Stripping off old wallpaper is a tedious and boring DIY job, but it is vital to do this task properly before you redecorate. Residue paste, flecks of old paper and damaged walls will make any new paint or wallpaper look terrible, so it is important to spend time and energy on the preparation before starting on your new room scheme…
Read MoreUsing wallpaper in a bathroom is a subject I’ve touched on before 3 years ago when I first wallpapered my own bathroom. Since that time, I have had a number of questions asked about the wallpaper in here….
Read MorePainter’s tape, also known as decorator’s tape, is a miracle DIY product that just makes painting your home so much easier! Rather than relying on a steady hand when cutting-in between your wall and your ceiling or skirting, painter’s tape allows you to get a perfectly straight, razor-sharp paint line between two different paint colours with ease. For those who like to be a bit creative, painter’s tape is the perfect tool to create stripes and shapes on your walls, making it great to use in a kids room where you might want to add in a multitude of colours!
Read MoreIn the past 3 weeks, I have painted 2 interior doors in my home in deep, vibrant shades. The door in my young son’s bedroom I painted in a cobalt blue. While our previously cream basement door got a lick of rich, red burgundy. Safe to say that I am a HUGE fan of the painted interior door trend. Painting an interior door in a bold shade is an easy way to add vibrant colour into your home, without having to commit to painting all the walls in a domineering hue.
Read MoreAs a child of the ‘80’s, I vividly remember my parents decorating our family home. Painting a room could only happen in the height of summer when all the doors and windows could be left open. Regardless, the harsh smell of chemical-laden paint always travelled through every room in the house. If the room being painted was a bedroom, you couldn’t sleep in it for a good few days until the fumes started to subside. The end result of a day decorating was two paracetamol for a banging headache, a dizzy spell and an early night.
Read MoreA bright wall mural in a child’s bedroom or nursery is a great way to create a bespoke interior for them, without spending too much money. Thanks to the recent release of Gorilla Crystal Clear Mounting Tape Squares, part of the new Stationary range from Gorilla, I decided to go one step further and create a 3D wall mural in my son’s bedroom. These clear, pre-cut 1” x 1” squares allowed me to bond toys and figures to the mural up to seven pounds in weight, adding another dimension to the landscape scene that I had painted.
Read MoreChoosing the right paint colour for a room is probably one of the hardest decisions to make when you decorate. Colour choice seems endless as the UK alone has over 25 well-known paint brands, whose palettes start at 100 colours, going into the thousands for the larger suppliers. Just how do you pick the perfect hue for your walls without choosing the wrong one?
Read MoreWithout a doubt, the questions that I get asked about the most are all centered around paint. What’s the best type of paint to use on radiators? What paint should I use on windows? Should I use gloss or eggshell? What paint is best with kids and pets? So, in order to round up all these questions, I’ve decided to dedicate a full blog post on the types of paint you can buy, the different finishes and where you should use them in and around the home.
Read MoreIce-cream and sorbet shades are the key colours in interiors for summer 2019, with minty hues really making my heart flutter! Mint is a really retro colour, so it works perfectly on fun, accent furniture such as drinks cabinets. Both Anthropologie and John Lewis are currently selling mint cabinets and even though I really wanted one for summer cocktails, I couldn’t justify spending a few hundred pounds on a non-essential piece of furniture. Instead, I decided to DIY one using a basic wood IKEA cabinet, paint, some MDF and my trusty Gorilla Glue products.
Read MoreWhen I covered how I repaired my flaky, peeling bathroom ceiling on Instagram stories recently, I had so many messages about it that I decided to document the process over here on the blog. While this will not be my most glamorous blog post, it will sure beat all the badly filmed ‘boring bloke in a bathroom’ You Tube videos I had to endure to learn how to carry out this DIY task myself!
Read MorePaint is a powerful tool. With paint, you can make a smaller room feel much larger just by choosing the right shade. You can also ‘hide’ ugly items such as radiators by painting them in the same colour as the wall behind it. In my hallway, I wanted the reverse side of my front door to feel much grander. It’s a beautiful door and I wanted to draw as much attention to it as possible! Apart from just painting it an attention-grabbing bight teal, I also tricked the eye into thinking it is bigger by painting over the door frame and onto the wall.
Read MoreHaving previously painted the back of my front door this vivid turquoise colour, I really wanted to make the most of this attention-grabbing entryway so decided to create a dried flower wreath that would stand out against the bold hue.
Read MoreClear acrylic or Perspex furniture and home accessories are brilliant if you want your room to feel spacious, uncluttered and airy. The fact that you can ‘see-through’ the piece means that it does not feel bulky or chunky in a space. In my new home office, the room is quite small and my new desk is so beautiful, the last thing I wanted to do was cover it up. I did, however, require a few organisational desk accessories, so decided to create this DIY acrylic tray.
Read More
How to make this 3D Dinosaur art for a kids’ room using plastic dinosaurs and old pictures frames.
If you do not have any dinosaur figures to hand, used plastic dinosaurs are ten a penny in charity shops and car boot sales across the country. In fact, I picked up most of the dinosaurs used in this DIY in the first charity shop I popped into on my local high street! While I was in there I also sourced a collection of frames in different shapes and sizes. I just removed the old artwork and cleaned up the frames they came in.
The first step in creating this DIY is to dispose of the back end of the dinosaur! I took each dinosaur and worked out what I wanted to ‘pop’ out of the frame and what I could get rid of from the back. I mostly kept all legs but got rid of the tail. You do not want your dinosaur to be too top-heavy, but if it is missing a leg it might look strange. Work out your cutting point and then slice him in two using a handsaw. I used a mitre box so that I could make a nice clean, straight chop. However, a mitre box is not essential if you have a good grip.
Once you’ve cut your dinosaurs you’ll find that in most instances your dinosaur is hollow and the sawed plastic rim you need to glue onto your mount inside the frame is quite thin. This is why I chose to use Gorilla Super Glue Precise Gel for this DIY. The gel can be applied in a very precise manner with the thin nozzle. As the glue is a thick gel it will not run, meaning that I can apply it to the cut outline easily without mess. The Precise Gel bonds metal, wood, ceramics, paper, rubber and plastics*. As my dinosaurs are a mix of rubber and plastic to be secured to the card, I knew this was the perfect product to use as they would join successfully.
To make my frames less mismatched and more interesting, I sprayed them all in a variety of bold colours. First of all, I cleaned the frames by wiping them down in soapy water so they didn’t have any dirt or grease on them, then once dry I gave them all two coats of primer in spray-paint form. Once the primer was dry, I used the small craft tins of gloss spray paint to add some colour. I gave all the frames two coats, making sure the frames were covered in paint from each angle.
Once the frames were dry I set about creating the mount to sit inside the frame. To create the mounts I purchased a couple of coloured mounting card boards from a craft supply shop. You need your mount to be strong and not bend as a thin piece of card will not take the weight of a plastic dinosaur. If your frame came with glass you may wish to place a piece of coloured paper behind the glass and glue the dinosaur directly on top of the glass. Both the mounting card and glass options work well for this DIY.
To create the mount I measured the inside of the frame or drew around the glass that it came with. I then cut out my mount with scissors and made sure it fitted my frame and could be easily inserted. Once I was happy with the mount size I applied a small amount of Gorilla Super Glue Precise Gel to the inside of the frame and stuck my card down so it did not shift or move about inside the frame and was completely secure.
Once I was happy with what dinosaur suited a particular frame, I applied Gorilla Super Glue Precise Gel to the thin rim of the dinosaur innard. As the application is so exact, I did not have to worry about the glue spilling over the edges of the dinosaur and marking the mounting card.
I carefully positioned the dinosaur front where I wanted it to sit in the middle of the frame and held it in place for 10-45 seconds in order for the glue to adhere to each surface. I then allowed my dinosaur art to cure for 24 hours until the glue had completely set.
Gorilla Heavy Duty Mounting Tape provides a quick and easy solution to provide a strong and secure, permanent bond to a surface. I simply cut the tape to size with scissors, applied it to the back of the frame vertically (Gorilla recommend this), removed the protective liner then pressed the frame firmly on the wall for a few seconds to grip.
My son loves his 3D dinosaur gallery wall and it makes a real statement as part of his bedroom decor. As Gorilla Glue can take real impact, I also know the dinosaurs can take a few knocks without falling off the wall or coming apart.
When we moved into this house 4 years ago there was an alcove in the kitchen/diner that was screaming out for a display cabinet. The alcove to the right of the fireplace contained the fridge, but with boxes bulging with glassware and cake tins, it made sense that the other alcove accommodated a cabinet/dresser. The space is relatively narrow and the ceiling low, so it took me a long time to hunt down the right piece of petite furniture. After a two month search, I finally found the exact right thing on eBay and this pretty cabinet below became mine for the small sum of £40.
Read MoreThe cast-iron period fireplace in my kitchen had not been looking its best for a good while. The front of the fireplace had glimmers of rust (I’ve since found out you should never clean a fireplace with a wet rag or it will rust - who knew??) with the edges of the fireplace having a chalky white rust all around. Before I completely redecorated this space I needed to sort it out. It was suggested to me by a lot of people that I give the fireplace a coat of black metal paint, but I knew that would completely ruin the beautiful iron shine and make it look flat and inauthentic. Instead, I wanted to restore this fireplace properly, so I did quite a bit of research into how I could do that. I purchased the following products and hoped for the best, luckily the fireplace turned out better than I could have ever expected! This is why I want to share this on the blog today as I was so happy with the result and thought it might help others (this post is in no way sponsored, I purchased these items with my own money).
Read MoreFor the past 6 months I’ve been completely obsessed with circular mirrors! I’ve replaced every non-circular mirror in my home with a circular one and I’ve loved the effect it creates in the room. The round shape is so pleasing on the eye and it feels a much more contemporary design to whatever I had there before. In my last blog post I talked about how circles in the bathroom are a trend that is here to stay, so I was delighted when online bathroom suite retailer Soak.com gifted me their Iris bathroom mirror to hang in my home.
Read MoreIn the first few months of starting this blog I attempted a little DIY of adding some home-made wall panelling over a damaged wall in my hallway. Fast-forward a couple of years and this blog post is still my most popular post ever. Even though I look back on the whole post (the terrible photography, the over-linking, not to mention the shoddy DIY job itself!) and cringe a bit, it points out that loads of you actually want to DIY wall panels in your own home, and are seeking out how to do it online.
Read MoreThere are a few reasons as to why I decided to attempt a DIY kitchen splash-back, even though I had never tiled before in my entire life! The main and most obvious reason was of-course money. Our old cooker had died a very sad death the day before Christmas and we couldn't get one the same size, so we had to have someone come and cut away the worktop and a section of the units to fit in the wide new cooker. We then had to have a joiner in to re-build part of the base units once the installation was complete. The wall tiles also came a cropper as part of the switch-over, but I just did not have a spare £500 to give a professional tiler to come and sort that out aswell. Yet, another reason apart from money was that I had discovered the new Syren range of wall tiles by Topps Tiles.
Read MoreI had long admired the many amazing Ikea Billy Bookcase hacks that are all over Pinterest, so being on a tiny budget and for the love of DIY, I set about making my own version!
Read More