Table Top: easy and stylish DIY hacks with @carryoncorbett

DIY hacks are empowering way to add value to your space says reno experts @carryoncorbett.

Read their inspiring home improvements story and unleash your inner handyman.

Story By: Catherine Caines

How did your DIY hack skills evolve to deliver such a rich vintage feel in your home?

I started small with my DIY hacks, and for me, it sounds ridiculous, but changing out the bathroom handles with a screwdriver was actually a big deal. I was very much inclined to call in my husband and be like, "Hey, could you do this for me, like quickly?" But now I've learned how to use a drill, and you become more adventurous with your DIY journey.

Your home has quite a rich vintage feel; how did you achieve that on a budget?

We've always had a bit of an obsession with the colour green. You see all these beautiful things on Pinterest, and you start picking endless shades and then before you realize it, you've got like twenty different colours and three different styles.

So we were really strict with ourselves when we moved in here, and we had to pick a defined colour palette and then apply it throughout the house. Further, even when we accessorize with different pops of colour, there's some consistency in the flow as you move through the house; you're not just walking into a mish-mash because we really liked the consistency.

What areas should you try and improve with your DIY hacks?

With our bathroom downstairs, we had no budget because we'd spent it on things like shutters. Basically, it was white, and we had an old mirror from the previous owners. And I decided that a monochrome scheme will be a dramatic way to update it quite cheaply yet still impact.

With my DIY, I switched out things like handles, and it was effortless, and I just needed a screwdriver to remove some jazzy kind of crystal knobs for more modern black leather pulls. I also found a new toilet seat and replaced the dated white plastic one with a modern black one. I also switched out the mirror to a more up-to-date round one, which again is black. All these tiny little details added up to quite a big effect within the space.

How can details make a room feel more special when your budget is stretched?

The details are what gives you joy in a space at the end of the day. The common theme is we didn't have a massive budget, and because we could do the work ourselves, we put what budget we had into the details.

We chose really nice fixtures, and fittings and the rule for that was; "if you touch it, then spend money on it". If you're only looking at it, it can be cheaper because it's not in heavy use and everything else we did ourselves.

We find that a lot of our customers are passionate about sourcing unique and sustainable finds. Does that help when on a budget?

I think as you do more and more DIY and tackle more of your own project, you start to develop a skill set that you can apply to pretty much everything that comes into your home.

I recently started to think if I want something, "why couldn't I make my own?" And so now I've got a NEW project where I'm going to build my own mirror because it's just wood and a mirror panel and a bit of paint.

I think behind people sourcing more for their home is number one; we get to recycle, which buys into the sustainability ethos. I think this idea of personalizing found items gives you something unique. Still, it's also very sustainable, which is really important, I think, to a huge majority of people now.

For someone who is such a DIY hacks enthusiast, what do you believe is worth investing in when buying from retail?

That's a really great question. I think that for us, it's got to be the things that you use every day. When we moved into the house, we looked at the space and said, "where do we spend our time?" Well, we spend an awful lot of time in bed. We spend an awful lot of time on the sofa, and we spend an awful lot of time in the kitchen. So the things that we use in these places need to be super hard-wearing, and we need to love them. And we actually had really high kind of expectations for them to last and be comfortable.