It is extremely common for a home-owner to grow bored with the look of their home after a while. Some people will consider a complete makeover, others still may even contemplate more drastic measures such as moving residence. Both of these can extremely time-consuming and costly options. It doesn’t have to be this way though; you can easily revitalise your home by simply rearranging or purchasing furnishings.

Rugs

Rugs are one of the simplest and cheapest methods of enhancing the look of a living space. There are innumerable styles and designs, of which you can often get them in a variety of colours or patterns.

Furniture

If you have a small budget, you could just rearrange your existing room’s layout to make it seem fresh. And sShould you have a bit of cash to spend, why not just go ahead and buy a few new pieces of furniture?

Following directly on from my previous article looking into the cleanliness of laminate flooring, this article is intended to give you quick tips on how to clean your own laminated floors.

Follow the steps below to clean your floors effortlessly and effectively:

1. Start by sweeping the floor with a soft-haired brush to remove any debris and loose filth.
2. Either mix some floor cleaner or make your own by adding about 200-300ml of vinegar to 4-5 litres of water. Avoid floor gloss solutions as these can damage the surface and make the floor too slippery.
3. Try to use a microfibre mop for this step as they tend to offer better absorption. Make sure to mop along the length of the laminate sections, usually this is in the same direction as the pattern.
4. You can leave the floor to dry on its own. You can speed this process up by airing the room: open windows and doors if possible.

Once you have completed the above steps, you should be left with a clean and sparkling laminate floor.

One of the most touted benefits of laminate flooring over other types is the fact that the smooth surface makes it easy to clean. However, anyone with laminate will also note how quickly the floor starts to look dirty - presumably because dirt and mess shows up more rather than being hidden; like in carpets for example.

The good thing that does come from the ‘rapid dirtiness’ situation is that you are prompted to clean the floors more often, which is a definite hygienic improvement. And, circling back to the start of this article, it is very easy to clean too - requiring just a little effort and time to get the floor looking sparkling again.

This article is a brief guide on how to install wall brackets for you to hang your thin TV on. You can read our previous article for more information on why people mount TVs on their walls.

Obviously these steps have been simplified and you should only carry out this task if you feel comfortable with basic DIY tasks.

1. Start by deciding on an appropriate location for the installation. Try to pick a spot that offers the best viewing angles for where people will be situated. Also, account for both the height and width of the TV unit itself.
2. If possible, use a stud finder and drill holes in the wall to match your TV bracket’s wall plate screw holes. The size of drill bit will depend on the size of the screws provided with the kit.
3. Once the wall plate is secure, screw the backing plate of the bracket set to the rear of the television in the corresponding VESA holes.
4. Finally, there should be a hook or attachment mechanism on the TV back plate that should slot into the wall plate.

We now live in an age where technological prowess is actually about how small you can make your product. With televisions, this means retaining the large screen sizes we’ve grown to love and instead reduce the depth of the units. This has also triggered a significant decrease in weight for the average new television.

Thanks to the reduction in size and weight, it is becoming more and more common to attach displays to walls, so that they can hang freely in a way that is not dissimilar to a picture or photo frame. Those aiming for a modern, minimalistic theme should definitely adopt this approach for their television.

Keep an eye out for our handy guide on how to install TV brackets and be able to put your television on a wall.

Emulsion paining can be a tiresome job, especially when you have to do more than a couple of coats to get an even coverage. So image your fury when you have to start the job from scratch and apply further coats because of a problem with the paint.

Although it was more common a few years ago, many people still suffer from wall odour phenomenom. This is when for some unexplicable reason the wall starts to smell after it’s been painted. And we don’t mean a a faint paint smell, we mean a putrid smell that resembles cat pi**. Paint manufacturer’s are stepping back from the problem and saying an unfortunate reaction with a mould on the wall is the cause.

We are not amused.

You can’t even stop the smell by applying another coat, the only way to stop it is by first applying a coat of plaster sealer on the paint then painting the walls again. This stops the smell coming through. And can mean around three additional coats of paint and one very annoyed customer and one very annoyed painter.

Has anyone else experienced this? We’d like to hear your thoughts.

When applying emulsion paint to a wall the most common method now seems to be the roller. However, you can use a brush and a pad as well. Here’s why we think the roller is best.

Paint brush

Even using the largest paint brush, it can take quite a long time to paint a room, add to that the potential for unevenness of paint coverage and all those hairs which come out of the brush and you’ll see why the paint brush is no longer loved.

Paint pad

Paint pads were introduced a few years ago and are simply a sponge with small bristles which transfer the paint from the pad to the wall. Painting with a pad is much quicker than painting with a brush, but again you can get an uneven coverage.

Paint roller

The paint roller is our favourite because of the even coverage you get on the wall. The finish is also good with a very slight bobbled effect and no brush stroke marks. You just have to make allowances for the extra mess.

We’ve all been there - we have to do a painting job and we have to do it quickly. Whether for business or pleasure, most of the painting jobs we do all have to be done with a degree of perfection. And you can get this easily and quickly if you follow the seven step guide:

1) Bare wood needs to be primed and undercoated. You can get an all-in-one product that should do the job
2) The surface should be sanded to remove roughness and any unevenness.
3) The undercoat can then be applied.
4) The surface can be sanded again.
5) The surface can get a top coat of paint.
6) The surface can get a final light sand.
7) the final layer of top coat can be aplied

When you’re doing any DIY you need to make sure that you get things right from the start. If you start the job in a bad frame of mind you’ll find that the job will take longer and it will usually be a shoddier job than if you spend a little time and attention to detail.

As an estimate we’d say that approximately 50% of the work you do in any DIY job is preparation work. This includes things such as stripping wallpaper, sanding woodwork, removing old fixtures and fittings or even just moving furniture around.

If you take your time during this preparation process you’ll often find that the level of finish you get is much better too.

With the good times come the bad times. And it’s only when we appreciate how bad the bad times are that we can appreciate what’s good in life. The same goes with DIY. Standing back and looking at the impressive room you’ve just decorated or the brilliant shelves you’ve just fixed makes you feel good. One thing however that makes you feel bad and we mean BAD, is wallpaper stripping.

I’ve yet to find a person who likes stripping wallpaper, even the stuff which is supposed to pull off in a single strip but never does. And if you have a particularly bad experiance where the previous homeowner has used 10,000 tubes of superglue to affix the paper to the wall, it’s no wonder you’ll never want to do it again.

We could say invest in a wallpaper steamer to help you out, but even that’s not good enough. What you need to do instead is GSI to strip the walls for you.