A savvy mum-of-three has created a magical princess room for her daughter and saved hundreds including using a simple hack from Ikea.
Charlotte Farah-Price, 28, who is mum to two boys aged 12 and nine and a six-year-old daughter, told money-saving community LatestDeals.co.uk: "I needed to redecorate the entire house to get rid of the bad vibes after leaving a bad relationship. I do a lot of DIY and like to think outside the box to see what would look good together, then plan it out. I’m really creative and seeing the kids’ faces just makes me so happy.
"Coming up with the theme for the room was easy enough - my daughter loves dressing up and being a princess. I wanted to have a pink and gold theme, but a lot of the gold decorations in the ornate style I wanted were expensive. I saved money by spraying everything gold myself with spray paint from The Range for £13."
Some of the room's key features is a dressing-up wall for all of her daughter's princess dresses and a new carpet to match the theme of the room. Textures in the room include velvet on the cushions, rug and curtains, while elegant drapes were to be applied on the dress-up wall to match the style of the princess dresses.
"I found the best prices online for a crown to go above the bed and two frames," said Charlotte. "The crown was the most expensive as it was £90 from House Of Altair, but I cut back on costs in other ways. For example, I got another crown for the dressing-up wall from Facebook Marketplace and revamped it with gold spray.
"The frames came from online and they were originally white. They only cost £13 each as I got them from Party Supplies. The mirror came from Amazon for £59. I also picked up some voile curtains from Amazon for £26 and some swans from eBay for £12.
"I wanted to line the tops of the walls with pink LED lights so I picked some up from Amazon for £10.99. I also got some wall hooks from The Range for £11.99 and silver curtain hangers from Amazon for £13.99.
Charlotte also got creative with the new bed and decided to optimize storage space. "I got some kallaxes from IKEA for £45. I’ve seen people use shelving units as beds and realised I could do the same for this bedroom makeover.
"Overall the project was pretty simple. First the walls were painted and wallpapered. I got the paint from Wilkos in the shade Candy Cane for £18, and the wallpaper came from B&M - it was £13.99 for 3 rolls. Fortunately, the ceiling was already wallpapered from the last design my little girl had in her room.
"My daughter’s dad then built a frame to fit on top of the kallaxes and screwed it into the wall. Meanwhile, I sprayed all the white objects gold using an old bedsheet to rest them on. We then used a drill and a spirit level to hang the crowns, frames and mirror on the wall before adding the swans in between.
"We hung the TV and curtains up, then added in the accessories we already had such as the bedding, pillows and dressing-up clothes. If I had to do this project again I would have avoided wasting money on sticky tabs that didn’t work and instead screw the picture frames on the wall from the outset.
"The most challenging part was attaching everything to the wall as I wanted it perfectly level. Now that the room is done, my daughter loves it and enjoys showing it to people!"
Tom Church, co-Founder of LatestDeals.co.uk, said: "This bedroom makeover is truly magical! Charlotte’s daughter is very lucky to have such a creative mum. I’d heard about people using IKEA kallaxes as beds and it’s nice to see this idea in practice. No doubt Charlotte has saved £100s by spray-painting items she found online and from Facebook Marketplace, not to mention by using this IKEA hack. Nice one!"
