Interior Design and Home Improvement Blog

The worktop is the most used element in our kitchens. They need to withstand scratches, spills, knocks, water and heat. It is important to choose a strong and durable worktop that is also hygienic and easy to clean.  These are the top 10 materials suitable for a kitchen worktop.. 1, Laminate Pros: Economical Great choice of colours, patterns and finishes Available in different thicknesses Withstand high temperatures Easy to clean Cons: It chips easily It isn’t easy to repair Not totally heat resistant (hot pans will create bubbles in the melamine) The Look: It’s cheap - and it looks it “Wooden” laminates just don’t look real Maintenance: Easy, but avoid abrasives DIY job? Yes 2, WOOD Light woods: beech, ash, maple and birch Tropical woods: iroko, mahogany, teak Other hard woods: walnut, oak Pros: Natural material Wood is Read More

There is a wide range of choice when decorating with paint. It’s fun to go through the colour charts and brochures but when it comes to choosing the right paint we are baffled. What is the difference between eggshell and satin finish? When shall we use acrylic paint? What’s the difference between primer and undercoat? What is limewash and so on.. So in this overload of choice we get confused and instead of getting the most suitable type of paint we end up with something from a trusted DIY store’s range or a designer paint. Why? Because the paint has a sensual or sexy name with seductive images printed on the tin. Sad but true. You’re not alone, even I have been seduced by this marketing… and I should know better as I have mixed my own paints in the past and realised that making paint is just like cooking – it’s just the combination of certain ingredients that result in Read More

Feng Shui is about arranging your stuff and furniture in a way that that helps you to avoid bad energy and to boost your wealth & well being. First you must find out your Kua number and establish your personal trigram – this depends on your birth year and on your gender. This will determine your best and worst directions and whether you’re an East or West person. Then you should work out your house or office’s trigram – this depends on the year the house was built and the direction it faces. You can find many websites and/ or books to help you with this - but it’s very important to establish before you start moving things around. When you’ve done the above you are ready to maximise chi.. The following points are the most important in creating a successful office: 1, Location of your office You must locate your office in an auspicious area of the building. This is not Read More

Putting up a shelf is considered an easy DIY job, yet it’s more difficult than you might think. A badly put up shelf just looks dreadful. So before you attach your self-made or ready-made shelf think about the following issues.. Weight What are you going to use the shelf for? How heavy will the load be? You must construct or buy a shelf accordingly. Wall What sort of wall are you fixing the shelf to - brick, concrete, wood, plasterboard etc? You’ll need to buy the appropriate screws and, if necessary, the right wall-plugs. Finish Ready-made adjustable shelf systems are easy to install and provide flexibility. Shelves resting on brackets are strong and can look attractive - the choice of brackets is endless. The trend these days is to have chunky and/or floating shelves - these look nice but generally don’t take heavy loads. Fixing shelves A shelving system consists of vertical Read More

It’s spring again, and the DIY season has begun. It’s the ideal time to freshen-up our homes, repair household items, fix broken appliances & fittings or redecorate some spaces. The best way to get everything done by the Summer is to get properly organised. Get a notepad and a pen and look around your home – room by room. Write down the things that need to be cleaned, rearranged, fixed or revamped. Then go outside and inspect the windows, doors, pathways, gates, courtyard or garden. Again, write down what needs to be done.. Then group these tasks into projects-to-do. It’s more efficient to create task-based projects rather than room by room projects. For example, create window-cleaning or window-painting tasks rather than allocating a weekend for cleaning/redecorating the bedroom, then another weekend for the living room and so on. The most common task-based projects that Read More