When Laura began renovating her recently purchased home in 2022, she was faced with rate hikes that more than doubled her mortgage. But that didn’t stop her from creating her perfect family home.

Driven by a clear vision to breathe new life into the kitchen and living zones, Laura tackled the renovation with a hands-on, DIY approach. She enlisted the help of tradie friends for tasks beyond her expertise and sourced many of her materials from Facebook Marketplace and closing-down sales.

The ingenuity and savvy shopping paid off, and despite times when she wanted to walk away from it, she says the hard work was worth it and she wouldn’t change a thing.

Renovation Details

• Time taken: 2 years
• Location: Queensland
• Budget: $25,000 (kitchen and living)

About the project

Laura explains that given they were faced with a hefty mortgage, luxury trips were off the cards while the house maintained priority. As such, they wanted it to feel like a holiday – or as close to one as possible!

“We wanted to do a modern spin-off of coastal, so we did an Australian coastal theme to make the home feel like an Airbnb by the beach.”

The labour of love involved a complete kitchen renovation, revamping of exposed beams, demolition of an outdated brick bar and reversing the linen cupboard to create a butler’s pantry.

Biggest Challenges

With limited resources and skyrocketing costs, the challenges were many and plenty for this kitchen and living room reno, and they started with the flooring.

“There have been many roadblocks with completing this space. We wanted to pull up the slate tiles while Scott was on school holidays (he’s a teacher). Once we did, we realised that we would need to do the kitchen before we could lay the flooring we’d purchased, rookie error. We had enough savings to get the floor installed but not the usual 20-30k that kitchens cost. After a year and a half of living with a slab for a floor, which was dusty and awful in winter, we found our kitchen on Facebook Marketplace. It was in great condition and by some miracle, the measurements fit. Our kitchen cost $2500 including the stone, sink and oven, which is unheard of. We got our floors installed just in the nick of time so we didn’t have to do another winter with a freezing unsealed floor.”

Biggest Triumphs

Laura says that even more than a certain aesthetic, she wanted her renovated space to feel just right, undeniably one of the most important parts of a renovation.

“I love the serene feeling when you walk in the door. It’s the feeling we were chasing and there was times when we thought we’d never get there with living on a construction site for 2 years but it’s been worth the backbreaking labour and hours of painting, I’d probably do it all again to get this result to be honest.”

Advice to people with a similar project

Having gone through two years of hard work and problem-solving, Laura has plenty of sound advice for people approaching a similar project with a limited budget, especially with regard to the floor.

“Plan ahead! It’s common sense, but when it’s your first time renovating, you want everything done now and that’s when you run into trouble. We should have waited until the kitchen was installed before we even thought about pulling up the flooring.”

“I’d also recommend that you start outside and work in. If we had started our landscaping first, we’d have fully established plants and a beautiful garden by now. But we spent all of our time on the interior of the house. So 2025 is the year of the backyard!”

We can’t wait to see how the backyard turns out!

See more about Laura’s huge reno journey on her Instagram account: @shore_thing_reno 

Images supplied by Laura Byron.

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