Home Improvement Projects for the New Year

Hello and today I wanted to share with you some thoughts I had regarding DIY Projects and Home improvements that will help you start the year productively.

According to research unveiled on Life After the Daily Grind studies show we cherish things more when we’re involved in making it. This is called the IKEA effect. Unfortunately we do not get these same rewards from sending out a clever tweet, or putting together a snappy INSTA reel. 

As many of you know Tuula and I have ditched city life and escaped to the countryside to raise a family and start anew. Now we didn't move into a dilapidated building but it certainly needed some TLC, and are some of the things I've been tasked with for the 2024. For this article I'm handing the reigns over to Peter Brooker who has spent the last two years renovating his flat in Chiswick. I'll be picking his brain for my own renovations so I'll be keen to hear some of his advice

Summer House

I wrote an extensive article on blog last year, documenting all the things I wish I knew before spending close to £80,000 on his summer house project. My biggest tip would be to always hire someone that has credentials on a platform like Checkatrader or Trust Pilot. It can't be a coincidence that all the contractors we had round that did an abysmal job were word of mouth rather than tradesman who take pride in their work and are conscious of maintaining a good reputation.

Secondly once it's done, keep it quiet otherwise everyone will be wanting to 'crash at yours for the night' when they come to London. I understand friends asking, hotels are expensive. But I didn't build a summer house so my mates could get pissed on stag dos and crash round mine at 3am. We're not 21 anymore.

Bedroom Cupboards

I believe a man is truly at his personal peak, when he has his wardrobe in perfect working order. I went looking to get new cupboards that would help me be more efficient when it comes to choosing my clothes in the morning. I want everything reachable and in its right place. 

For my wardrobes I went to Howdens. First off, when you buy something from Howdens, or Magnet, nothing is ever truly bespoke. For real bespoke you're paying well into the thousands. It's like buying a made to measure suit. They will take a template and just make a couple of tweaks. We wanted to get some new wardrobes and thought Howdens was probably the best with regards to value. My girlfriend and I are quite short so we had a pull rail installed in the middle which comes in handy. The lights come on when you open the doors which is a must because wardrobes are naturally dark spaces. 

My one big tip is to ensure that when they are doing the measurements, they allow for the doors to open fully. We didn't realise this would even be a possibility that we couldn't fully open all the doors. The cupboards may fit, but there is a hinge allowance that you need to consider. The big downside to not having the doors open fully, is that you can't install pull-out drawers in the cupboards where the doors are impeding on the aperture. Nuts right?

The Basement

The basement for many people, is just a dumping ground for suitcases or a lifetime supply of UHT milk. When we renovated the basement, it was just a shell of concrete and mdf framing. We put vinyl down on the floors, boxed up the walls with plywood and plaster board (ensuring to leave access to meter readings) installed electrics, LED strip lighting and carpeted the stairs. One half is now a Bond Museum, the second half is extra storage for winter/summer clothes and pet food. 

The biggest tip I would give regarding this, is have dehumidifier. I bought one last year on Amazon for £27 and it's still going strong. The air has nowhere to go in the basement and we have to empty it at least once a fortnight. Which tells you the amount of moisture and damp that can build up down there. Touch wood we haven't had any issues with damp. People are always impressed with the basement, although it's not finished, I do enjoy showing it off. 

Kitchen 

The kitchen is the biggest renovation project outside of the summer house. And here's why. You would not believe the amount of shit that you own until it comes to emptying and boxing up all the kitchen supplies, the spices, the plates, the saucepans, everything. It took us two days to box everything up, and the renovators only took 2 hours to remove all the appliances and the cupboards. It's truly a massive undertaking. 

The biggest thing we wanted to have in the kitchen, was space and a warm place to visit. Think about it. How many times do you have guests over, and they just hang out in the kitchen, and never go into the lounge or even onto the decking where the barbecue is being served. It's almost as if the kitchen is everybody's safe place. I have a theory about this. If you're just hanging around in the kitchen you don't have to make a commitment to stay. You always want to have one foot out of the door when you visit someone else's place. I personally don't like going into peoples lounges or dining rooms, because I will feel like I'm being waited on, and I'm an imposition. But that's just me. 

So we had an electric fire installed on the wall. It makes for a nice feature and gives the home dinners a romantic edge. 

So the kitchen took several weeks, and we ordered this from Magnet. We had a specialist kitchen counter made and fitted. (TIP: Cover well if making turmeric tea. Turmeric is a kitchen killer and those stains are tough to get out). 

TIP: Here is a huge tip when doing your kitchen fit. Ask the fitter or the designer, if there are going to be any dead spaces in the layout. What I mean is, if you have a peninsula for example, not every inch of space under the counter will be used. They will tell you, 'oh well its on the blueprints, its on the layouts.' To which I replied I'm not a fucking architect I can't tell what is a cupboard and is simply a box with no access. Every inch in the kitchen is crucial and you want to maximise the space as much as you can. I can't stress how important that is. We have so much inaccessible dead space under the kitchen counter, it just doesn't bear thinking about. 

Summary

I've listed a lot of projects here, that we got contractors in to do. There is no way I am fitting bespoke quartz kitchen tops in my new kitchen. But I learnt a lot looking over the shoulder of my men who I employed to fit my kitchen, my carpets, my wardrobes. I got to be another pair of hands for them when it came to ripping out old ovens, when it came to carrying rolls of carpet from the van. My recommendation is that these DIY projects can be very overwhelming when you start out, but immensely rewarding when they're finally done. Especially if you rolled up your sleeves and committed to doing some of the hard work yourself. 

 Photo by Roselyn Tirado on Unsplash