I seem to now be somewhat of a wine connoisseur or borderline alcoholic as some professionals like to make me feel so I decided to invest for the sake of my love of wine in a Liebherr Wine Cooler, a fantastic highly useful cabinet to correctly store my wine in. It’s crucial and detrimental to the taste of wine that it is stored correctly and at the right temperature, you don’t want to be serving warm white wine and chilled red wine when hosting a party as your guests won’t be pleased with your lack of care.

The Liebherr Wine Cooler I choose fits my specific needs it can store a maximum of 68 bottles, has ideal climate conditions thanks to forced air cooling and fresh air supply via activated charcoal filter, mechanical control and analogue temperature display which can be read from the outside. The cooler cabinet is also H 890 x W 600 x D 605mm so it ideally sits under my work tops in a space I had in my kitchen and the doors of the cooler have UV protection to stop harmful rays of light getting in and damaging the quality of your wine plus it also means I can see when I am running out.

It is absolutely freezing here right now, yeah the snow is melting, but it doesn’t feel like it has got much warmer!  Whats worse is that my boiler is screaming “We jus’ dinna have the poor” so I think it may be time for me to consider alternative forms of heating.

One thing I was considering was installing one of those underfloor heating systems from Floor Heating Online, it’ll have to be one of their electric underfloor heating kits though, as I don’t think I’ll get any benefit from a water based one linked to my boiler – as I said, its just not able to cope.

I’ll have to save up a bit, and I’ll probably wait until summer, although by then I’ll probably have drunk my savings and decide to punish my future self by deciding I can hack it for another year!

What is everyone else’s experience with underfloor heating? Is it any good?

I’m pretty god dam sick of our bathroom been cold all the time in winter, I think it’s mainly to do with more than 50% of it been tiled which i don’t mind as its easier to keep clean but it can just be so cold.

So I’ve been looking at bathroom radiators which also include those tall towel radiators. They can be quite expensive if you’re looking for a fancy design or a chrome one but if you opt for a standard white radiator and a usual design they can be found quite cheap.

Our hot water pipes run right past where I want to place the radiator which makes it easier and cheaper for the plumber to do, but also because it’s going to be a heat safe so we can have a slightly larger and will usually get the first of the heated water.

The Plumber reckons he’ll be done within a morning and also he says that it will generate a lot of heat which is what I want.

All in i think it should only cost me around £500 which isn’t bad if I’m going to gain an extra warm bathroom.

The family will benefit from this greatly since everyone is always in and out of the bathroom and we’ll always have nice warm towels.

I’ve been looking at updating my kitchen for some time now and have been doing some internet research. I don’t really want to rip the whole thing out as the cooker and fridge are relatively new and the layout of the cupboards is useable, so I have decided to change the work surfaces and cupboard doors to create a new look.

I quite like the idea of having quartz worktops as they are heat and scratch resistant and require very little maintenance. Quartz is also available in over 40 colours and are more consistent than granite worktops, meaning that you can easily match the surfaces if you want to extent the kitchen or match it to your existing worktops.

The cupboard doors will also be changed for a more modern look, I was thinking about maybe a simple gloss finish, but haven’t decided on a colour yet. I will also be fitting laminate flooring and tiling the walls in between the cupboards to finish the look.

All I have to do now is measure my kitchen and choose some colours, then I can start ordering the quartz worktops

I have decided to bite the bullet and get some double glazing to replace my existing windows that can only be described as rough. They have probably been there since the house was built (sometime in the 1960’s) and have deteriorated a great deal over the winter, so it’s time for a change.

I have been looking around on the internet for a couple of weeks now and found lots of helpful articles about double glazing and that it can reduce heat loss by up to 50%, which would be nice for next winter as it’s been really cold over the last few months.

I also never knew that there were so many types of double glazing, I just thought they were all made from white plastic, but you can get double glazing with wooden, aluminium or PVC frames and in a range of different style to suit most houses.

I haven’t decided which type of double glazing I’m going to go for yet but will update the blog when I order them and hopefully it will not only make my house look a lot better but also save me money on my heating bills.