The homeowner explains how she transformed a dated £1,200 kitchen into a rustic space

Cecilia Effa wanted to renew her “aging” kitchen while maintaining its original features. She spent £1,200 on it and is in love with the end result…

A homeowner fed up with her ‘dated’ kitchen has explained how she transformed it into a rustic space for £1,200.

Cecilia Effa, 28, an editor from Liverpool, bought her new home and the historic property was 140 years old.

Although her kitchen had character, Cecilia wanted to remodel it while retaining its original features.

She paid a decorator to paint the cabinets an on-trend sage green and used cheap finds from Facebook Marketplace, Tesco and The Range to outfit them.

She even brought flowers from her local park to add a personal touch and made shelves out of scrap wood.

Cecilia told the DIY On A Budget UK money-saving Facebook group: “My boyfriend and I bought the house in October. It has six bedrooms which seems crazy but was a bargain price.

“We wanted to keep the old country style in the kitchen but thought it could use a more refreshing color – so we went for a rustic-meets-modern style.”

The first job for Cecilia and her partner was to paint the cupboards a fresh sage green, which cost her £1,000 to have done professionally.

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Next they had to repaint and sand all the walls, which had a lot of cracks and peeling, before moving on to the tiles.

“We thought it would be too much work to remove all the tiles, so we focused on the decorative tiles that were scattered around the kitchen, primed them, and painted them the same green,” Cecilia said.

“The edges of the tiles were faded so we bought copper spray paint and had a hard job spraying clean lines – but the copper made such a big difference.

“The countertops are real granite, so we kept them and then beautified everything with lots of sealing.”

Next, the couple added some shelves they made from an old bed headboard. This had been sanded, prepared and stained to be used as a shelf.

Cecilia also made a giant cutting board from the leftover wood and engraved her initials on it.

After completing the major home improvement, Cecilia set about decorating her new kitchen with cheap Facebook Marketplace finds.

“I found copper pans from a lovely lady in Leeds for a rustic statement piece – only £30 for 4 and she also gave me a lovely big old jam pot for £10.

“We also found the £15 Persian rug on Facebook Marketplace.

“I have some decoration pieces from Amazon, like the garlands, and containers for spaghetti, rice and chili from The Range.

“The hexagonal shelves were £60 from Etsy, the vase was from Tesco for £8 and that was it – I had lots of other bits and pieces lying around.

“I feel like I can breathe again because it’s a big project and none of the other rooms are finished yet.

“It will most likely take years. I love the style of the kitchen and I want to cook in it every night.”

The total cost was just over £1,200, but £1,000 of that went towards repainting the cabinets.

“We’ve saved a tremendous amount, not only on the kitchen, but by having the tools and doing the rest of the house ourselves,” Cecilia said.

“This is my favorite room in the house.”