All posts tagged: DIY

DIY Garden Building

How to build your own garden building – aka ‘The Manporium’

Published by Karen Knox

Hello everyone, apologies for the radio silence this week, it has been a ridiculously busy week AND i’ve been waiting for my husband to pull his finger out and finish writing something. Yes, this week everyone, you will get to read the design ramblings of him indoors (or should I say, “him outdoors”). He’s finally sent in his homework…. i’ve had a good read, and actually it’s really good (she says begrudgingly). It’s about how he made his own garden workshop which is perfect if you’re someone  looking for inspiration on how to build your own garden building/workshop/man cave/she-shed/home office/garden pod…. so many names for these additional rooms. So without further ado… Iiiiiiiit’s Mr Making Spaces! **crowd goes wild** ” What’s that…you didn’t sign up for this? You didn’t. Sorry to invade this sacrosanct space of beautiful interiors, design and styling. I’m here to talk about anti-style. Yes…it’s the world of sheds. During my 39 years on this planet, I’ve learned a few things about life. Here are some: Men like a bit of solitude now …

Benjamin Moore

Benjamin Moore #paintlikenoother

Published by Karen Knox

Sorry for not posting last week. I’m sure you were all refreshing your inboxes every 30 minutes wondering where my weekly post was? Call off the search party everyone, i’m fine, if a little stiff around the ole joints. I’ve done the equivalent of 39 step classes this weekend, working hard on the decorating of our bedroom makeover. Remember our proposed new bedroom colour that divided opinion? Nude Bedroom – Moodboard Now let me make it clear from the off so the ASA don’t come and arrest me, I was gifted the paint for this project. BUT I chose the paint and colour, Benjamin Moore‘s ‘Fox Hedge Tan’, before i’d secured a collaboration. I’ve been wanting to try Benjamin Moore’s paints for ages and always prefer to try new products in my own home before recommending them to others to try in theirs. After i’d bought a tester and settled on the colour, I emailed Benjamin Moore to see if they’d let me review their paints on the blog in exchange for a few litres of …

Painting UPVC

Let’s talk about white UPVC (and how to paint it)

Published by Karen Knox

I know a lot of you guys hate your own white UPVC, because you were all messaging me this week on Instagram when I was sharing my recent DIY project on Insta Stories. I’m not the only hater out there it seems. Once the talk of the town, white UPVC doors and windows revolutionised the whole glazing and door industry back in the 80’s. Maintenance free, double glazed units were fitted in nearly every house and home in the country. However, it seems there’s not a lot people out there that still want their white plastic frames and doors. Not in their current state anyway. Including me. There I am standing in front of my door, fake laughing for a MADE.COM shoot. Praying they won’t use this one as i’m so embarrassed by the front of our house. I’m super proud of what we’ve managed to do inside our little 3 bed semi, but the outside was always last on the list. And this year is the year for that. If you remember, we’d already …

Making Spaces Living Room update

Living Room Update – Pt 2 #styleitdark

Published by Karen Knox

Ok, if you didn’t read Part I, then this post might not make that much sense. So you might want to pop back a couple of posts and catch up so you know what the heck i’m going on about today. Or just keep reading… you’re in charge. I think it’s fair to say I wasted spent a week painting various sections of this room. This bit that colour, that bit this colour. There are some sections of wall that have been painted four times over the space of a fortnight, I swear the room is smaller. https://www.instagram.com/p/BTRQx3RA0GD/?taken-by=makingspacesnet As much as I loved the tone of Dulux’s Rich Praline 3, it just did not work with our oak furniture or pine door. It was also a perfect match for the carpet (which I don’t like) making the room feel a bit “blah”. Not exactly the look I was going for when I started this room update. So after, repeatedly telling my hubster how the room would’t work unless I painted the door in with the …

P.P.P. Power Tools

Published by Karen Knox

You guys know i’m fond of a cheeky DIY. I’ve made a few bits and pieces for our home and for projects. From desks, to giant outdoor chalkboards and artwork to lighting, I love these pieces just a lil bit more as the finished article is always full of (mainly) fond memories. Now there are three things I couldn’t live without for these DIY missions: Number one: My trusty helpers, normally my pops or my husbandado (we got married very recently and I still can’t say the word husband without sniggering. I’m such a child). Whenever my olds visit, I generally have one or two “jobettes” lined up for my dad. He loves it really. Number two: An absolute must have is our ever growing collection of tools. They’ve filled our under-stairs cupboard and the boot of my car. I’ve inherited a very respectable set of tools from my dad who was a Design and Technology teacher back in the day (completely unrelated to my A* in GSCE Design and Technology everyone) and probably explains why …

Lightbulb Moment

Published by Karen Knox

Remember my fancy bulb? Ya know, the beautiful hand engraved filament bulb from Vinegar and Brown Paper? Aye. That’s one… it made a little feature in my Shelfie post and a more recent post for Iconic Lights. Here’s what I gone done wrote: “It’s been waiting for a lamp to sit in for months. We were going to make something… bought the brass lamp holder (above), black fabric cable. But ya know… life… time… It never got done.” Don’t get me wrong, I love that concrete and copper lamp. Like a lot. But it was too perfect for a project I was working on at the time. So I made the greatest sacrifice of all, and re-homed my lamp in The Pod. You can just see it to the very right in this picture above. It looks very happy there. But, good news! It turns out, publicly shaming my OH for not making a lamp for said bulb, was THE best way to get him to actually make it. Get in! This is what we he needed? tools bit of …

I love OSB

Published by Karen Knox

Well I do. Orientated Strand Board is gorgeous. “Oriented Strand Board uses the same system as plywood: opposing-orientation of wood-fibres creates rigidity, allowing a very stiff panel without great weight. Ideal for roofing, wall sheathing, hoardings and flooring.” Jewson Well yeah, it is good for all of those building-y things… but it also makes gorgeous furniture. It’s cheap as chips too. Bonus. Which brings me onto my home office. I’ve been wanting to update it for ages, it was done over a year ago on a complete budget. I used left over paint and bit of old furniture from the loft and it did the job. For a while. But over the past year, i’ve kind of outgrown our third bedroom, it only measuring a minuscule 1.8 x 2.9m. Pretty standard for a “box room” really. Photos – Olly Gordon I also wanted to work facing the window so I felt connected to the outside world. It’s mad how quickly a week can pass before you realise you’ve hardly seen or spoken to anyone when you’ve been …

Sherwood Forest is coming together nicely…

Published by Karen Knox

I love seeing how a design project develops. A before and after is great, but how about the middle bit? The real life stuff? Like mess, design changes and sometimes even mistakes. As ever, lots to do still. Joinery, sofa, floorboards and skirting boards painted, but we’ve started getting things back in the room to make it feel more like a family home over Christmas. Then we’re right back on it in the new year. Before and after of the fireplace: It took some work to get the fireplace looking like this. You can see it being ripped out here. Warts and all. Everything went, apart from the original concrete fire insert. I wanted to give the impression of a fireplace without actually having one, so I created a fire surround with a special mix of paint (eg. I wanged a load of different paints together to try and produce a darker version of Valspar’s Sherwood Forest). I chose a gloss finish to  add a textural contrast. The concrete fire was painted in Valspar’s Storybook Sundown. …

Home Office in a Day

Published by Karen Knox

I was recently set a challenge. Could I update a currently unused third bedroom from a room of storage chaos to a sleek and super cost effective home office? In one day. 8 hours. Let’s have a look-see…. Well yeah, of course I can. They don’t call me Karen “make-over in a day” Knox for nothing you know. Bah! Firstly, this rather large and unnecesary sofa needed to get the hell outta there. The room is about 2x3m so this took up more than a third of much needed space. A “free sofa to anyone that could collect” Gumtree ad worked a treat, giving me a near empty room and someone else a much needed free sofa. Perfik. The CD towers, old cushions and a spare light shade were getting sent to the charity shop but everything else in that room needed a place to live. I had a budget of £150 to spend on the entire room. Eek. I needed to purchase: A desk Filing drawers Drawers for the existing Ikea Kallax unit A chair …