Woman transforms kitchen walls using 6,500 penny coins[ Photos]

Loads of people are using lockdown as an excuse to get creative and give their homes a DIY makeover – but these feature walls have to be one of the most creative transformations we have seen. Emma Cox, a mum of two and emergency dispatcher from Crowland, Lincolnshire, decided to transform the kitchen walls with the help of her husband Stuart. The 37-year-old created a truly unique wall by covering the surface in thousands of pennies, creating a gleaming, copper finish that is both quirky and really fun.
‘I saw the idea on a floor and thought, “why not put it on our wall?”, Emma told money-saving community LatestDeals.co.uk.
‘We have spent about £35 so far, and when we will have finished it will have cost about £65 in pennies, £30 on adhesive and £20 on grout. We have been glueing the coins on by hand.’
Emma and her husband painstakingly cleaned every single coin, prepped the wall by cleaning it and sanding and filing any rough bits leftover from their old splash-back.
Then we just glued them on with an adhesive sealant as it was heat and moisture resistant,’ Emma explains. ‘We then individually put glue on each coin and stuck them on. We then cleaned them and we will be grouting them in the next few days hopefully.’

Emma has collected a huge variety of pennies, some of which are 50 years old.
‘We had quite a few pennies before lockdown, then our local post office had a few spare bags that we could buy when I went in one day to post a letter as the shops weren’t open,’ says Emma.
‘I wanted a mix of old and new. We have ones as old as 1973 and we have some Spanish 50 cents and New Jersey pennies.
‘I love just cooking and seeing a new one that I haven’t noticed yet. We have spent about five hours on the wall so far, and we have carried on around the whole of the kitchen. We have about two hours of sticking left to go.’
The white parts between the pennies will be filled with a dark grey grout, and the couple are planning to complete that task over the next few days.
Emma is delighted with how the transformation has turned out, and says it’s the perfect activity to keep her busy during the coronavirus lockdown.
‘I just love the fact that the coins have history and they are as old 50 years,’ she adds. ‘Some are scuffed, some are untouched and some are from another country.
We spend a lot of time together as a family but we work opposite shifts so with the lockdown it gave us more time together. We put the kids to bed, opened a bottle of wine and spent the nights sticking on pennies.