Room for Improvement: Dining Room Make Over

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to have received an email from Money Supermarket. They asked me if I would like to take part in their Room For Improvement challenge. 

The brief? Improve a room of your choice for just £50 using whatever methods you like!

The best part? They gave each participant the £50 to do the challenge! Since Chris and I are using just one room as our bedroom, lounge, study and dining room, I decided to improve one area of it. It was a tough decision but in the end I settled on the dining area. Primarily because before there wasn't really one before, just a dining table which we didn't use! Take a look at the before and after photos, then I will tell you what I spent my money on.

BEFORE

AFTER

So we did a bit of rearranging and moved the dining table to what had previously been our lounge area.  First things first we needed some chairs. I scored 4 for just £10 at a car boot sale! (I'm only showing 2 in the pictures because we don't have room for all 4 yet) Next I had to paint them, so I went and bought a tin of Craig &; Rose 1829 Pale Mortlake Cream, from B&Q for £11.98 and got to work sanding them down. Four coats later and they were nearly finished, but I wanted to add a little bit of an accent colour. Luckily we had some light blue paint left over from another project, so I added the finishing touches! Here are the before, during and after pictures of the chairs. 

I also bought some plain white calico off of ebay, which cost £4.20 including postage.  I simply covered over the horrible brown leather effect fabric, and used a fabric staple gun on the reverse to secure.

Next up, I wanted something for the centre of the table, so I bought a cute little cut glass pot for £1 from a car boot sale. I decided to continue with the blue theme, and found some spray paint at The Range for £4.99 to match the colour on my chairs. I had a plant which I had been meaning to re-pot, so I thought he would be right at home in the centre of the dining table.

I didn't want to hang anything on the walls, since we will be moving in a few weeks time (into our very own house, yay!) But, the wall did look rather bare, so I came up with an alternative; really tall flowers! I have always loved the way the cherry blossom looks, it reminds me of beautiful Japanese paintings. So, I was rather chuffed when I found faux cherry blossom branches for £2.99 each at Dunelm Mill. I bought 3 of them, and popped them into a painted decanter which I already had.

I found a rather lovely jug in TK Maxx FOR £13, and obviously I needed to buy it to match the pretty pink cherry blossom flowers. With my last pennies I bought some wine glasses for £3.14 from Dunelm Mill, since we will definitely be needing those the day we move into our new house!

Total Spend = £57.28 (Ok, a little bit over, but not far off!)

While I was perusing my Bloglovin feed this morning I spotted a few of my bloggy friends who had also taken part in this challenge. If you fancy seeing some more ways to brighten up a room for £50 why not pop over to Claire, Rachel and Harriet's blogs.

Laura xXx