DIY Archives - ET Speaks From Home

Updating Your Home? What Can Be DIY And What Needs An Expert

Completing home improvements sounds like a satisfying job. Being able to transform a room in your home into your dream space not only provides you with pride in completing the task but also saves you money. Over the past year, there was a rise in the total of people completing DIY projects within their home.

As this total is showing no signs of slowing down soon, it is important to know which jobs within your home can be done yourself and which ones require an expert. In reality, whilst completing a job yourself is both satisfying and cost-effective, certain jobs are better left, or require, an expert to complete.

5 Tips to Add More Value to Your Home

Looking to get stuck into some home improvements? Want to add value to your home? Here are a few key things you should be doing right now:

Haynes 4 Cylinder Engine Augmented Reality Review

This coming Father’s Day, why not treat your loved ones to this ultimate gift – Haynes 4 Cylinder Engine with augmented reality features for car enthusiasts and budding petrol heads! You get to build this awesome working engine featuring real engine roars with the authentic Haynes Build Your Own Engine sets.

How to Prepare for an Architect Home Visit

Whenever you undertake building works within the home, at one point or another you will need to have an architect visit your home to take appropriate measurements of the space. This is typically called a site survey, and may be done by a surveyor first, before an architect then completes a measured survey of the space taking more accurate measurements and details. It can be difficult to know what you need for these home visits, so here we have outlined what you need to know to prepare for them.

How to Keep your Loft Conversion Cool this Summer

In summer it can be frustrating when you go upstairs to sleep and find that the higher up your house you go, the hotter the house becomes. It can lead to an uncomfortable night’s sleep which nobody enjoys in the humid summer! When you think of having a loft conversion, you may believe that having a bedroom in a loft space could end up being sweltering in these hotter months, but there are many ways you can keep your loft conversion cool and airy in the summertime.

How to Design the Perfect Guest Annexe Garden Room

We have all had to host family and friends in our homes, whether it’s for a family gathering at Christmas, or to get away for the weekend and explore where your friends live. For those who are fortunate enough to have a spare room in their home, it can be an easy arrangement, but for other busy households it can be a logistical nightmare. A garden room can be the perfect solution, providing a beautiful guest annexe for family, friends, or even to rent out and make some money from!

How to Incorporate Colour into your Kitchen Extension

There are many different ways you can decorate your kitchen extension, with bold statement colours or more traditional neutral colour schemes. How you incorporate colour into your kitchen extension can depend on numerous factors, for example the type of extension you have and the amount of light in your extension. However, it does not need to be as difficult as it seems, with some handy tips that can help you decorate your kitchen extension space.

Four Tips For Transforming Your Kitchen Area

When transforming areas of your home, it is always good to pay attention to places where there’s lots of traffic. This is usually the area of your home that’s likely to get the most wear and tear and will be the first place to look like it’s in need of an update. One of these areas is the kitchen and seeing as you might use it two or three times a day, it’s worth spending some time updating it every now and then. Here are four tips for transforming your kitchen area.

DIY Tips for your home and office

Whether you are looking to refresh or revamp, there is always a DIY project that can be done at home, or in the office.

Projects range from small scale undertakings such as paint jobs and fixing shelves for extra
storage to building custom furniture and installing wales and ceilings. Here we take a look at
some possible projects and offer some tips to help your projects flourish.

The Different Types of Damp and How to Manage It

Damp may sound a simple and regular thing, but if it is left untreated it can cause serious damage to your property and health. Damp is described as a presence of unwanted moisture in your building’s structure. Damp walls could be a result of condensation within the building itself or an invasion from the outside building.

As several reasons could cause it, and in various ways, no two cases can be exactly the same. There are different types of damp, and many different solutions to handle them. However, finding the right cause and getting the right damp proofing treatment is of great importance.

Ways to Decorate Your Bedroom

Not long ago, I blogged about a few different ways to decorate your boring white wall, like adding a splash of colour to re-energise the room. If you don’t fancy getting the paints out, you could get museum-quality wall art, like paintings, photographs and illustrations to add to the wall. Or you could add sentimental items and pictures that remind you of your childhood. Hanging a quality mirror can help capture and reflect light. Alternatively, upcycle your furniture by painting it, like what we did to our bathroom, or refurbish it with used fabrics.

Is Wood Flooring Really Safe For Children?

The flooring in your home needs to be pretty hard-working if it’s going to stand up to the pressures of family life. Children spend a lot of time on the floor, whether they’re learning to crawl or just playing with their toys. Your floors need to be easy to clean, durable and safe. Parents are often confused by wood floors. Are they safe for children or not?

Is Adding An Extension To Your House Worth The Money?

If your family is growing in number and you’re living in a small flat or townhouse, it is possible you are going to consider either moving to a bigger house or adding an extension. In the UK, most people would go for the latter option, owing to the statistics from the Office of National Statistics that the country spends close to £30 billion every year on home improvements, with a significant number being extensions.

How Can I Give My Home a More High-End Feel, on a Budget?

Want a home that looks high end, but don’t have the budget to go out and blow thousands of pounds on furniture and fixtures? You’ll be pleased to hear that it can still be done- there are ways that you can give the impression that you’ve spent a lot more than you have. Here are a few examples of how to go about it.

Build it or Buy It

Should you build it or buy it? More often than not, in order not to crack open our brain, we tend to follow the quick and easy way to furnish our house by buying furniture straight from a catalogue. And of course, our home might look exactly like a catalogue showroom, which can look pretty boring.

We are Ikea fans and over the years, we have bought a lot of their black and white furniture. They always look great in the catalogue, but they don’t always work well for everyone’s home, especially for us! Our living room looks dull with no style!