Tasia Papoulias transforms her home into her mid-century modern dream home

NEED TO KNOW

• Tasia Papoulias wanted to renovate her new home to make it her mid-century modern dream
• The Manchester-based content creator used affordable plywood sheets to create full wood walls for less than £2,000 — or roughly $2,670
• Papoulias documents the ongoing renovation on TikTok and encourages others to embrace bold design choices

Tasia Papoulias considers herself “the biggest lover of mid-century interiors,” so when she moved into her builder-grade home, she knew she had some work cut out for her.

Papoulias, who lives outside Manchester, tells PEOPLE she bought the house with her partner a year ago and immediately “went down the rabbit hole” figuring out how to bring her vision to life — all without breaking the bank.

“‘You create the Pinterest board that you wanna bring to life and we’ll just make it work,’” she remembers her partner telling her.

Through her pins and the interior design books that her friends got her, she started to see a trend emerge: full wood walls. 

“I was like, ‘Okay, now that you’ve said that, I want a room full of wood walls. I hope you believe in the vision,’” she adds.

“With this house, it’s a 1930s home, which traditionally you wouldn’t necessarily see the wood walls, and I was like, ‘Maybe I’ll just do, like, one wall and see how that looks,’” she continues. “Then every time I would refer back to any of the spaces that I loved the most, I was like, ‘If you’re gonna do something, you might as well make a really bold statement.’ That was my initial thought process behind doing it.”

Papoulias says the renovation started with the “whole downstairs.”

“Every single floor needed to be ripped up. We had to peel everything back. We had to do damp courses. So we basically had the shell of the house downstairs,” she shares. “I always knew this room that I’m starting with, the wood walls, this was one that had the clearest vision of.”

The feeling she wanted to evoke was of sitting in a cozy, snug mid-century bar somewhere. For the rest of the house, they initially planned on just doing a “small renovation,” but once they started, it was hard to stop.

“It’s been a full, like, top-to-bottom renovation,” Papoulias shares. “It was like trying to scale it back and just work room by room. So far it’s been like my biggest achievement today, I would say. I’ve really brought my Pinterest board to life.”

While working through the downstairs renovations, Papoulias “fell in love with marble worktops and dark wood kitchens.”

“I said to my partner, ‘So that slight renovation that we wanted to do, we’re gonna get full new worktops and we’re gonna wrap the kitchen in a real dark wood veneer,’” she recalls. “We started with this room as the entrance and then walked through the house and then slowly but surely had a vision for each of the rooms.”

However, when it was time to get quotes for the wood paneling, none of the contractors saw her vision, saying it didn’t “make sense” and suggesting they only panel one wall.

Still, Papoulias was determined to make her vision come to life. She had to “figure out a way to do it in a more feasible and affordable budget, because as you can imagine, doing a full room in wood paneling can soon rack up.”

“I was like, ‘Okay, challenge accepted. I’m gonna make this work somehow,’” she shares. “I did it in plywood sheets, which tends to be like timber wood, which is a fraction of the cost than if you were to get an oak wood veneer. A lot of the time in old mid-century homes, it’s like oak wood veneer that you see in the rooms, which is very expensive per panel.”

With the help of a friend, they manipulated and maneuvered the wood to match the curve of the walls. In the end, Papoulias says it cost “not as much as I had originally planned.”

“I’ve been very savvy with thrifting things,” Papoulias says, noting that each sheet of wood cost around £15 — or $20.

She was able to furnish and finish the room for under £2,000, or roughly $2,670.

Papoulias, who is still working through renovations, says “managing my own expectations” while taking on such a big project with important deadlines has been a challenge.

“With many people, you see something online and you’re like, ‘Okay, that is exactly what I want, and that is what I need, and I don’t care. I need to bring it to life.’ Then you find out the bed that you love is actually £50,000 and it’s not at all realistic to be able to put it in your home,” Papoulias shares. “It’s also trying to find what it is I love in interior design that I see, and how I can then make that really stick to my home and my space.”

Papoulias has been documenting her renovation and sharing it with her TikTok followers, creating “a community of people that also love this interior design style,” which she notes has been “really nice,” especially when it comes to finding “alternative solutions to more expensive options out there; it’s nice to be able to share that with people.”

Papoulias hopes to inspire others and that they learn to “not be afraid to take risks.”

“If you’re gonna create a space and if you love something and you really believe in the vision of something, then don’t be scared to take the risk because if we don’t like it it’s not gonna be that difficult to change,” she tells PEOPLE. “If you do a paint color and you really don’t like it, then you can change the paint color. Go with your gut and don’t be afraid to be bold, because the bold choices are the ones that actually end up being the most rewarding.”

While her wood-paneled living room might not be for everyone, she loves it — and that’s all that matters.

“I  would really encourage people to, if they love something and if they’re passionate about something, and especially if it’s interiors, they should really do what they love the most and really create a home and a space that they love,” Papoulias shares. 

“It’s the first room I come into and just almost escape the world,” she adds.

Although renovations are “still an ongoing process,” she is loving the journey.

“That’s the crazy thing about your home is that it’s never finished,” she shares.

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