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My house does not feel like my home. We have been renting a three bedroom house in South East London for almost three years now and I feel like I’m yet to make a stamp on it that makes it my own.

Maybe because the room that we use as a study had previously been used as a nursery and has been decorated with a frieze of teddy bear wallpaper – lovely, yes but for me, it’s just a reminder of things I’m yet to achieve. It doesn’t help that the study is being used as an office come holding place for our overflow of clothes and you can’t see the floor 99% of the time. Our bedroom needs a coat of paint desperately and don’t get me started on the bathrooms. Two words, mold central. The kitchen is not so bad, but there is hardly any workspace.

A year ago, I suggested to G that we try to redecorate as much as we could without spending a fortune. We asked the Estate Agent if we could re-paint some of the rooms in return for a reduction on our monthly rent. At the time, our landlord was in the process of transferring the ownership of his houses to his son and told us that his son would get back to us. A year later, we got a letter saying that any painting or decorating could be done at our own cost but also had to be returned back to its original state when we moved out. We nixed the idea straight away and left it at that.

Now I’m a blogger and I read some wonderfully amazingly creative blogs where people post pictures of their house and I wonder how easy it could be just to change a few things, put up a few pictures and voila, house becomes a home. I wrote out a list of ideas and I’ll be slowly crossing them off over the next few months as money allows – we are currently saving £800 a month towards a deposit for a house in a new development in Sydney – and of course I will share them on the blog.

• Order A3 prints of wedding photos, one of me, one of G, one of us together and one of the entire bridal party.
• Organize frames for wedding photos and hang personal ones in bedroom and group ones in lounge room.
• Buy a few prints off Etsy and hang on walls in spare rooms – well the office/study/junk room until our housemate moves out.
• Re-organize bedroom, sort out bed linen and buy new duvet and pillows.
• Work out how the heck to get rid of all of the mold in the bathrooms and then look at storage options for en-suite.
• Clean out bookshelves and re-arrange living/dining room.
• Clean out kitchen and re-assess what we really need in regards to crockery, cutlery and other assorted kitchen junk. Buy a new set of dishes, plates and more glasses (why the heck do I manage to break so many of those darn things!)

A big list and a pricy one too, with all of the purchases I’d like to make. I think it’s time to start thinking about asking for gift vouchers for Christmas for John Lewis and Marks & Spencer!

Are you renting a house and hate the way it looks or feels? I’d love some advise from those who have re-decorated rental properties on the cheap without painting or serious decorating being done.

All images from ApartmentTherapy.com.