My home insurance is due up for renewal and after searching numerous comparison websites and checking countless quotes I decided to stay with my current insurer Policy Expert. Their quote was about the same as the other top insurers and covers my house contents up to £50,000 and has accidental damage cover as well.

Having claimed for a new carpet earlier this year (my sons friend spilt a whole bottle of Lucozade on our cream living room carpet), I thought that our premium would go up but it didn’t. Making a claim was easy and straight forward with Policy Expert and the carpet fitters came out within a week and measured and fitted the new carpet.

With an excess of only £150 it also saved me money as it would of cost me as least that just to fit the carpet.

Although other insurers were up to £3 less a month I’ve decided to stay with Policy Expert as I know they are very helpful and quick.

Oh yeah, and Lucozade is banned from my house now

Today I decided that I would clear out the garage and get rid of all the stuff we didn’t need in the vain hope that I could once again fit the car in. This didn’t happen, but I did notice that the garage has become a sort of dumping ground for lots of stuff we don’t use or didn’t want.

I opened the first couple of boxes which contained photo albums and other mementos that we will keep; it was nice to look through them again and see when the kids were babies and our wedding album (oh happy days). Then it was on to the rest of the stuff.

I opened a few more boxes and was staggered by what we actually keep; old kettles and toasters that are probably 6+ years old, board games and jigsaws with half the pieces missing, not to mention old baby toys and prams.

I boxed up all of the decent stuff so my wife can take them to the charity shop and I took the rest to the skip.

There wasn’t enough room to fit my car in after all, but at least the garage looks a lot better than it did.

Oil spots from cars can leave a drive or garage looking rather messy and poorly maintained. There are a variety of methods available to remove the oil spots with items you may already have in your cupboards. Try these suggested methods before resorting to acidic washes, which can be not only dangerous to you, but also to the environment.  

One popular remedy is to simply pour a couple cans of cola on the affected area and leave it on overnight. The next day, add a good amount of washing up liquid to a bucket of water and use it as a rinse on the oil spot. Follow this with another good rinsing with the garden hose.

Bicarbonate of soda is another environmentally friendly approach to removing oil stains from concrete. Shake bicarbonate of soda over the oil spot. Add a small amount of water in order to make a good scouring paste. Scrub the area with a broom or stiff cleaning brush and then rinse with water. If you do not have any bicarbonate of soda available, cornmeal or sawdust can also work.

Sprinkling the oil stain with automatic dishwasher detergent powder is yet another remedy. After applying the automatic dishwasher powder, pour a kettle of boiling water over the area. Then scrub with a broom or stiff cleaning brush. Follow with a good blast from the garden hose.

I’m looking at getting some new blinds for the living room as the ones that are there have been there since we moved in and are looking a bit dated. I searched the internet for different styles and decided that I was either going to go for roman blinds or roller blinds because they are simple and easy to use.

There are a number of websites on the internet that specialise in made to order blinds, which will make installing them a lot easier. Now all I have to do is measure the windows I need and pick a fabric and style. I’m thinking a nice bright colour that will match the existing décor of the living room.

Of course I will have to ok everything through my wife first, but she hates the blinds we have at the moment so it shouldn’t be a problem.

Painting a room may seem like a straightforward task, but is easy to make crucial mistakes that will affect the finish and potentially ruin it instead of making an improvement.

First of all, make sure you have plenty of dustsheets to cover the floor.  If painting the ceiling, it is best to cover the entire floor rather than wasting time moving a couple of sheets every time you move to a new section. 

Ceiling

If decorating the whole room, the ceiling should always be painted first, so any drips that find their way onto the walls won’t matter as they will be painted later regardless.  Depending on the height of the ceiling, you may have to fashion a platform in order to reach, although an adjustable handle for a roller should be sufficient.  You will need a ladder of some kind anyway to paint the edges that the roller can’t reach.  All that is left is to evenly distribute the paint using the roller, ensuring that the strips blend in to each other so the lines will not show up when dry.

Walls

Painting walls is a much simpler process, where you don’t have to worry about the awkward angles or your movement.  The important thing to remember is that if you don’t think you will finish the whole wall for whatever reason, do not start it, as you will have visible edges where the paint has dried.  The order you choose – cutting in and then rolling, vice versa or cutting in as you roll – is your choice, as long as the result is an even, blended finish.

You’ve shopped around and bought the headboard and luxury bed you’ve always wanted, and before you know it you’re tossing and turning on your old lumpy mattress. Is there any other solution?

Try a memory foam mattress. It will work wonders for your sleepless nights. These mattresses are great for your legs, back, shoulders, and joints. This material is a breakthrough in sleep technology that will forever change the way you sleep.  The material is breathable material that has the ability to distribute one’s body weight over the full surface area of the mattress, therefore relieving pressure points. Another advantage is the temperature-sensitive nature of the material, allowing you to sleep better and feel healthier.

This is a bit of background on why and how these beds were created. Due to the demands that G-force makes on their astronauts’ bodies, NASA developed a substance that not only supports their bodies, but also allows them to have a comfortable nights sleep. The ideal material is a foam that allows the body to form a comfort cocoon where one’s body applies pressure.

This space-aged technology has filtered down to the general public and has improved the way people sleep. Much praise has been given to the memory foam mattress and it’s companion, the memory foam pillow. It is ideal for alleviating painful pressure points, especially if you have sensitive skin and difficulty sleeping. The memory foam mattress helps older members of the family that find it hard to sleep on a traditional and solid mattress.

Over the past few months I have been decorating the kid’s bedrooms and am finally getting round to doing ours and have decided to put blinds up as well to add the finishing touch. I’m quite a light sleeper and get woken up when it starts to get light in the morning, not good when it’s about 5:30 so I’ve decided to get some Blackout blinds to help.

Thankfully blackout blinds come in a range of different colours and patterns as my kids want ones that match their room’s colours, so I have ordered a pink set for my daughter and an orange set for my son. For our room I’ve gone for a patterned set that will match the colour of the walls which I have still to paint.

Ordering is really easy and you can put in the dimensions of your windows for a snug fit without cutting. The blinds should be delivered this week so will start putting them up at the weekend; hopefully it will help me sleep for a bit longer in the morning.

There are a huge number of tool suppliers online.  Many of the larger trade stores have dedicated online warehouse centres where prices are often slightly lower, or at least equal, to the prices you find in the store.  When you buy online, you are inevitably under less pressure to make the purchase there and then; you can take as much time as you want to think about what you actually need, rather than what you want on that day.

When you are shopping online for tools and supplies, you will notice there are a large range of prices as well.  Many online retailers will periodically put items on sale as new ranges come in stock, so check back every quarter to see if anything you need is on special offer.  Most online tool shops will sell a variety of DIY supplies as well as tools, meaning that for some, a one-stop shop is available.  This means you can get the things you need at competitive prices, and have them delivered straight to your door.

Supplies and tools all come in differing qualities – the key is to find what you need and what gives you the best value for money.  You can do this by searching online; almost every product available has a user review, and some will have professional reviews done by specialist magazines.  You don’t necessarily need the most high end professional level equipment if you are only going to use it a dozen times a year.

You might wonder what is so special about Chesterfield club chairs. I would say that there are certain qualities that clearly distinguish Chesterfield club chairs from others, the most important being their construction which is solid. Being strong and durable, these chairs have steadily gained in popularity.

A finished Chesterfield chair is a pleasure to behold. There is no special method for manufacturing club chairs. As usual, the craftsman starts with a simple frame. Now if you carefully observe, you will notice that the frame of most of the other club chairs is not visible. This is because companies try to save on cost by using low quality raw materials and unskilled workmanship.

This is another major difference between a distinctive Chesterfield and an ordinary club chair. The material used for the frames in Chesterfield club chairs is solid beech hardwood. This wood is of the highest grade, low knot count and kiln dried. Although this variety of timber is a bit expensive, it is worth every penny as both the frames and the structure are long lasting. You can be rest assured your Chesterfield chairs will never be dumped in the garage with frame fractures, creeks or warps.

After choosing the best hardwoods, dedicated frame makers start working on the Chesterfield club chairs under strict supervision. This ensures a high quality chair frame. Then comes the spring and padding for the frame. According to experienced manufacturers, serpentine and fish-mouth springs have proven their significance in Chesterfield club chairs. However, comfort comes only with padding, which is done with multi graded reflex foam. After this comes the final step where the chair is polished and refined to give you one of the best quality, long lasting Chesterfield Club chairs.

My house is pretty old and the electrics in part of the house still only have one socket output, which is a problem in this technological age, so I have decided to fit double sockets to replace them. Although I could quite easily do this myself, by law you have to get a trained electrician to connect everything up to the mains so I’ve been looking for a local electrician.

Doing a quick internet search I found a website called City-Visitor run by a local search marketing company called Infoserve. City-Visitor has a vast database of local services and tradesmen and I easily found some electricians in my local area.

I phone one up this morning and he is coming tomorrow afternoon, so hopefully I’ll have nice new sockets brining the house up to date.

If your looking for local businesses or services then I would recommend Infoserve City-Visitor, it’s really easy to find what you’re looking for, you don’t have to subscribe and its free!