The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Interiors
Katherine Ormerod’s grown-up guide to beautifying a rental
ON TOP OF THE universal low point that was the start of the pandemic, March 2020 was a painful time for my family. My boyfriend and I had just lost a baby at 20 weeks, then, after a year of trying to sell our twobedroom flat, our buyers pulled out on the day of completion. The family home that I’d been mentally renovating for the past six months was sold to another buyer and we were stuck in our minuscule flat with no garden for the first lockdown.
As the summer wore on, I found out I was pregnant again, so we decided to rent out our flat (for less than the mortgage) and find a family home to rent. In October, we moved into a fourbedroom house in west London, which was just about affordable because it was more of a student house than a swanky, high-end rental, with patchy walls and a shiny silver carpet.
Instead of dwelling on how our plan had gone off the rails, I decided to make the house wonderful and record the progress on Instagram (as an author and freelance writer, I’ve built up a following of 65,000). My partner had now become freelance, too, having just set up his own business, which meant it would be at least two years until he could get his tax returns together for another mortgage, so I knew we would be in the house for a while. I set about doing all the little things that I knew I couldn’t live with, from scraping paint off glass doors and touching up patchy walls to stapling cables and resealing fireplaces. Then, when it came to the decor, I struck a deal with the landlady that I was allowed to decorate as long as I returned the property to its original state when we left.
I started with the living room, painting the central fireplace in Bone by Farrow & Ball – my landlady was happy for me to do this, as the wood stain beneath was such a mess. Then I added display shelving to one of the alcoves and slotted in metal lockers from Mustard Made below to mimic built-in cabinets. Later, I covered up the broken marble of the hearth with a mosaic made
Why should I live in decor purgatory just because I can’t buy?
from Kraftile removable tile stickers and changed the overhead light fixture to an affordable modern one.
Next door, in the dining room, I decided I needed some art to fill the blank walls. Nothing I had from the flat was big enough, so I created a large wall hanging by building a wooden frame and stretching a woven blanket by Slowdown Studio over it – in all, that cost just over £250. Our old furniture – Eames dining chairs in black maple and a much-loved Ikea display cabinet filled with crystal – fitted in perfectly, while a third-hand sideboard bought from a friend completed the room.
Upstairs, I wanted the main bedroom to feel serene, but with personality. I made a wavy mirror inspired by expensive designer versions by Ettore Sottsass and Gustaf Westman, which cost me £200. I bought a
mirror for £80 from Ikea, then ordered some wavy MDF trim from a site called Madhoney (madhoneylondon.com). I made it into a frame with my mitre saw, nailed it to the mirror and painted it.
I also made the stripy bolster cushions in the bedroom using Tivoli Stripe fabric from The Cloth Shop, which cost £25 per metre. To bring colour into the space, rather than painting the walls I painted the picture rail and door trim pink, knowing it would be a quick job to return to
white, and I also painted an Ikea Hemnes chest of drawers in a bold green. Not everything went to plan – the cheap-aschips Ikea wardrobe never closed properly and continues to drive me mad on a daily basis; I kick myself for not finding better value on Gumtree.
Perhaps the saddest room in the house was the guest room in the loft, with its bizarre open storage ‘hole’ housing a disconnected water tank. Here, I decided to go in hard and used my mitre saw to make rattanbacked cupboard doors to cover the opening, even though I was nine months pregnant at the time. My first foray into cabinetry was a massive learning curve and could have been a disaster, as the sides of the hole weren’t straight, and the cheap wood I bought from B&Q wasn’t quite up to it. In the end, my brother and I constructed a frame with an architrave and caulked the gaps (see above right). For less than £250, the doors have transformed the room and I’ve learnt some skills that I will be able to use in my own house one day.
I added a picture shelf above the cupboard doors, so that I could display some art, and on the wall opposite the cupboards I used peelable wallpaper from a company called Tropical Origin that I found on Etsy.
Knowing that my eldest, Grey, now three, will be schoolage
I’ve learnt some skills I will be able to use in my own house one day
before we leave this house, I really wanted to make sure that the boys’ rooms felt special and homey. Using five tester pots, I painted a rainbow mural on my toddler’s wall, used peelable triangular wall decals and bought myself a cheap knitting machine to make the woven words that are scattered around the room. In the nursery, I made a bed can
opy from a net curtain and a curtain rail, attached to the ceiling with two screw hooks, and hung cheap shelves bought for £5 that I primed and painted in a cheerful yellow.
The response from my followers on social media has been really mixed. Some have sent bemused messages wondering why the hell I would be investing so much time (and money) in ‘someone else’s property’. The answer to that is partly a question of passion – I absolutely love making a house a home and if I can do it for a reasonable cost, I believe it’s always worth it, even when renting. Why should I live in decor purgatory just because I can’t get a mortgage yet? I certainly didn’t expect to be edging 40 and still renting, but it’s a fantasy to think that you get on the housing ladder and it’s all one way up – for so many families, it simply doesn’t work out that way. I hope that by decorating this house, I’ve inspired others to make the most of their home, whatever their living situation.