The living room is complete, photographed and ready for your perusal very soon. Before I bring this little Rock My Room series to a close I thought you might like to take a gander at my final DIY for this room. When I say ‘my’ I really mean ‘our’ as to be honest James did most of the work on this one.

As you may remember we moved into our pad just before Christmas. Before we’d unpacked most of the boxes I’d prioritised and whipped out the Christmas tree to fill an empty corner under the window in the living room. Now I know everywhere looks bare after the Chrimbo decks come down but this area looked particularly sorry for itself. I considered adding a cosy chair, then maybe a cabinet before settling on a console table which I figured would be practical and add to the airy feel I was hoping to achieve for the room.

Cox and Cox have this beauty of a table in their collection but to be honest the budget was running thin by this time and I needed to spend about £50 rather than the best part of £200 so off we popped to Ikea and snapped up a Vittsjo Laptop Table for £30. At a metre long the proportions were perfect for the space under the window so we set about with a few alterations to make it complement the room.

  • First I put together the table omitting the shelf (which is designed to hold a laptop) and the glass top
  • Next James sprayed with three coats of Gold Montana Acrylic Spray Paint in ‘Gravel Grey’ spraying the shelf separately to get an even coverage
  • Next we nipped off to B&Q and bought a plywood off-cut for a £1 and a bag of cement
  • James cut the plywood to size with a saw and then screeded the top with a thin layer of cement and water mix. This is just a fancy way of saying he applied a coat of cement with a tile grout float (you can see this in the step-by-step image above)
  • After leaving to dry overnight he then added another thin layer
  • When dry he sanded back with a light rub of glass paper and secured the top in place with a few screws

Voila. A one-off concrete table for less than £40. Truth be told we’re considering redoing to add a thicker top to the table to give it a bit of a chunkier feel, however for the moment I’m pleased to have a new bit of furniture for a bargain price.

I am back bright and early on Monday morning to share the full reveal of the room (including the gallery wall you can see sneaking into one of the pics above). Thanks for bearing with me as I’ve droned on about this makeover for the last month.

Any other Ikea hacks you’d like to share? Have you been getting busy with any cement or concrete in your own home? Don’t forget to tag your own room makeovers with #RockMyRoom over on instagram so we can all take a butchers. Until Monday…