'We added £230,000 to the value of our house - and one £400 change made a huge difference'

A pair of first-time buyers have managed to add a huge £230,000 in value to their property after renovating it themselves. Ellie Rimmer, 27, and James Lawrence, 28, bought an 'uninhabitable' two-bed bungalow for £400,000 back in September 2021 with the ambition to turn it into a four-bed house.

Since then they have stripped their home back to its 'bare bones' and have been doing various DIY jobs to it - which has now increased its value to £630,000. One of the biggest changes cost them just £400, but made one of the most obvious differences to their property.

The couple decided to paint their roof tiles themselves, turning it from a worn out brown colour to a modern slate grey. Ellie and James saved £4,100 by cleaning and painting their tiles instead of buying a brand new set for an average cost of £4,500.

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The couple came up with the idea to paint them themselves whilst strapped for cash during their house renovation.

Ellie researched and discovered tile paint existed and bought £400 worth to coat their existing brown tiles twice.

The pair - along with Ellie’s dad Gary - cleaned each tile one by one with a wire brush and spent around four 10-hour days painting the tiles.

Ellie and James couldn’t be happier with their handiwork and say doing the DIY themselves is “satisfying”.

Ellie, a project manager for the NHS, from Brighton said: “I have done a lot of upcycling in the past. I just thought ‘surely you can paint tiles.' I Googled it, and it did exist.

To save money on new tiles we cleaned them all by hand. The first coat – the tiles drunk the paint. We did two coats and all with brushes.

"It fits with the rest of