Meet the mum who says she has saved over $20k on her home

Mum of three Jess Brouwer has used DIY, from upcycling furniture to home renovations for her regional home, to save tens of thousands of dollars.

The 34 year old said living in Albany, a regional area of Western Australia with few affordable furniture shops, meant she had to get creative, such as upcycling and painting a faux brick feature wall.

“I’ve always been big on arts and craft,” she said. “I’ve come from a family that’s quite big on DIY, my dad was quite into it and always building something so it’s always something that I’ve enjoyed doing.

“Then when we started buying our own house, it just kind of started from there, I’d see little projects I knew I could do by myself instead of paying someone to do it. It’s been a bit of a hobby that has kind of escalated.”

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Jess Brouwer

Ms Brouwer was born in Perth, her husband born in Albany.

The family lived in Perth, when three years ago they moved to Albany without seeing the home prior, which Ms Brouwer said was ultimately influenced by the market at the time.

“The market was pretty crazy, houses were just selling like that,” she said.

“We had put an offer on a few houses and missed out, so when this one came up we didn’t have any choice but to chuck an offer on it without looking at it, because we weren’t going to be able to make it down to Albany in time before it went under offer.

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Ms Brouwer has used DIY to save $20k+

“So we took a leap of faith, chucked an offer on, hoped for the best and got accepted.

“We moved down to Albany and started on the renovations.”

Ms Brouwer said she has saved tens of thousands through these home renovations and DIY.

“We’ve done a lot of work, mainly the kitchen renovation, we redid all the flooring throughout the house,” she said.

“Just little bits at the time, but I would say easily over $20,000 just in labor doing things ourselves.”

Ms Brouwer said one of her favourite projects was doing up a cabinet upcycle.

“One of our neighbours put a nice cabinet with glass doors out on the verge, it was very dusty and scratched, so I sanded that back and painted it in a beautiful bay leaf colour with a Dulux spray and gave it a full makeover to suit our house,” she said.

“That was probably one of my favourite ones.”

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Before and after of the cabinet up cycle

Another project Ms Brouwer has included is a DIY brick wall in her children’s bedrooms.

“That was a fun one, I’ve done two bedrooms like that in this house,” she said.

“I used an ordinary soft sponge from the supermarket and I cut it into the shape of a brick, dipped it in paint and dabbed it onto the wall.

“The kids chose the colours that they wanted, we went to Bunnings together and they picked out the colours and made a brick feature wall in their bedrooms.

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Ms Brouwer also did a faux brick wall.

The DIY faux brick wall

“They were really happy with it and it turned out really nice.”

Another upcycled DIY was transforming an old coffee table into a multipurpose chess table.

“I found that table at an op shop in Albany – I think I paid two dollars for it,” she said.

“The kids love playing chess, our chessboard broke, so I used my cricut machine with vinyl stickers to turn the table into a chessboard.

“So now when it’s not being used it’s a coffee table and then we have the little chess pieces there if we want to play chess.”

The DIY coffee and chess table

Steps of the DIY chess table.

Ms Brouwer shared some advice for other DIY-ers.

“I’d say do your research, there’s so much information online tutorials, how-to videos etc,” she said.

“Learn from any mistakes and just have fun with it.”

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