* Home Improvement Features  *

Need a little inspiration? These articles cover a range of home improvement ideas - check back for regular updates...

 Bringing the Outdoors In

The Summer is when having outdoor space really pays off - eating outdoors always feels like a treat, kids are able to run around and discover plants and insects and catching a few rays can give you a real boost! The outdoors is appealing - but how do you bring the outdoors in?

If you're looking to build a conservatory, you will need to check whether planning permission is required by contacting your local council planning office. It's also a good idea to let neighbours know about your plans as the work may cause some disruption. There are now many types of conservatory styles available - from traditional to ultra modern and the flooring and furniture you choose will further tailor your new space to your own tastes and needs. You will need a builder or specialist conservatory installer to ensure a good job.

Alternatively, if space is limited, think about increasing the glazing on an existing wall or even knocking out a wall and replacing it with glass doors. This will make your home lighter and increase access to the outside. Some modern glass door systems fold back to give a really seamless transition from indoors to outdoors. Bear in mind that any increased glazing may mean your and your neighbours' privacy are affected, so it's best to discuss your plans with them first. For this type of project you should check with a building surveyor whether your ideas are feasible - an outside wall is load bearing and you will therefore need steel beams to support the floors above. If you get the thumbs up, its time to call in a builder.

Another idea is to create an effective additional living space outdoors. Decking or paving can provide a defined area for eating, drinking or simply relaxing. Kids will enjoy the space for riding tricycles and playing - think about having a small sandpit or waterplay area to entertain them for hours on end. Before you start, work out where you will benefit from morning, daytime or evening sun and decide which you'll benefit from most. And for chillier evening, consider an outdoor gas heater. A landscape gardener will be able to advise you and turn your ideas into reality.

If a relatively large project is not feasible, try planting window boxes with herbs and flowers that bloom continuously throughout the summer such as pansies, geraniums etc. Keep picking off dead flowers and watering (window boxes and pots dry out quickly when the weather is hot) and you will have a brighter view through your windows.

 Adding an Extension

If you want more space you can move up the property ladder or extend your current home. With stamp duty at up to 4% of the value of a property, you may well find you can extend your property (and increase its value) for the cost of moving. Staying in your current home means retaining friendships and connections you've made in your area and avoiding the uncertainties and costs involved in buying a new property.

Extensions can be made up, down or sideways.

A loft conversion is ideal in a Victorian or 1930s house where the roof pitches tend to be high. You will need to consider how to fit in a staircase to your new loft room and whether you want your additional bedroom to have an en-suite bathroom, which will require plumbing work. You will need a builder or specialist loft conversion company to draw up plans and help you through the building regulations and any planning consent involved.

Cellar conversions can work well and are of course easiest where there is an existing cellar tall enough to stand in. Shallow cellars can sometimes be dug down - seek the advice of a building surveyor. With no natural daylight you will need to think about what lighting is required, and this will largely depend on what the new space is to be used for. With the right insulation and heat regulation you could create a wine cellar, but cellars also provide great storage and superb games and party rooms.

Extending sideways can add a lot more versatility to the ground floor, turning a kitchen into the focal family room or creating a new room for relaxation or to allow children to play in freely. Planning permission should be sought from your local council planning office and it's a good idea to speak to your neighbours about the project too.

Building an extension should be an exciting and rewarding project and will bring new life to your home.

 Get Creative with Lighting!

Lighting can be the most important element in a room's design, so how do you make sure you get it right without making expensive mistakes, bearing in mind you can't test it first?

There are a number of things to consider when designing a lighting scheme:

  • How will you use the room and how much lighting flexibility is required? For example a kitchen or study will need task lighting, directed at specific areas where you need to see what you are doing. A room containing pictures or other works of art will require accent lighting to highlight the items on display. Accent lighting also helps to give shape and interest to a room with pools of light and shade achieved by using halogen spotlights, down and up lighters. All rooms have ambient or background lighting to represent daylight, provided by ceiling spotlights or a single pendant light in the middle of the ceiling.
  • How integrated do you want your lighting controls to be? Do you want to be able to turn each light on and off separately or do you want to use a control system whereby one switch will operate several lights simultaneously? Control systems allow you to pre-programme various lighting scenarios so that you can create different lighting moods at the flick of a switch. Also think about the most convenient and practical places to place your lighting controls.
  • Can the structure of your home accommodate your lighting scheme? For example ceiling mounted spotlights require a gap (of at least 10 cm) between the ceiling and the floor above. Bear in mind that any major changes to your lighting scheme may need wiring work which causes damage to plaster etc which will have to be made good.
  • Do you want to change the perceived size of a room? To make a room look larger light all four corners of a room and consider uplighters to bounce light off the walls and ceiling. To make a room seem cosier use table lamps or clusters of small lights to give low pools of light and create an intimate atmosphere.
  • Finally don't forget about outside lighting. Good outdoor lighting at the entrance to your home creates a warm welcome. Lighting in a garden adds interest and drama and will encourage you to use the outside space in the evenings and can be used to pick out interesting plants or architectural features.

You must always use a qualified electrician when making any changes or repairs to lighting in your home.

 Easy Ways to Save Water

Many of us are currently subject to a hosepipe ban and some of us live in areas where water use is metered, so it makes sense to find out how to reduce water use in our homes. We've all heard commentators talk about "grey water" and Mayor Ken Livingstone telling Londoners not to flush after a pee, but here are some practical ways to design your home so that it uses less water without you having to radically change your habits.

Grey water is the waste water from baths and sinks and can be collected, by installing a household-scale reuse system. It can be treated so that it can be used to flush toilets, which use on average about a third of a household's water. Components of the system include a filter to filter out matter such as hair and skin particles (which if left in the water will cause it to deteriorate quickly), a disinfectant to clean the water, a pump to get the water to the toilet cisterns, and a system to protect the mains water against contamination by backflow. Other ways to reduce water use when flushing are to put a litre bottle (with sealed lid) in the cistern to reduce the volume of water it holds. When installing a new cistern, a dual flush system can be fitted, allowing the user to choose whether to use a light or heavier flush, saving potentially 1,000s of litres of water a year.

Untreated grey water can also be used to water the garden, although it is not recommended for edible plants. Valves are available to divert water from the bath to a hose for the garden. Other water saving tricks for the garden include water retaining gel in pots, available from garden centres and if you water your plants in the evening less water is lost through evaporation, and plants can soak up the water through the night. Flower pot saucers retain water which would otherwise drain away and having plenty of organic matter in the soil also helps to retain moisture. A water butt (a plastic barrel with a tap, which can be bought in various sizes) at the bottom of your down pipe collects rainwater rather than letting it escape into the drains. You can then use a watering can to distribute the water to your plants. Some water companies sell water butts at subsidised prices.

You can make further savings by designing a home's plumbing as a whole when building a new home or refurbishing an older one. The type of hot-water system you choose is probably the biggest factor that will influence your water and energy consumption. A house with mains-pressure has higher flow rates through taps and showers and will typically use more water than a traditional gravity-led system delivering low-pressure hot water.

But clever plumbing can reduce water consumption. For instance minimising the length of hot water pipes reduces the volume of cold water that has to be drawn off each time a tap or shower is used. Ideally all water fittings would be grouped round the hot water source or at least the most frequently used ones would be closest (e.g. the kitchen sink). Another trick is to install an insulated hot water ring round the house to areas requiring hot water. This will minimise the amount of water lost through turning on the taps and letting water run until the hot water comes through. Hot water pipes should be placed above cold water pipes to reduce heat transfer and long hot and cold water pipes should be insulated to prevent heat loss and gain. Pipes in unheated areas need protection against freezing (which can lead to burst pipes and flood damage).

 Scrub up your Bathroom

Gone are the days when a bathroom was a utilitarian washroom, now we are after an indulgent haven - somewhere to retreat from our hectic lives and pamper and refresh ourselves. The modern bathroom is sleek, sophisticated and can materially affect the value of your home. It is also the room which best suits a contemporary look, even in an otherwise traditionally designed home. So how can you achieve the ultimate bathroom?

A chic bathroom can be created on a relatively small budget.

A few years ago, to achieve the right look you would need to buy designer fittings. Now, retailers such as Bathstore and B&Q are offering really good looking bathroom suites, taps and fittings at sensible prices. The sleekest bathrooms have the simplest decoration - plain floor and wall tiles, a simple window blind, a few spot lights, so not too much needs to be spent on these. And most bathrooms are relatively small so that if you want to go for slate or stone floor tiles, you're unlikely to have a large area to cover.

If you're happy with the layout of your bathroom then updating the tiling and bathroom suite should be straightforward. Updates could include a power shower attachment, a double ended bath, with taps at the middle of one side (useful for bathing children who both want an "end" to lean on), a free standing toilet (attached to the wall rather than to the ground) and a shallow or glass sink. Toilet cisterns can now often be hidden in the wall cavity, to give your bathroom a sleeker look, and dual flush systems are now commonplace. They help to conserve water, by allowing a small flush when appropriate. Talk to your plumber or builder about these options.

You can have a lot of fun upgrading fittings such as taps and towel rails. Contemporary design calls for chrome rather than brass or white fittings. Mixer taps allow you to get water at the right temperature and some can create an amazing water feature - waterblade taps are very thin and wide, giving a cascading waterfall effect. Minimalist unframed shower screens "disappear" and declutter the bathroom. Wall mounted heated towel rails free up floor space and create a visual feature.

At the luxury end of the market, there are all sorts of possibilities.

Installing underfloor heating creates a warm floor to stand on as you step out of your bath or shower. If you are anyway replacing floor tiles, it won't create too much extra work.

Stone flooring and surfaces in glass, stone, granite or wood always look good. Wood needs to be properly maintained with regular oiling to keep it in good condition.

For a really contemporary project, build a walk in shower wet room, to create your own domestic "spa". A wet room must be completely watertight so you will need good floor drainage and a waterproof membrane on the floor and walls. Competing technologies are available - polyethylene matting, thick liquid roll-on membranes and specially constructed panels. These are designed to be waterproof, breathable, compatible with underfloor heating and can be tiled over. The wet room needs to be tiled throughout, and a shower screen installed to stop water spray. Body jets and halogen spotlights complete the look.

Other "top end" ideas include free standing baths and designer baths made of acrylic, ceramic, stone or even birchwood ply. You can even buy a bath which allows you to enjoy chromatherapy (light therapy). Lights in the wall of the bath go through a sequence of changing colour as the water washes over you. And if that's not glamorous enough, go for a shower screen incorporating blue or white LEDs.

The possibilities for bathroom design are seemingly endless, whatever your budget, taste and needs.

 Wallpaper is back...let's flock and roll!

Believe it or not, the latest interior design trend is...wallpaper. Having been shunned and used only as a quick-fix to cover cracked or uneven walls, wallpaper is back and there is no limit to the creative opportunities it provides.

To make a success of wallpaper in the home environment you should embrace its aesthetic appeal - use it to highlight one wall of a room, without hanging other pictures on it and you can go for something really bold.

Think about texture too. Grasspaper and paper backed silk, linen, PVC and leather are all available. These will all change in different lights and may mature and develop their character with time. On a practical level, sellers of paper backed PVC point out that it is practical for bathrooms, kitchens and children's rooms! If these sound expensive then bear in mind that for one wall you may only need to buy a roll or two.

Wallpaper needn't be bought as a finished product. The latest craze to sweep the nation's living room walls is 'interactive wallpaper', encouraging you to participate in the design process. For example some companies provide stickers and transfers for you to apply to the wallpaper as you wish. There are also paint by numbers ranges.

One company sells wallpaper through some of the DIY superstores that has empty frames printed on it for you to fill in with your own works of art. Could be fun for the talented amongst you, or for a child's room - whoever said you're not allowed to scribble on the walls?! And your creativity needn't stop there. You can now design bespoke wallpaper with your own digital photos featuring your favourite images of friends, family, holiday scenes or whatever else appeals.

One designer is looking at wallpapers that use thermochromic ink, which changes in response to touch and heat. And a group of French designers uses video art to change the look of a room in seconds.

And what about the trend to bring domestic comfort to outside space? External wallpaper gives your garden or courtyard a sophisticated touch. Panels made from stainless steel, Perspex, aluminium or wood can make really interesting visual features and can double up as trellises for climbing plants. They also make effective balcony screens.

Wall coverings are now so diverse and interesting that some can quite legitimately be regarded as art forms. If a whole wall daunts you, why not just frame some?


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