Do-It-Yourself

Our Do-It-Yourself adventure has been ongoing for over a year, since we bought our first little flat in April 2006. We call this our "practice house" as we've done all the improvements, except updating the electrics, with pretty much no DIY experience. We're trying to decide if we can do this "for real" on a proper house. My hubby has decided we can. I'm not entirely convinced. As I said: ongoing, over a year.

This is what we bought (cooker wall and hallway):


This is what we did to it shortly after moving in:


Four months of wallpaper stripping and plaster repair later:


Ten months after moving in:



In the wonderful world of Do-It-Yourself, it is interesting to learn what "its" you can and cannot "do yourself". I can strip painted wallpaper myself, but only for about eight hours. Then I cannot anymore, even when there is more to do. I cannot plaster or fix a badly plastered wall. Well, I can, but not without bumps, indents and general non-flat-ness. I can put IKEA flat pack together, hang cabinet doors, and affix door handles. I cannot cut coving, but luckily, my hubby can. My latest experiment is tiling on the cooker wall. It's going well so far…



What do you think? (I still have the bottom and the left rows to do.)

I thought this might be a fun one for my first blogger entry. For my previous blogs, check out my MySpace blog.