Mrs Hinch fan transforms kitchen for £70 using vinyl wrap and freebie from Facebook

Mum Eleanor Bromley, 28, from Farnham, Surrey, was inspired by women like Mrs Hinch and Stacey Solomon to makeover her space on a tight budget.

A fan of Mrs Hinch changed her kitchen for only £70 by using a clever vinyl trick and using Facebook Marketplace to get an extractor fan for free.

Eleanor Bromley, a single mother of two from Farnham, Surrey, who is 28 years old, covered the doors and worktop of her kitchen with vinyl wrap from B&Q. This completely changed the look and feel of the room.

She also found a free extractor fan on Facebook Marketplace and used wood she already had at home to make a couple of shelves.

The stylish makeover, which she did herself, cost around £70. This is hundreds or even thousands of pounds less than if she had added new doors, a worktop, a fan, and shelves and then hired tradespeople to put them all in.
Eleanor told the community of people who save money, LatestDeals.co.uk: “I follow a lot of home Instagram accounts, and women like Mrs Hinch and Stacey Solomon give me ideas.

“I’m a member of a number of home improvement groups on Facebook, so being around these ideas helped me come up with the idea.

“The colours in my living room are mostly neutral and earthy, and the kitchen is right next to it. I tried to keep the same style in the kitchen as well. Before, I had grey countertops and cabinets that looked like they were made of pine wood.

“I wanted to change the way it looked, so I gave the counters a wood look and painted the cabinets white to make the room look bigger.

“I had seen people use vinyl wrap in their kitchens, and I thought that if I did it myself, I could save a lot of money.

“I got most of the things I needed at B&Q, and the total cost was about £70.”
She covered the doors with D-C-Fix Whitewood Gloss White Wood Effect Self-Adhesive Film, which cost £6.50 per roll.

She bought three rolls of D-C-Fix Woodgrain Artisan Oak Self-Adhesive Vinyl Wrap Film for £7 each and a D-C-Fix Self-Adhesive Film Decorator Knife Set for £3.50 to use on the counters.

She said: “I knew that it would take time, patience, and a lot of cleaning to make the wrapping job look like it was done by a pro. I watched some helpful videos on YouTube to get a feel for the whole process before I started.

“The next step was to clean up. I made sure to scrub every surface clean, and then I dried it well. For this step, some people use sugar soap, but I just used regular soap and water.” After that, I put the paper in place on the surface I wanted to cover and cut off any extra. Then, using the Decorator Knife Set, I slowly peeled away a couple of inches at a time and smoothed it out with a special tool.

“The angles in my kitchen are very weird, which made it hard to line up the D-C-Fix. Another problem was bubbles under the paper, which meant you had to go very slowly and be very patient. If you see a bubble under the paper, you have to peel it back and do that section all over again.

Eleanor said that in the YouTube videos she watched, the cupboard doors were taken off so they could be covered while the person sat on the floor. But because her screws had threads, she couldn’t take them off.

“I decided to just work right on the fronts of the cabinets while they were still on. I didn’t mind it too much, but it did make my arms and neck work harder than I would have liked “she went on.

“I also wanted to make the room look nicer, so I got a free extractor fan from someone on Facebook Marketplace and got help putting it on the wall safely.