I'm obsessed with scrolling Facebook Marketplace and these are my tips for finding the gems

Screen printer Hannah Carvell is one of Ideal Home's new Open House contributors, sharing her thoughts on colourful home design for a creative family to live in. See the rest of her articles here.

Upcycling furniture is a staple of my aesthetic at home and always had been as long as I can remember.

I recall being a child and my mum transforming an old set of shelves with pot of paint for my newly decorated under the sea themed bedroom (she loved that nineties trend where you painted the walls with a sponge perhaps a little too much) or when she ran a sweet shop cafe and tasked me with the challenge of upcycling some retro stools and tables.

I remember we painted the woodwork in bright coloured gloss paint and collaged old Beano comic strips on the seats and table tops before varnishing.

I think the main draw for an upcycling project for me is that I always want something individual and unique, I am very drawn to the old and the weird. If a cupboard has paws and claws instead of normal feet, sign me up. A bit wonky? An old patina with a mark made from the original owner? Yes please.

I love all the quirks that come with buying second hand and also I can’t deny a big factor is price, as much as I love scanning the pages of design magazines for all the beautiful trends and iconic pieces of furniture, I can’t afford to buy a lot of those pieces. So upcycling and hand picking bits of a trend that you love is a fantastic way of updating your home at a fraction of the cost.

I recently bought a large pine sideboard for the lean-to conservatory at the front of my house. Its useful for storage but also was a snip at just £100 on Facebook marketplace for a very large solid well made piece of furniture, and bonus it just about fit into the boot of our car.

I am always drawn to bright colours, and as green is a firm favourite I knew I would want to update it myself. I started by removing the knobs and sanding, then adding a couple of coats of Farrow and Ball's Yeabridge Green Eggshell (that I had left over from a past project), and gave it a modern twist by investing in new handles.

I am loving the burgundy trend that I keep seeing right now in fashion and homeware, so have replaced the tired old pine knobs for modern Plank Hardware's gorgeous bobble handles and Brass Back Plates and Matching Knobs.

A lovely contrast in colours and when I do get round to decorating this room properly down the line I know its a colour scheme that will work for me in future, I plan to have lots of greenery and indoor plants in this room on a permanent basis, I know I love the colour green and will always come back to it again and again in my decor and have created a piece that feels totally me with some on trend accessories but for the fraction of the cost of buying something brand new.

I have a permanent obsession with hunting Facebook Marketplace for 'Stripped Antique Pine' pieces, you can in fact set alerts for specific things which I do often if I am hunting for something very specific.

I admit I have a tendency to doom scroll FBM and saving gorgeous old vintage school cabinets, antique kitchen cupboards, old stripped pine chest of drawers and dressers that I know full well I have no space for in my house but still can’t help myself.

I will say when I do buy something deliciously old with great patina I don’t always paint it, somethings are best left alone, normally a good clean and a fresh coat of beeswax can be the perfect refresh.

Over the years I have painted many a dresser. Shout out to Annie Sloan's Chalk Paint which makes this task so much easier. You don’t even have to sand or undercoat first so makes for a very satisfying instant dopamine hit without all the time consuming prep, and the wax coat at the end sets hard and really endures the test of time.

Re-covering chairs with smaller scraps of favourite fabrics is a great way of breathing fresh life into tired pieces and I have even had a go at re-spraying an old (and extremely heavy) cast iron radiator, of course purchased on FBM.

I longed for one of the beautiful coloured enamelled old fashioned cast iron radiators from cast rads and I ended up finding a very large one near me being ripped out off an Edwardian house reno. I dispatched my husband to collect (the biggest challenge in fact was how HEAVY it was - we dented the car trying to get it into the boot). I used a specialist enamel spray paint I had sourced from a Riolett, where you could literally have ANY Pantone colour mixed, so I went for the brightest orange I could find along with a spray based undercoat.

I won’t say it was my easiest upcycle, but it did work and for around £300 all in for rad and paint I had a completely unique piece that replacing the 80s white radiator that was dominating the wall in my living room was transformed. Would I do it again, absolutely! Would I spray paint outside rather than having evacuate my whole family for a dog walk mid way through as the fumes were so strong? Yes.

Spray painting is a brilliant quick update, I tend to use it on smaller metal up-cycles, a little rusty metal stool with folding steps and a ripped vinyl seat pad (a mid century classic) I found at the back of the shed is now one of my favourite pieces, a quick rust fixing undercoat and a small can of bright red enamel paint (a snip at £7 a can) - I recovered the old vinyl seat with a scrap of red ticking fabric I had left over from a previous project and it truly is one of my most treasured pieces of furniture, as well as extremely useful when you want to reach something high.

I am a little bit obsessed with searching Facebook Marketplace for treasures, I think finding great things isn’t just luck, its time and consistency scrolling and hunting and probably training that algorithm to show you the pieces it KNOWS you will want to buy. If I am looking for something specific it can take me months of refining my search and checking back on a daily basis until I find the perfect piece.

My advice is if it truly is perfect and at a price you are happy to pay don’t hesitate, I am still mourning the loss of a sofa I was 2nd in line for, I messaged the poor seller daily to check if her first in line buyer had collected (willing it to fall through so I could swoop in and claim the prize) sadly it was not to be. So act fast when you see “the one” and this is where checking daily is important so you are first in line when the right pieces do come up.

I use Shiply a lot, I will factor in the cost of a courier for larger pieces and you can set your circumference accordingly for how far you are willing to drive to collect the treasures.

Haggling on price, I would say only if you are not fussed either way about the piece or its been up for a while, I save a lot of pieces I am on the fence with and then you get notified if the price comes down, but if you know it just has to be yours, move fast.

I am always friendly in my message and offer to collect promptly without a haggle, that way if there are multiple people after the same piece you have the best chance of being the chosen one in the sea of nonsense that I’m sure we have all experienced selling on Facebook Market Place.