Medina Grillo benefits from renting a house from a very easy-going landlord! The award-winning DIY blogger's love for IKEA and upcycling has turned her uninspiring rental property into a wonderland of interior design. Medina started by removing the doors from her upper units, filling any visible holes and painting them white. Next, she lined the interior of each with removable wallpaper from Wallsauce – a non-permanent option that costs just £29 ($38) per square metre.

"Whilst you can’t make any drastic changes to a rented kitchen, you can customise it," Medina says. Aiming to enhance the room without losing her security deposit, her alterations simply improved the shell of what was already there. Another cost-savvy design feature, the adjoining dining area is home to an amazing feature wall, created using a simple tin of Rustins blackboard paint, available for £10 ($13) per 500ml.

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This 1930s kitchen was once a rather unsightly shade of lime green, but with just a few cheap purchases The Otto House blogger, Georgia, has totally revamped it: "I knew we needed to come up with a quick and cheap solution so we could transform the space, or at the very least, make it liveable," she says. To update it with ease, Georgia used white tile paint to cover up the green, before applying Brasilia tile stickers from Moonwall, which cost just £12 ($15) for a pack of 32.

As well as covering her unsightly tiles, Georgia sanded down the vibrant green cupboards and painted them alternating shades of Dulux Prussian blue and crisp white. "We also covered our cork floors with Ronseal Diamond Hard Floor Paint in white and turned a notice board into a pegboard by sourcing peg sheeting from eBay." Georgia removed some of the kitchen's shelves, painting the rest white and spraying the fridge handles and towel rail gold for a stylish finish. And all on a budget of just £412.50 ($536)!

Sometimes all a room needs is a change of fixtures and that's exactly what interior stylist Maxine Brady of We Love Home did, adding DIY copper handles and shelving to create a stunning space. "It was always my intention to add handmade elements," Maxine explains. "In such a small space, it would be tempting to go for white, handleless units, but my idea was to have a kitchen that reflected my home style – eclectic, chic and a little bit boho!"

Sourcing plumbers’ copper piping from Screwfix, available for as little as £3.69 ($4.80), and copper-plated bell hangers from Amazon, costing about £2.75 ($3.60) each, Maxine just needed a pipe cutter, a screwdriver, a drill and some glue to complete her project. “I think the copper handles make my kitchen look way more expensive than it was,” she says. “I love the way they have injected a unique style into the space. They would also look good on upcycled doors. It’s totally up to you!"

This stunning kitchen belongs to Lissi Walker of This Girl Loves Colour, but it didn't always look this cool. Lissi and her partner bought two homes that they decided to knock together, so they had almost no budget left for the kitchen. With a little ingenuity and thrifty thinking, they made the space their own with numerous upcycled redesigns, from a previous green and black tiled scheme to the current Memphis-inspired design that really makes the room pop. 

The ultimate way to inject colour and personality into a room without the use of extensive tiling, a bespoke wall mural like this is also a fantastic way to use up old paint tester pots or half-empty tins. "I tried to pick out the same accent colours at different points around the room so that wherever you look, it feels deliberate," says Lissi. She also repainted all of the cupboard doors herself, before making the mural the room's focal point. Total spend? A bargain £400 ($520).

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Laura Montgomery-Coleman of @renovating_ethelwolf has created a stunning kitchen with minimal effort and expenditure. Thanks to its bare brick walls and rich blue cabinets, the space was already pretty dreamy, so all Laura needed to do was add a few finishing touches to make it stand out. While brass pendant lights add to the room's rustic charm, it's the handmade open shelving that's the real star of the show.

Bryony Webster's kitchen was once plain and entirely uninspiring. "It felt old and drab," she explains. "So I thought long and hard about what colours to choose, researching Pinterest and trying different combinations on my computer." After deciding on a colour palette, Bryony sanded every cupboard down before painting them in a variety of candy-inspired enamel shades. Despite the project being a lot of physical work for Bryony and her husband, they totally transformed the space for just £155 ($202).

Bryony now helps others to create unique living spaces, with her company, Furbelow, selling one-of-a-kind boho items and handmade furnishings. The colourful cabinets are by far the room's main focal feature, but vibrant homeware items, verdant house plants and a chic boho rug complete the stunning scheme perfectly.

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What was once a bog-standard rental kitchen, with basic wooden cupboards and cheap white tiles, is now a sleek, Scandi haven. The home of award-winning blogger Emma Hopkinson, this dark and brooding scheme might have taken a fair few hours to achieve, but the result is more than worth it. Luckily, the kitchen already offered ultra-thin black worktops and appliances, so all Emma needed to do was add a lick of paint.

It's hard to believe that this kitchen hasn't undergone a complete refit. Tilly of @behind.the.grey.door carried out all the work herself and the results are spectacular. Since she lives in a rented house, Tilly was unable to replace the kitchen, which featured dark wooden cupboards and ugly black tiles, so she turned to Pinterest and Instagram for inspiration, while Decorating Centre Online helped her source the materials she needed.

Tilly opted for Zinsser AllCoat paint (£18.99/$25), colour-matched to her favourite Farrow & Ball shades. She primed and painted the tiles pink, before using a white grout pen to define the lines. She also covered her worktops in a self-adhesive vinyl from d-c-fix (from ‎£5/$6.50) and installed geometric vinyl flooring from Best 4 Flooring (£19.99/$26 per square metre), which really lifted the space. To finish the room, Tilly replaced her cupboard handles with stylish metal ones from B&Q.

Those without the skills or desire to paint their cupboards or create their own worktops, pay attention to this scheme. Sarah Gillespie opted for a simple yet effective makeover to revamp her cupboards. Buying terrazzo decals from Stickered Deco for just £43 ($56), Sarah completely transformed her once plain units into a stylish focal point. Before applying, Sarah divided the stickers by the number of cupboards she had and experimented on one door first to hone the design.

She finished the space with a feature wall of Wedgwood calendar plates that she purchased for just £5 ($6.50). When it comes to advising others who want to give their homes a DIY makeover, Sarah has a few tips."Don’t let Instagram make you feel bad about your space," she says. "I follow renovation accounts and I’m so impressed by people ripping out entire kitchens, when all I’ve done is superficial tweaks. But the time, stress and money involved is incomparable, so don’t feel less excited about your place because others are doing more."

Courtney Equall of Girl & Grey has a passion for DIY, thrifting and all things interior design. Chronicling her home improvement journey on her blog, her kitchen is perhaps her home's most inspiring space. Despite being compact and old fashioned, the DIY enthusiast took an innovative route to modernising the heart of her home. As well as painting the walls and installing new tiles, Courtney decided to pour her own concrete countertops.

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Despite sounding like an impossible task, this DIY project is actually relatively painless. With a melamine-coated particle board as her mould, Courtney then installed a reinforcement grid before pouring the concrete. Taking a week to set, the worktops now add a cool, industrial feel to the space. A highly cost-effective revamp, Courtney achieved her worktop for around £50 ($65).

Bursting with character, this gorgeous scheme by Manuela of @kunis_lovely_vintage_home is a masterclass in upcycling. The ultra-chic space is jam-packed full of quirky, recycled materials and despite being over 30 years old, looks brand new. Manuela updated the space with a fresh lick of white paint across the old black tiles, while chalk paint was used to freshen up the cupboards.

Manuela's retro fridge has also been given a facelift, thanks to a simple coating of blackboard paint, while antique wooden crates act as eclectic storage. "I love to upcycle things," she explains. "My old drum is now a plant shelf, and an old rake is a stand for my spoons and other utensils." To bring freshness and colour to the scheme, Manuela also added plenty of plants and green accents, resulting in a fun and fresh room that oozes personality – all for less than £415 ($540).

This stylish scheme is beautifully modern, yet offers plenty of unique, rustic charm too. With handmade units and countertops, every single part of this kitchen was crafted by DIY queen Kasie Barton. For her preparation space, Kasie hand-poured her own concrete worktops, as well as creating an amazing DIY island from old bricks, wooden crates and surplus tiles.

This amazing kitchen was designed by Plykea, a company that offers doors, drawer fronts, worktops and cover panels for standard IKEA kitchens, and took just six weeks to achieve. The incredible budget-friendly scheme is just one of their creations and features the firm's Fenix Grigio Bromo, Formica Chrome Yellow and Walnut Ply cabinet covers, with semi-recessed circular pull handles. 

All of Plykea's fronts and worktops are made to order, so prices vary, but a kitchen like this could be yours from around £1,680 ($2,185), a steal when you consider the typical price for a new kitchen is £8,000 ($10.4k), according to comparison site Household Quotes. Offering a range of contemporary materials, including oak and walnut, you can customise everything from door handles to spacer panels. Each cover is finished by hand and sprayed with a UV protective clear lacquer to stand the test of time.

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