‘I mix budget-friendly buys with forever pieces’
Bargain finds and clever DIY hacks give Sushma Samonini the freedom to splash out on more expensive items to complete her beautiful home
Sushma and Shaun Samonini found their family home in 2019 with big dreams for the space, which Sushma documents on Instagram @house_on_the_way. It was the bright, spacious landing that won them over after the couple had lost out on another house just around the corner, in Buckhurst Hill, Essex. ‘I knew it was the one when we walked up the stairs,’ says Sushma. ‘We also liked the fact that it hadn’t already been extended. It would have been out of budget had it been done already and this meant we could add long-term value to it ourselves.’
Steadily, the couple are renovating room-by-room, from top to bottom. As the downstairs had been updated by the previous
owners fairly recently, Sushma and Shaun turned their attention to the upstairs rooms. ‘The bedrooms and bathrooms were quite dated, so we set to work on renovating the entire top floor in one go just a few months after moving in,’ says Sushma. Since then, they’ve also had work done on a few rooms downstairs, saving the dining room and the kitchen for a big, ground floor extension in a few years’ time.
THE POWER OF PAINT
The couple haven’t made any structural changes yet (apart from adding a clever, under-stairs WC) – instead, they’ve worked on smart decorating projects, which have included an ultra-budget makeover for the kitchen. ‘It cost us just over £100,’ says
‘I have a strong black and gold theme running throughout the house and I’m partial to a geometric pattern’
Sushma. ‘I wanted to revamp the space and make it feel more in tune with the rest of the house, so I painted one of the walls with leftover paint from another room and used
Jes Rose Home vinyl to create a faux tiled splashback. The impact these subtle changes have made is amazing.’
The house was all creams, whites and greys when they first moved in, and Sushma soon rectified that with her favourite combination of monochrome and muted colours. ‘I have a strong black and gold theme running through the house and I’m partial to a geometric pattern,’ she says. ‘I also can’t do with too much clutter – I’m definitely somewhere between a minimalist and a maximalist.’
It comes as no surprise, then, that Sushma has flexed her creativity with a number of DIY projects to get just the right look, including painting her own canvas for the landing. ‘I was looking for the perfect piece of art for ages and everything was either not quite right or too expensive,’ she says. ‘In the end, I decided to give it a go myself and I’m so pleased with the result. I used regular filler to
Green is said to boost creativity, so it’s the perfect choice for Shaun’s music room. Streamlined storage for equipment means there’s space for a sofa, too OUR MUST HAVES 2-seater velvet Taby sofa in Black, £369, Beliani. Idåsen drawer unit, £99, IKEA. Gold leopard print, £13, Ink & Drop