With summer fast approaching, it is the perfect time to put on your old paint-splattered shirt and do some DIY, giving your living spaces a new lease of life. We have gathered advice from experts on how to elevate your…
Whether you are DIYing it all yourself or getting tradespeople in, there are ways to cut some of the costs associated with sprucing up your home. 1) Testers Shop around for testers as prices vary a lot, and sometimes the…
Popular trader recommendation websites must vet the firms they advertise and tackle fake reviews under new rules designed to protect households from cowboy builders and tradespeople. Nationally, unscrupulous traders cost homeowners about £1.4bn a year, according to trading standards authorities,…
First, think cosiness This is all about creating “a feeling of permanence and warmth”, says Katherine Ormerod, the author of Your Not Forever Home: Affordable, Elevated, Temporary Decor for Renters. Achieving this begins by changing the acoustic environment. “There is…
Kevin McCloud | Book lice | Heart symbols | Ofsted gradings | Medicinal properties of Guinness As one of three occupants, all well over pensionable age, of a house with four toilets, I can tell Kevin McCloud that when he…
“I don’t know about you, but we probably had one bathroom between five or six of us when I was growing up,” says Robin Chatwin, an estate agent. “It’s certainly very different now.” These days, at least in the comfortable…
Wild sage, lemon, peach, sorbet, mint, and avocado: not the makings of a bizarre fruit salad, but some of the forgotten shades of Britain’s bathrooms that were popular in the mid-20th century. The colourful suites disappeared from homes as whites…
Wherever you get your pictures, in your mind’s eye you want them to be as expertly hung as the Royal Academy of Arts’ Summer Exhibition. But poorly spaced frames and wonky canvases can spoil the final effect. In the first…
If the idea of spending hundreds or thousands on a painting, print or sculpture sounds like too big a commitment, you could consider renting one. “It is a way people can bring great art into their home at a fraction…
Michael Leung first came across hempcrete after a family tragedy. When his father-in-law died from asbestos-related mesothelioma, Leung, an architect, swore off using toxic materials in building. “When you go on a healthy building journey, inevitably you bump into hempcrete,”…
