When we bought our house last year a sizeable chunk of garden was taken up by a mysterious circle of paving slabs in a sea of golden gravel. Not a druidic ritual site, but rather the footings for a 15ft trampoline that the previous owner – I am delighted to say...
This wooden crate is made out of 12mm sheet plywood. It is dead-easy to build and the size can easily be varied to fit any space. I made three of these to fit inside a bench unit I built. Here’s the list of tools and materials: Tools Circular Saw Clamp...
Our dining room is dark. It has no windows to the outside and the only natural light comes via the kitchen. The gloominess is compounded by the back of our house being east-facing and receiving little direct sunlight. I’ve wondered how best to tackle this shadowy room...
The Grundtal kitchen organiser series is one of Ikea’s classic lines, a simple, modern and practical storage system with a ‘professional kitchen’ look. We’ve already got a couple of rails for pots and pans – see blurry background in photo above – and I...
Since moving into our house I have been steadily building up a ‘stable’ of power tools. My approach has been to save up for good quality tools and buy them when I can, though borrowing (on permanent loan) from a generous dad has also proven fruitful. I’ve...
If I have to live with stair gates for most of the next decade I’d rather they looked good, so I’ve gone in search of some more attractive DIY solutions – turns out plenty of parents feel the same way and have taken matters into their own hands: 1. DIY...
Filling up the entire bay in our front room with a window seat felt like quite a committing project, but the arguments have been stacking up: 1) Every time my wife encounters a window seat – in a house we are visiting, on the telly, or in a magazine – she...
The days of Gregor’s cot acting as effective containment are numbered. Given his ability to scale a step-ladder, open the front door, and use a stool to grab that just-out-of-reach bit of cake on the kitchen sideboard, it is only a matter of days before he vaults the...
This sandpit with fold out benches is an absolute gem of a DIY project. It’s a brilliant yet remarkably simple design that can be done start to finish in a couple of evenings – and all for less than £80. The catalyst for this particular job was my wife’s threat to buy...
Framing pictures can be an expensive business. We have dozens of pictures sitting in our cupboard and not on our walls. The other day I decided to sort this out by setting up my own framing workshop. I figured that for the same price as getting a couple of pictures...
