I recently had a surprise visit from an old friend in the States, and with that in mind decided to ‘spruce up’ my guest bedroom. We all have one of those rooms in our house, where the door remains shut for fear of anyone peeking inside and seeing unopened boxes, wrinkled laundry and an an ironing board, right?

My concern for this room was that I would be working on a very strict budget, so I really needed to be creative and clever when it came to making it look semi decent, on a R400 limit

I decided to keep the main fixtures of the room intact, the bed, curtains and and the side table as these would be too expensive to replace. The curtains are a somewhat mousy beige and the linen is all white, so I decided to work with these two colours and bring in other colour accents with the decor.

I painted a square mock headboard on the wall behind the bed (Dulux Moss Green), which really created some depth, and then centered a beautiful wall vinyl of birds on it, which I had been given as a Christmas present.

For some wall ‘art’ we simply hammered in 6 Hilti Tool nails (ladies and gents, best R99 DIY product, ever) and hung our hats in rows of 3. A quick visit to an ‘al cheapo’ home decor shop and I was one lamp shade, new sheet and a scatter cushion closer to creating a guest bedroom.

Not exactly a suite at the Hilton, but not bad for DIY on a budget!