House

Gardens can be designed and grown for the enjoyment of local wildlife as well as your own. A garden wildlife sanctuary can attract a continuous variety of birds throughout the seasons. Birds and butterflies are the most popular and easiest of all wildlife to attract if you provide food, water, …

Creating a family fitness room makes it easier than ever to stick to your workout -and it’s a great place for the kids to chill out, too. Obviously choose the biggest space you can for the fitness area, but don’t forget to create an atmosphere of warmth. That way it …

Nobody moves house on a whim.  It’s a process which takes careful consideration, weeks of searching and then months of paperwork and negotiation.  And in a time of recession persuading someone to move from their home in to something new, to spend money on movers and solicitors, pay mortgage lenders …

You move away from your parents house, or out of shared accommodation at university or with colleagues to your dream home – it might be a small flat in the city, it might be a seven-bedroom mansion in the country, you may be alone or moving in with a partner …

Home makeover programmes have inspired millions of people to become a little more creative with their interiors. You can now choose from endless paint shades, rolls of designer wallpapers, floor coverings, furniture styles and accessories. It is piecing them all together that is the hard bit. While choice is always …

How many times have you eagerly started a DIY project full of enthusiasm only to get half way into it and get bored? If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. About 1.7 million of us are living with a DIY or home renovation project that’s remained unfinished for the …

Gone are the days when dads pottered about in the garden shed, tinkering with machinery or finding new ways to keep unwanted insects off their vegetable patch. Don’t get us wrong, there’s no doubt that men still use the garden shed as a refuge – a means of escaping the …

The credit crunch has taken a firm hold of the housing market, knocking the confidence of first-time buyers and bringing sales down to a sluggish trickle. But with the number of available properties rising and the lowest interest rates for years, could there be a silver lining for first-time buyers …

Do you enviously look across to your neighbour’s garden and wonder why it always seems to have a selection of flowers and foliage in bloom, no matter what the season? Well now you too can enjoy the benefits of garden that offers year round floral displays -all it takes is …

People who want a beautiful home but want to create a healthy living space that doesn’t damage the environment have many more choices these days. Due to environmental and consumer demand, there is a growing number of greener home improvement products available. These products may take some searching for and …

When the sun breaks through and we get told that we’re about to experience a heatwave (for a couple of days at least) the whole world descends on the local DIY centre to grab all the outdoor ephemera to make it possible to live comfortably in the garden for the …

Back in the 1970s, talking, singing or even playing plants their own music was kitsch. Thirty years on, are your house and garden plants suffering in silence? Or do you secretly sing them a little ditto or tell them a story? You can expect that a few gardeners have the …

It seems the credit crunch has not only prevented many of us from moving house, but has also stopped us hiring professional tradespeople to tackle home improvement jobs. Builders, decorators and plumbers who thought they would get a bite of the home improvements pie have been left sorely disappointed as …

William Morris once said “have nothing in your house which you do not know to be useful and do not believe to be beautiful.”  In many ways the same could be said of a garden, although we tend to keep along the lines of more beautiful than useful these days. …

Taking a trip to a home improvement store has proved to be a particularly popular pastime over the past few weeks. Such is the assertion of Barclaycard Payment Acceptance, which reports that consumers have been taking advantage of discounts and sales by retailers over the past month. Indeed, research from …

When considering the perfect garden most of us want perfect manicured lawns, pretty, neat flower beds and perhaps a charming water feature.  But how useable is a garden where everything has its place?  And how much can kids enjoy it? The typical British garden is all about a nice patch …

With the long winter evenings drawing out and the warmer weather on its way, now is often the time of year people start to consider moving house. But before you start searching for your next potential dream home you should first turn your attention to your own property. We’ve all …

At the time of year when Wimbledon is in full swing, evenings stay light until 10pm and there’s nothing more satisfying than a BBQ in the garden accompanied by a bottle of light summer ale, there’s one fruit on the minds of allotmenteers – the humble British strawberry. For those …

There are certain things that a seasoned DIY-er can take on, potentially saving themselves thousands in call out charges. But take on a job beyond your abilities and it really could cost you dearly – contractors don’t charge those expensive fees for nothing after all. So what are those ‘little’ …

Curtains do more than just keep the light out.  They maintain privacy, divide a room and provide a punch of colour and personality.  Yet many people ignore window dressings when they redecorate, sticking to plain, ill fitting or just plain ugly curtains or blinds.  Follow these tips to get the …