All posts filed under: Trades

Our outdoor space – Final Reveal

Published by Karen Knox

When we bought our little house nearly seven years ago. It wasn’t exactly what we wanted, but in terms of its location and the surrounding area, it gave us everything we actually needed. Or should I say, it had the potential to. Our house, 2012. Estate agent’s pic Earlier this year I wrote a post showing you all of the rooms inside. What they were like when we moved in and how they look now. You can have a nosey inside here if you like. The one space we’d never tackled fully was the outdoor space. A front and rear garden with a long driveway connecting the two. Pretty standard for a 3 bed semi. Rear garden, 2012 – Estate agent pic We had done plenty to the rear garden over the past six years but never dealt with any of the building work and nitty gritty. Our driveway was a crumbling mess, drainage being a real problem, the front garden was on a slope and retained water like a sponge and the steps to our …

How to incorporate a cat loo into your home – The Hidden Cat Litter Tray

Published by Karen Knox

I’m sure you all know i’ve got a cat, she features quite a lot in my images. She makes an excellent alternative to a sheepskin and is most of the time, a more than willing styling prop. Her colouring also fits right in with our monochrome home. All in all she’s fabulous. One thing that never fitted in our home was the cat litter box. We don’t have a cat-flap, so madam needs access to an indoor loo. When we had the loft converted back back at the end of 2016/17, I designed a space for her litter box to sit, accessible to the furry one, but out of sight from the rest of the house. I was looking forward to not seeing it as I went about my daily meanderings around the house. Alas, as our son is a very light sleeper, just like his mum, Chooch’s midnight races up and down the stairs woke Charlie up. Not actual footage So we had to move Chooch’s overnight quarters to the confines of the kitchen/diner to …

Kitchen Facelift – Final Reveal

Published by Karen Knox

I told you it was coming soon! If you read my last post, you’ll know it was time for me to say goodbye to our gloss white kitchen. Feel free to have a little read of that one if you want to know the what’s and why’s… Adios white gloss! Here’s the wall cabinet layout i’ve had in my head for years and the one I think it going to make our little kitchen look hell of a lot better AND give us more much needed storage.I wanted to move the existing wall cabinets up towards the ceiling, wrap a third cabinet around the extractor hood and add two more open cabinets below, either side of the extractor. Simple no!? I didn’t want handles but I also didn’t want the traditional handle-less J profile design our original kitchen doors had. If i’d gotten my way, I would have had doors than opened by telekinesis, but as my powers of mind-control weren’t quite up to scratch, we went with push openers instead. Fair enough. It’s difficult to …

Kitchen Facelift – Goodbye white gloss

Published by Karen Knox

There’ll probably be a lot of people out there reading this blog post thinking, “there’s nothing wrong with your kitchen, love. What ya updating it for?” And one of those people is my husband. So I just wanted to say from the start, I get it. Me, wanting to update a perfectly fine kitchen might seem a bit unnecessary. Especially when it was originally like this: You can read all about the kitchen knock through we did in 2013 here. It’s still one of my most read posts as it seems a lot of you out there are still researching knock-through options, so it’s defo worth a look if it’s on your list of house jobs. And whilst i’m so happy with the new layout and extra space we created in 2013/14, the actual kitchen doors began to annoy me, more and more once i’d taken the step into interior design in 2015. I’ve been patiently waiting to get this kitchen looking more like me without making any huge changes. I didn’t want to buy new …

Aluminium Door Making Spaces Home Update

Out with the old – In with a new aluminium sliding door

Published by Karen Knox

I do love sharing projects with you guys, especially the ones at our place, as you get to see just how normal our house is and how the smallest of changes can make the biggest of differences. This is certainly one of those projects! Photo from last summer’s #UKHomeBlogHop We’ve finally got rid of the horrendous French doors that lead out onto the garden. I’ve always hated them, but when we moved in, it was at the bottom of a very long list of priorities to sort. They don’t look too bad in this pic above, that’s mainly because I’ve styled the crap out of the space, but the reality was they didn’t close properly, they were too small for the opening and they let a whole heap of cold inside. Before Updating the back of the house is something we’ve been putting off for ages. It was a faffy job, needing the old walls knocking down before the window co could fit the new, much improved door. Our first choice? An aluminium sliding door, …

Trades Say the Funniest Things

Published by Karen Knox

Now when I say funny, it’s only funny after the project has finished. You know when you’ve had a glass of wine and you’re looking back at all that hard work and reflecting on all the “bloopers”. It’s funny then, but in reality, what I mean is ‘annoying’. I spoke about this somewhat last year when we were doing our loft conversion. If I had a pound for every time I heard, “You can’t do that” or saw this face: I’d be sitting pretty on a few hundred, I tell thee! And you know what, it’s exhausting having to constantly clue everyone up on new products and slightly more creative uses of materials. If I wasn’t quite as stubborn I would have just relented… but I didn’t. Exposed brick. Poplar plywood floorboards. Conduit lighting. All from last year’s big build. Only last week, I spent about 20 minutes trying to convince an electrician that you could get bathroom light switches that are IP rated and suitable for zone 2. “Yes, yes you can.” “I’ve seen …