A secondhand-obsessed mother transformed her dilapidated Victorian house with pre-loved furniture, salvaged wood, and scraps found on the street and in skips, increasing its value by £200,000. Louise Horton, 36, from Banbury, Oxfordshire, and her DIY-enthusiast husband Peter scoured skips, building sites, and secondhand websites for cut-price fittings to create a high-end look for a fraction of the cost.
Complete renovation from top to bottom
Louise, who entered the 2026 uFurnish.com Home Awards, bought the two-bed Victorian terrace in 2018 for £240,000, undaunted by the need for a complete overhaul. "The house needed a complete renovation. It was dark and dingy, there was a dead mouse on the living room floor," she said. "The carpets were awful, there was peeling laminate and terrible tiles. We ended up touching every single inch of the house."
With husband Peter, 39, a construction manager for historic buildings, able to tackle a range of building and DIY challenges, interiors-loving Louise started her Instagram account, @thestylepad_uk, to chart the process.
Never buying new
"I never buy new, I love charity shops, the auction house, car boot sales and Facebook Marketplace," said Louise, a finalist in uFurnish’s 2025 Home Awards. "All those places are great for picking up good quality, pre-loved things. It’s good for the environment and good for my purse."
"When Peter’s working on jobs, if they’re getting rid of stuff in skips he can’t bear to see it be thrown out. He can see something and see the value. If our neighbours throw out wood, I always pick it up and bring it home. It always gets used for something – shelves here and there, or the top of our welly box. We always make use of things."
Converting two bedrooms into three
The pair, parents to Nye, five, and Elis, three, converted the two-bedroom home into a three-bed by turning the bathroom into a bedroom and dividing another bedroom into a smaller room and a family bathroom. "Peter’s built our extension, knocked down walls, built walls and created new door openings. He's done all of the major structural work himself. At one point we had no hot running water, no heating or lighting. It was a miserable winter and we had to join the gym so we had somewhere to shower."
Kitchen transformation for £3,500
Their greatest saving was in the kitchen, where Louise achieved the heritage-style room of her dreams for just £3,500. "If we went to a kitchen company or used a standard supplier, getting the traditional look I wanted with solid wood, ceiling-height cabinetry, coving and that built-in feel, would cost around £30,000. That simply wasn't going to happen."
"I searched everywhere, and eventually I found our kitchen units on Facebook Marketplace for £50. That included the carcasses, the doors and drawers. The seller even threw in the oven, which has become one of my favourite things in the house. We got the sink free from a neighbour who was throwing it away. Even the patio doors came from Facebook Marketplace. They were brand new, but a local couple had ordered the wrong size and needed to get rid of them, so we saved around £800 just on those."
She also found a Georgian farmhouse table on Facebook Marketplace, which she turned into a kitchen island. "We repurposed it by extending the legs to make it work as a prep station. I stained it, added a marble top and attached a little brass tea towel rail," she says.
Mixing secondhand with new
They bought the white and black marble-look backsplash new. "That's probably my biggest tip," she says. "If you're using a lot of secondhand pieces, mix them with some new elements. For us, that was the worktops, the taps and the lighting. If everything is second-hand, a room can start to feel dated, but adding some contemporary elements keeps it feeling fresh."
Bathroom from leftover materials
In their bathroom, Peter created the vanity by converting a wooden chest of drawers that Louise found on Freecycle, cutting a hole through the top for the sink and pipework. The white shower tiles were left over from a bathroom tiling job in Westminster Abbey, while the walls are covered with full-height shiplap panelling that Peter salvaged from a construction job in a nearby private school.
Louise snapped up a new bath on offer and finished the look with a £5 mirror from Facebook Marketplace, taking the total for the whole room to £1,000. The couple used salvaged wood to build shelving units in their living room, teamed with a brown velvet sofa from Facebook Marketplace (£200) and a £60 curtain pole to hang a pair of Ikea curtains.
Their dining room features a table found on Facebook Marketplace for £120, plus dining chairs (£10 each) painted dark navy. The cream feature wall with wooden moulding, stuck on with No More Nails glue, draws the eye. "You can add a lot of drama by using wooden moulding on walls, furniture, picture rails and dado rails," says Louise. "Every built-in cupboard that we’ve got will have coving at the top. We’ve even got wooden moulding around our oven hood. It’s an inexpensive way to add character and charm."
Using pattern in small areas
She also recommends using pattern to define small areas. "I love wallpaper, but I don't want to be surrounded as I feel like it's too much, so I have little nooks. I've got my little laundry area, which has got some toile de jouy vintage wallpaper, which was an old roll that my mum had in her cupboard for years. And then I've got a desk area that's got just a little pop of wallpaper. They’re just in little places that make me happy."
Flooring and mistakes
The one new item they splashed out on is flooring, largely wood-effect luxury vinyl tiles (LVT). "The original floorboards had holes everywhere and some were missing and they weren’t in good enough condition to use so we bought our flooring from Plusfloor and B&Q."
Louise admits mistakes: "When we first did the bedroom, we wanted one nice room and I was pushing for a white carpet. Then our dog was sick on it and he knocked a cup of coffee over, and since then we’ve had children and it was disgusting. We lived with it for a good few years until we replaced it with LVT, like the rest of the house."
Bedroom for under £200
The dark flooring pairs with a large Georgian chest of drawers bought at auction for £60, while doors and coving were provided by Peter from construction projects. The bedroom cupboards were salvaged, the bedside light was from Facebook Marketplace, along with the statement capiz shell vintage light shade for £20, and their bed was a gift, keeping the total cost under £200 for the entire final look. She colour-drenched the room: "I did a colour drench so the ceiling, architraves, windowsills, walls and cupboards are all in the same green, which I love. It really elevates a room and makes it feel expensive and bigger, because the eye keeps going."
Selling up and next project
After putting everything into the renovation, the couple are now selling up and have their eye on a neglected 1960s bungalow with a paddock and outbuildings, described as "the worst house in a beautiful village." "We can’t wait to get our mitts on it," she says. Their current house is said to be worth £200,000 more than when they bought it. The winners of the uFurnish.com Home Awards 2026 will be announced on October 19.
