Katherine Ormerod: 'People tell me I’m mad to decorate a rental home — but it's worth the effort'
Katherine Ormerod is a woman of many talents: she’s a digital taste-maker with a tool belt, a ghostwriter undaunted by a staple gun and a fashion journalist who knows her way with a pocket hole jig.
When she moved into a rental property several years ago, she began sharing her DIY pursuits alongside outfit posts to her 70,000-strong Instagram following. The rattan-insert doors she made from scratch to box off unsightly eaves, and the temporary wallpaper she painstakingly applied to an awkward corner, was her way of uplifting her surrounds.
“It’s showing that there can be joy to it, and that it’s worth your while to make an effort,” she says of renting.
The writer, 40, is now on to her second rented home with her fiancé and their two young sons in Grove Park, Chiswick.
The reception to her labour-intensive projects was — and still is — very mixed. “Loads of people tell me I’m
