A 20K Renovation Budget and a Can-do Attitude: How Shaun Tompkins Lives Small
Twenty-thousand dollars, YouTube videos, and a can-do attitude: three essential ingredients to Shaun Tompkins’s DIY renovation of his 42 square metre apartment in Melbourne’s Brunswick neighbourhood. Tompkins, a Sustainable Building Officer with local government, purchased the unit on the top story of a small, low-rise 1960s building in 2022. He was drawn to the apartment’s good bones, simplicity, and low-enough cost, but wasn’t happy with its outdated appearance or its lack of insulation – causing it to be unbearably hot on warmer days. So, with a budget of twenty-thousand dollars, Tompkins optimised his 42 sqm home to make it not only functional and aesthetic but also sustainable and energy efficient.
With a Pinterest board, how-to YouTube videos, and a tool library subscription, Tompkins was able to complete the vast majority of the work himself, which kept him (mostly) on budget: “To make the budget work, I had to take on the majority of the work myself”, he explained, “which was okay because I have a ‘can do’ attitude. I only really paid for the essential trades like an electrician and a plumber”. Some of this work included: demoing and reinstalling the kitchen, laying cork flooring, and adding ceiling insulation and K17 plasterboard to exterior walls. He did it all in good time, too: “From start to finish, the whole renovation probably took about six months”, Tompkins estimated. “I was working four days a week, so for three days a week I would come to the apartment and put in a 6- or 8-hour day – depending on how many beers I drank with some friends”.
Tompkins’s Small Space Solutions
To make his 42 sqm work for him, Tompkins applied (whether knowingly or not) some textbook small-space solutions with his own flair. The kitchen, for example, originally had a large island blocking the middle of the room and making it feel cluttered. Tompkins reoriented it into a L-shape hugging the corner, building in all necessary appliances below the benchtop to allow for a nice sense of lightness above. He used an IKEA kitchen as the base structure and modified it with a recycled and reclaimed benchtop from Urban Salvage, custom-cut timber fronts that he stained pistachio green, and little add-ons like a slide-out benchtop for extra working space. “The IKEA kitchen was great because their invoice will show you the exact sizes of the fronts you didn’t order, so you can customise by getting wood cut to that size”, he added.
Another classic trick Tompkins used was his cohesive use of materials, creating some continuity and flow throughout the space. This is most apparent between the kitchen cabinets and bedroom PAX wardrobe and shelf, which is finished in the same pistachio green stain. Tompkins’s own tricks he applied to the PAX were to oversize the doors to reach ceiling height – adding an extra shelf up top – and creating the illusion that it continued into a floating shelf above the door and his desk. For the latter part, he received some help from his friend Marcus of Blue House Studios in Sydney, who was able to design the floating curved shelf and produce a file that went straight to Plyco for cutting.
Tompkins’s home is also a testament to how just because your space is small, it doesn’t mean you can’t integrate your own style through vintage furnishings – something Tompkins’s has a knack for. His advice: “it’s about finding the shapes you want, that’s the most important. Like, the chairs, for example, were reupholstered. You can spruce things up if you need, so go for old, durable materials that you can bring back to life or make your own”.
Home Improvements
Even though Tompkins realised he was not quite the perfectionist he thought he was over the course of this project – with little “flaws” to be found here and there – he remains thrilled with the outcome: “When I wake up in the morning and I look around, I’m still sort of pinching myself that I was able to do it – that the vision came together.” As far as what’s left, he noted that he’d love to add double glazing and external shading to the windows, but that will need to wait until he’s got another budget to play around with.
