My House and Home Blog

If you live in the country side, particularly next to a forest where deer are known to roam you may be concerned about your garden. Deer are a great treat for the eyes to see near your home but can be not so great for your beloved prize vegetable patch.

Well, don’t throw away your old CD’s and DVD’s just yet. Keep all your damaged, scratched or CD Freebies and string them together with some regular washing line. Then hang them with the shiny side pointing towards the forest edge along the side of your garden closest to the forest. This will deter deer from getting too close to your garden and protect your home grown food.

Wooden floors in homes commonly have a space underneath them called a void. Air trapped in this void can contain a great deal of moisture that condenses on the underside of the floor at night time when the heating is turned off. This inevitably causes rot on the underside of flooring. Eventually this causes the joists to become soft at the ends especially around walls. You can quickly check to see if your floor is rotting with a screwdriver to test the hardness of the wood. If caught early you can carry out repairs on your joists but if left it can mean whole new flooring is required.

You may have a large bottle of PVA glue hanging around your kitchen because it’s commonly used in arts and crafts. Children get sticky with PVA glue to stick coloured card and glitter on all manner of other paper based objects but PVA glue isn’t just useful for play time.

PVA glue is actually the humble DIY man/woman’s best friend. It can be used a powerful adhesive for wood and joinery as well as a fantastic waterproof sealant. You can even add it to cement mortar mix to improve adhesion to the surface it is applied to and make it slightly more waterproof.

Before you get to work sanding away the textured artex in your home you should be aware that old artex can contain asbestos. Therefore, if the Artex was there when you got the house, don’t sand it down before consulting an asbestos specialist. You can contact your local governing body for help and advice on asbestos and finding a consultant to examine the property.

If your home is modern or if you applied the artex yourself it is more than likely this will not apply to you. However, if you do not know what artex was applied and when it can be very dangerous so tamper with it in any way.

Okay so if you are a crochet enthusiast and can handle mitts then you can make your oven mitts easily, if not maybe you can try making a simple oven square instead.

1. Use thick chord cotton or acrylic yarn.
2. Get a 3pt crochet needle.
3. Use the triple crochet stitch or double. (Double – wrap twice then hook through, wrap once then pull through two, wrap once then pull through two, wrap once and then pull through two).
4. Just make a nice medium sized line until you have the square size you need. Then one the last stitch make three simple stitches, turn your line around and begin your crochet line again across the top of the other one using the top of your previous line to hook through.
5. Carry on until you have a reasonably sized square.
6. Crochet a trim in a nice bright color to compliment your kitchen around the edge of your square.
7. Add a simple to once corner so you can hang your square on a hook.

If your garden plants are plagued by aphids there are two top methods for eliminating them.

1. Buy some ladybirds or go to the park with your kids and get them to catch as many ladybirds as they can. take them home and put them on your plants. Try to put them on different plants, not all on the same one! The ladybirds will naturally gorge themselves on the tasty aphids you have for them.
2. Get some organic/eco-friendly washing up liquid and add a small amount to a spray bottle of water. Spray your plants gently when needed with this mixture. This will make the plants slippery and aphids will be unable to cling onto your plants anymore. Only apply when needed to avoid over soaping!

When doing DIY projects around the home you may inevitably encounter many different broken pieces of tile. Bathroom tiles, hallway floor tiles, wall tiles even just tiles you find in your garden shed. Let’s face it, over the year of DIY our home has endured, we have had our fair share of broken tiles through both natural wear and tear and our own tile cutting errors.

Hold off on throwing all these broken tiles away though, it could be an interesting home DIY project if you collect all your old tiles together and when you have enough, make a mosaic pattern. You can use your old tiles to cover a coffee table, outdoor patio table, create a mosaic mural on the back wall of your home and more.

Don’t throw away perfectly good earphones. Many people suffer the problem of a loose or broken wiring to their jack connector. Well you can avoid this problem by holding only the jack connector when pulling it out of your MP3 player or phone and not holding on the wires to do so. However, because we are all so lazy this problem continues to occur so for everyone who is already looking at a broken jack connector here’s how to fix it:

1. Cut the wire an inch from the jack connector using nail clippers (if you have actual wire cutters go ahead and use them instead).
2. Separate the two wire cables in the non-jack connector end.
3. Use nail clipper to cut through the plastic ends of these wires but not the metal wiring inside. Then pull the plastic covering off. (Wire cutters have their own special part for doing this, simply place the wire in the appropriate sized hole and then pull).
4. Skin the wire ends of the jack connector wires and use a knife to remove the thin coating on the tips of the wires.
5. Use a multimeter to check the conductivity of each wire so you can figure out which wires go to which donor wires.
6. Remove any silky white fibers on the donor wire. and scrap off the thin layer of lacquer on the tips of these wires too.
7. Now simply twist the wires that match together.
8. If you have a solder iron, GREAT! use that on the exposed wires to sold them together. If not carefully wrap the wires in electrical tape or use shrink tube.

Here is how to make your very own bottle opener so you can drink beers while working away at other, larger DIY projects. On your work bench or table get a handy screwdriver. It doesn’t need to be electric or anything…

Next grab a screw and screw it on the underside of your work table near  the edge. Make sure to screw it only half way in. Or you bottle opener will just be a pretty stud in your table.

Next, grab a beer bottle and hook it onto the screw underneath your table. Move bottle accordingly as per a normal bottle opener.

Finally, enjoy your beer!

It may be beneficial for you to get some moisture traps and place them in your kitchen especially along the window sill. Moisture traps are small plastic trays with lids that can fit easily along your window sill and need to be refilled with fresh moisture crystals when they are full of water. This is especially useful if your home does not have an overhead vent for the oven as moisture can quickly build up during cooking and cause mold around windows and damp in the air.

Moisture traps are very cheap and highly effective and could save you from scrubbing and toiling with chemicals on your windows later on.