Upgrade your soft furnishings
(Picture: Handout)As inevitable as rain, Easter Parade on the telly, and the feeling of nausea caused by eating chocolate for breakfast, the four day Bank Holiday when the nation suddenly collectively decides it is actually quite handy with a nail gun is almost upon us.
Sprucing up your home to welcome in spring is an age-old tradition, and with these easy-as-pie projects this could be the year you finally upgrade your bathroom or make your outside space sparkle:
Give your cupboards some love
Kit: Primer, chalk paint, furniture wax, foam roller.
How to: Alice Jakubiak has spent the last two decades teaching herself DIY. Her journey began when she was 19 and bought a run down ex council flat in Battersea which, due to shortage of cash, she renovated herself picking up skills along the way.
Since then, Alice has bought and renovated two other properties. Five months ago she finally bought her “dream home” – a three bedroom mock Tudor semi in South Ealing.
Alice works in contract compliance but spends her evenings and weekends transforming the house, charting her progress on Instagram (@diy_alice_adventures).
When she bought the property its bathroom was in a sorry state. “It was very eighties looking,” said Alice.
Its worst offence against style was its built in faux wood cabinets with rusty chrome handles.
Alice decided to paint the cabinets, first with a layer of primer and then a blue-black chalk based paint – she recommends Vintro for its bold colours and ease of application (www.vintro.co.uk). She used a foam roller to avoid visible brush strokes on the veneer surface of the cupboards, and points out that this is a technique which could easily be used on kitchen cabinets too.
For finishing touches Alice bought bronze-coloured door handles from Amazon, and changed the chrome tap in the basin for a bronze model. She loves Farrow & Ball’s card room green but to save money had a Dulux version mixed for the walls, and she also built a flat pack cupboard to conceal the radiator and give herself some extra storage.
Alice estimates she spent around £200 on her bathroom upgrade, including accessories.
Skill level: Moderate. This project takes a bit of design and planning, but it is pretty easy to execute.
Jet wash the patio or balcony
Kit: You’ll need a jet washer, plus a hose to connect it to a water supply. Prices vary wildly. A top of the range Karcher K7 will cost you £479 at B&Q. But if you only have a small space to tackle you can get a perfectly serviceable model for around £50.
How to: Hook up the washer to the hose, turn on the water, get soaked a few times making sure the connection is tight enough, turn on the power, and prepare to jet.
During last spring’s lockdown everyone from Stacey Solomon to football pundit Jimmy Buller got busy with their jet washers, which can rid anything from paving stones to concrete, to decking from a thick coating of moss, slime, and winter guk. Its quick too – you could have an average sized patio sparking within an hour, and it can also be used on garden furniture, walls, and fences.
Skill level: Rock bottom, plus you will feel like Luke Skywalker brandishing his lightsaber.
What’s the catch: If you put the pressure up too high a jet washer is capable of stripping paint off walls and furniture, and you should wear safety goggles as stones and debris can get thrown up in your face. You will probably be drenched and muddy by the time you have finished.
Restyle your fridge
Kit: Washing up liquid, sandpaper, paintbrush, primer, chalkboard paint.
How to: After she had a new kitchen installed Jenny Adler-Potts realised that her family’s hulking old fridge was letting the side down. “It was six or seven years old and quite beaten up,” she said. “The handles were peeling, and it was just a bit depressing.”
Jenny, 45, who gave up a career in graphic design to set up a furniture upcycling business (www.glasshousegirl.co.uk), decided that rather than spend thousands of pounds replacing a perfectly serviceable fridge she would give it a facelift.
Step one was to clean it thoroughly – either with a degreasing solution or washing up liquid and elbow grease. Then she lightly sanded the surface to help the paint grip. Jenny, who lives in Barnet, then applied two coats of Ultra Grip primer (www.fusionmineralpaint.uk) then three coats of chalkboard paint. She also painted over the peeling fridge handles using a copper coloured eggshell paint. Jenny opted to hand paint the fridge simply because it meant she didn’t have to move it outside to spray it.
Two months on Jenny said the fridge looks great and is standing up to busy family life doing double duty as a kitchen appliance and a message board.
Skill level: You need to be patient rather than skillful to carry out this project, as each layer of primer and paint must be left to dry fully before the next is applied.
Update your soft furnishings
Kit: Scissors, tape measure or ruler, needle and thread, fabric, cushion pad, iron, pins, Velcro.
How to: A quick way to update your bedroom or living room is by investing in a pile of squishy cushions. But buying a new set of covers can cost an absolute fortune. Tottenham based artist and homeware designer Leila Vibert-Stokes (www.leila-vibert-stokes.com) makes cushions (amongst other things) for a living and says making a simple slip cover is a piece of cake, even if you don’t own a sewing machine.
The first step is to buy some upholstery fabric, which should be relatively thick. “It needs to be able to withstand being sat on repeatedly,” said Leila, 35. She recommends Etsy.com, as well as www.myfabrics.co.uk for a combination of value and style.
If you start off with a standard sized 40 x 40 cm cushion pad you should allow around half a meter of fabric. Leila prefers feather-filled pads for optimum squishy comfort and likes the range at www.cushionwarehouse.co.uk.
Start off by cutting a square of fabric slightly bigger than your cushion pad (43 x 43cm) which will form the front of your cushion. Then cut two rectangles, measuring 43cm wide by 30cm. Fold one long edge of each rectangle back by 4xm, and iron down to give you a clean line.
Lay your square of fabric down on a table, with its printed side facing upward. Then lay the two rectangles on top of it, slightly overlapping so they line up with the square, and with their printed sides facing downward. Hand stitch along each side, around 1.5cm from the edge, turn the cover around so the printed side is facing outward and voila, you have a simple envelope-like slipcover.
If you like you could sew in a strip of Velcro to keep it neatly in place.
Skill level: Moderate. You do need to get your dimensions right and keep your stitches small and neat for this to work, but at least it is a task you can do sitting down while eating Easter egg.
Paint the front door
Skill level: Really easy but requires patience.
Kit: Screwdriver, masking tape, sandpaper, wood filler, sugar soap, primer, gloss or eggshell paint, paint brush or roller.
How to: First impressions matter and painting your front door can really make a difference to a property, whether you’re thinking of selling or you just want something that will make you smile every time you come home.
You need to pick a dry but not too sunny day to paint. First unscrew all the door furniture (or cover it with tape). Also mask off any glass panels. Then give the old paintwork a good sanding down, first with medium and then fine grade paper, and use wood filler to fill in any cracks. Wash down with sugar soap to make sure the surface is really clean.
Paint on a layer of primer if you are painting onto bare wood or are making a radical colour change. Then paint the door with two to three coats of either gloss (shiny) or eggshell (matte) paint in your favourite colour. Painting the woodwork the same colour at the same time will make your door look bigger and grander.
Finishing touches: If you want to get rid of your old door furniture and invest in something a bit more stylish Jim Lawrence (www.jim-lawrence.co.uk) has a comprehensive range of traditional brass pieces. Cox & Cox (www.coxandcox.co.uk) has a more whimsical approach with door knockers shaped like dragonflies, bumblebees, and shells.
Repurpose planters
Kit: Old filing cabinet, drill, bricks, polystyrene, soil and compost, plants and bulbs.
How to: Kendall Platt, founder of The Mindful Gardening Club, has come up with a smart and stylish way to repurpose unwanted office furniture in the garden of her home in Theale, Berkshire.
“I wanted a really big planter, and you can buy them but they cost hundreds of pounds which I can’t really afford,” she said. “I started thinking about alternatives and realised that if you got an old filing cabinet and took the drawers out it would make a great container for plants.”
Kendall, 35, scoured Facebook Marketplace and found someone giving away an old Bisley steel cabinet which she snapped up. All she needed to do was remove the drawers, drill drainage holes in the base, prop it up on a few old bricks so the water could drain through.
Kendall’s cabinet was black, which she was happy with, but if you wanted a bright colour it would be a simple task to spray an old cabinet using paint suitable for metal surfaces.
“I decided to put a layer of polystyrene in the base, because filling the whole thing up with soil would have been really expensive, and it would have been really heavy,” she explained. She then added a mix of soil and compost and started planting. Spring bulbs planted in November will give a magnificent show later in spring, and Kendall will then replace them with long flowering plants like cosmos, filled in with ornamental grasses and herbs. Over winter she suggests adding in colourful pansies to give year round impact.
Skill level: Quite a bit of lifting and carrying required, but minimal technical know-how.
Revive your sofa
Kit: Fabric steamer or hair dryer and water spray bottle. Spray adhesive and quilt batting.
How to: Our sofas have taken a proper battering during the pandemic, and we wouldn’t be surprised if yours is looking a bit deflated and wrinkly after all those hours of Netflix bingeing.
If you have a fabric covered sofa you can smooth out creases using either a handheld steamer. Get a similar effect by spraying water on the afflicted furnishing and then gently blow drying it. You could also use an iron, set on steam, but be very cautious and put a cloth between the iron and the sofa to avoid singeing.
If your sofa seat cushions are looking a bit dented, and flipping them over isn’t doing the trick, you can perform a more complex surgery. Most seat cushions are made of a foam wedge which you can remove by unzipping the cover. Pick up a roll of quilt batting and wrap it smoothly around the foam three or four times. Use spray adhesive to hold it in place, and then stuff your newly-reinforced cushions back into their covers.
Skill level: A ten year old could probably manage this one.
Pitfalls: Getting the innards of sofa cushions out is easier than putting them back in. It may need a couple of pairs of hands and some patience to achieve.
Regrout tiles
Kit: Grout rake, sponge, new grout, grout float, cloth.
How to: Grimy or crumbling grouting does not a spa bathroom make. First you need to dig out your old grout by raking up and down between the tiles, carefully, with a special tool called a grout rake. Its important not to be slapdash here or you could end up cracking or chipping the tiles, opening up a whole new world of DIY pain. When your grout lines are clear, sponge them to be sure. You can buy new grout as a powder (cheaper) or a ready made paste (easier), and you might find that a black or grey tone works better with your tiles than pure white.
Use a rubber “grout float” to smooth the grout over the tiles. You can then wipe off the excess using a sponge. When dry, polish up your tiles with a dry clean cloth. If you are grouting a wet room or power shower you will need to leave a couple of weeks for it to fully “cure” (dry).
Skill level: Medium. Its not rocket science but you do have to work slowly and methodically.
The easy way: If your grout is in reasonable shape you might get away with just whitening it up again using paste made of bicarbonate of soda and water.
Rub it in well with an old toothbrush, they spray vinegar over the tile joints and wait while it bubbles up. Give it another scrub and rinse clean.
