in this new blanket which has dark blue tones that reflect the wall. Plus there's some really nice cool tones in here, some greens which works well with the coffee table and also my indoor plants. I also chose to opt for a dark brown cushion cover. This totally changed the look of the fabric on the couch and it helped to reflect the leather elements that were going on in this room. So there's a few things for you to think about when transforming your living room. I really hope you found them helpful. Be sure to subscribe to our channel and make sure you watch out for next week's episode because Suncorp is challenging me to make change for less in the bathroom.