How We Restyled Our Garden On A Budget
If you read my previous garden post, you’ll know that I have been planning a bit of a garden revamp until we can afford to get the garden completely changed in a few years time. After spending any spare cash we had on a full re-decoration of the house and on really boring house stuff such as damp-proofing, replacing cavity wall ties and chimney repointing (Zzz… why is it that the house stuff you spend so much on, you can’t even see?! ), we didn’t have much left in the pot for the garden.
Our garden on our house particulars...
Our plan was to make use of the garden furniture we already have - fortunately none of this is that old and we still like it all - and buy a few new accessories and pieces of furniture to compliment it. Along with the fun shopping side, we actually had to put some hard graft in (graft? I never say graft… I clearly have been watching Love Island too much!) and over the past month that’s exactly what we’ve been doing.
First of all we painted the shed and the inspiration behind this came from our trip to Morocco last year (you can read about how to introduce Moroccan style into your home on my recent blog post here) and seeing the wonderful Majorelle Blue in the flesh. It’s such a wonderful bright and deep blue and I knew when we left Morocco I had to feature it in our property somewhere. I thought the shed was the perfect place to go bold and use such a bright colour so after a trip to B&Q and the Valspar paint department, we found a pretty similar blue. It’s definitely made such a difference compared to the boring wood colour of the shed before!
Next up was the fence panels either end of our patio which to be honest, need replacing but are still upright so we decided a bit of paint would fix them up a bit! We wanted a light grey for these and went cheap and cheerful with Homebase’s own Home Of Colour Nightscape shade. I have to say this went on very easily and is quite thin so was easy to work straight into the wood.
Whilst I was getting on with all the painting, which to be honest is a job I don’t mind doing, my husband Steve had the job of cleaning up the patio, path around the garden and pathways around the house. The patio is one of the parts of our garden we dislike the most and I keep dreaming of pretty Moroccan outdoor tiles which I’d love to replace our paving slabs with. But I have to say, if you have paving slabs in your garden then the difference a pressure washer and a bit of hard work can make is unbelievable! I will never love them but they look ten times better when they’re clean and it’s definitely made the garden have a newer feel to it.
Finally, I got down and dirty and got stuck in to a lot of weeding and um, bush trimming! Weeding the garden is time consuming and it does make you think “I really must keep on top of this” when you finish!
So, I know you’re all waiting for the good bit now… the accessories! Well, here they are with details of where they’re from and how much they cost.
Deck Chair from John Lewis (no longer available), Cushion from Habitat (no longer available), Solar Lamp £19 from Ikea, Pink Rug from World Stores but now cheaper at £48.99 from Wayfair, Orla Kiely Plant Pot old but available for £16.99 from Cuckooland, Lanterns (old)
Festoon lights £6.99 from B&M (in store only), Plant Pots from Aldi (no longer available), Faux Plants from Ikea
Flamingoes old but available for £12.99 from Ebay
Disco Ball old but buy similar £17.99 from Ebay
What do you think? I really feel like we’ve made a big difference to what was otherwise a pretty forgotten space before and it was done for under £200!
Now to sit back and enjoy it...
