‘I saved £9.5k turning soulless kitchen into dream house with intelligent DIY hacks’

A woman revealed how she managed to transform her “soulless” kitchen for £500 – after being quoted a huge £10,000.

Lauryn Roach, 26, from Essex, got on the property ladder by purchasing a house in early 2023. The insurance company worker, along with fiancé Dean, 28, started to put their own touch on their pad with licks of paint and furniture to suit their style.

However, with a wedding and honeymoon to pay out for, the dingy kitchen had been left due to the huge cost it would take to give it the revamp it so ‘desperately’ needed.

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After being quoted over £10,000 for the refit from local fitters to high street home improvement retailers and £4,000 alone for a worktop, Lauryn’s dream kitchen would seem to remain as that.

But not wanting to give up, the couple decided to give it a whirl themselves – and have saved thousands and inspired others in the process.

Now with her kitchen transformation having gone viral on TikTok, Lauryn exclusively spoke with Daily Star about how she did it on such a budget.

She said: “We didn’t like how dated our old kitchen looked, it felt really dark and soulless, it wasn’t to our taste at all and didn’t fit the rest of the house’s aesthetic, so we desperately wanted to give it an uplift.

“I had spent lots of time looking at photographs on Pinterest of my dream high-end kitchen and desperately wanted a similar look.

“We decided to give it a go ourselves, despite never doing a kitchen ourselves before and having no idea how it would turn out.”

The couple started to transform the kitchen to Lauryn’s dream room at the beginning of the year all while juggling their full time jobs and other life commitments. Squeezing in the improvements on the weekends, the kitchen is newly refreshed with the pair finishing the project this April.

Instead of splashing £4,000 on rose quartz worktops, Lauryn snapped up £45 oak vinyl wrap from B&Q. She covered the pre-existing black laminate surfaces with the material which gives the effect, without the big price tag attached.

The loved-up couple bagged £30 gold cupboard handles from Amazon, £15 on white wall paint and a pricer £75 Silver Sage kitchen paint from Rusto-Oleum. They secured a sink, tap and plumbing for £180 and spent only £100 on floor tiles from Wickes.

With the finishing touch of a £85 John Lewis Chandelier, the couple had completed their kitchen – but not without their own elbow grease.

Lauryn and Dean did all of the labouring themselves, which helped keep the cost low as possible. Although Dean is a tradie – so was able to lay tiles, plaster and fit lighting – they both painted, removed the original tiles and did the vinyl just by watching YouTube tutorials.

“We absolutely love the finished product, in particular the worktops,” Lauryn gushed,

She continued: “When we wrapped the worktops, we said to ourselves at least if it goes wrong, it doesn’t matter as we had only spent £45 on the materials.

“But it had came out even better than we’d ever imagined and we’ve had so many compliments from all of our family and friends wanting to do the same to their kitchen!”

Since posting on TikTok, Lauryn’s video quickly racked up more than 125,000 views. Many people have since been ‘desperate’ to know how the pair managed to do it – and it’s inspired others to give the DIY kitchen refurb as go themselves.

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Lauryn admitted: “We were overwhelmed with the amount of compliments we’d received, people were shocked that we’d done it ourselves, saying it looked like a brand new kitchen, and we had so many people desperate to know how we did it.

“Our advice to anyone who is thinking of renovating their kitchen on a budget, is that 100% it is possible and if you have a vision, just go for it.

“We brightened up our whole room just by painting our cupboards and upgrading the handles.

“Wrapping the worktops and tiling the floor was probably the most challenging and time consuming part, but we followed some YouTube videos on how to do it and this definitely helped.

“It is very rewarding having designed and making it exactly how we wanted!”