One woman has proven that you can make your home look totally different on a budget after sharing her £5,000 transformation that's taken her garden from lacklustre to Love Island.
Alex Lawson, 28, a DIY-enthusiast has built up an online following since sharing her extraordinary transformation, as well as other renovation tips and tricks.
Taking just seven weeks to complete, Alex, who lives in London, wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty and teach herself valuable skills, using online tutorials to complete the work at a fraction of the cost.
Describing her style as "modern and rustic with a traditional twist" the renewable energy worker by day and DIY lover by night knew she wanted to renovate her garden when she bought her home in 2019.
"I am a lover of industrial metals and exposed brickwork and also rustic wood," she explains.
"We had a very standard new build garden with a small patio area and path and the rest laid with grass. I renovated the garden in seven weeks."
"I decided to break it up into chunks to make it more manageable and affordable. My gate was originally in the area where I wanted my seating area, so the first step was to have the gate moved to the opposite side of the fence."
"After that, I had drawn up the initial design of what I wanted, and I decided what parts I would be able to do myself and what parts I would rather get someone else to do."
"Once I had my decking built and patio laid, I then knew I would be able to do the patio upcycle, fencing, and pergola build myself."
Growing up, Alex would watch her father's clever handiwork, and that's where her passion had stemmed from.
"My dad would have never paid someone to do something he could do himself. Shortly before I bought my first home, I sadly lost my dad, however, I found myself with all of his tools.
"Having grown up around him, and him always having a project on the go, I decided I would give it a go and see how it turned out."
"It took the weekends, evenings and rain dodging to complete the work.’’
Discussing the parts of the job that went well, Alex explains, "two of the most successful projects were for sure the fencing and the patio stencilling. I completed the fencing, pergola build, patio stencilling and grass laying myself. This saves hugely on cost."
When it comes to top money-saving tips, the DIY guru added: "I would think about how you can reuse, recycle and upcycle materials to give you a high-end finish without the price tag.
"I completed my patio stencilling for £80 - this is a fraction of the cost I would have been to have the whole area actually tiled."
"I also learned how to build a pergola from scratch, this was so rewarding! It can be very tiring work, and when you start to get tired, you make mistakes often. It was important to take stock of what I'd achieved and be patient with the progress."
Alex shared her DIY breakdown below:
Labour: costs for decking, outdoor electrics & decking lights, planters and patio extension - £1600 - this took 2.5 days for the team to complete
Materials: cost for decking, outdoor electrics & decking lights, planters and patio extension - £1900
Pergola: material costs - £260 - this took a week to complete in the evenings after work, so around 8-10 hours in total
Patio: upcycle costs - £60 - this took 10-12 hours to complete over a couple of days
Fence cladding: £660 - this took about 25 hours to complete in total over a series of weekends
Artificial grass: £410 - this took 4 hours to complete.
Total garden cost: £4,890
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