DIY Woodworking, Home Improvement, and Art Projects

Conducting your own home improvements is a fantastic way to add value to your property, and to make it more individual, without the expense of hiring someone else to carry out the work for you. If you are a dab hand at DIY, it may well be that you have already found a variety of ways to adapt and improve your home, using only your own creative vision and practical skills. However, it is worth considering how such domestic improvements could affect the amount you need to be paying on your home insurance, should you have increased the value of your home significantly. After all your hard work, you will no doubt want to be sure that your household is protected fully, and to its full value.

It may surprise you to discover just how much you could have increased the value of your home through DIY work. Interior aesthetics have a huge effect on the amount you could expect to put your property on the market for, should you ever decide to sell, especially if your home improvements are a little artistically inclined. The odd creative and original touch can be a major selling point, so if you’ve carried out extensive improvements or added a great deal of extra detail it might be worth having your property carefully evaluated before you renew your home insurance.

Your home insurance covers everything, from the very foundations and the vital structure of the buildings you live in to the contents of every room, electrical equipment, any possessions of exceptional value, as well as everything that is dear to you and makes your house feel like home. If you have played a major role, by employing all your handiest DIY skills, in making your home the place it is today, it will, no doubt, be even more in your interests to protect all your efforts. In this light, then, home insurance is one of the most important expenditures of the year and should be considered carefully each time it comes up for renewal. Doing thorough research will help you to have confidence in your final decision when you can rest assured that your property will be fully looked after, whatever happens.

Check websites, and listen to word of mouth. The internet holds a host of insurance providers, all offering their own special offers and deals. Have a look at the Kwik Fit Insurance website to see what they offer – they are well reputed for car repair, but have branched out and now include property coverage on their website. Check their house insurance policies for details of what they include in their coverage.

If you are a DIY enthusiast, who relishes in taking charge of their own home improvement initiatives, then it may be that you have acquired a considerable collection of tools and electrical items in order to help you execute your creative visions within the home. If you own an expensive drill, a snazzy tool box full of the latest gadgets, a digital spirit level, or, indeed, all of the above, your DIY equipment could tot up significant cash value, particularly if you insist on always having the top of the range tools at your fingertips.

Surprisingly, DIY equipment is often overlooked when it comes to our contents insurance and, in the face of the unfortunate events of burglary, flooding or fire. If you are anxious to make sure that your tools are covered in your insurance policy, there are a few factors you might like to consider before getting on the phone to your home insurance provider.

Whether your DIY goods are covered in your insurance may depend on whereabouts they are kept. They are most likely to be covered automatically if they are stored within the building of your house itself, in a cupboard or utility room, though if they have particularly high value this should probably be mentioned on the policy. If, however, you keep your tools in a garage or shed in the garden they may not be covered automatically unless you have a policy which includes garden cover as standard. Some insurers, such as Kwik Fit Insurance, offer a certain allowance for garden contents, but it’s worth looking at this carefully in case the value of your equipment exceeds the amount you may claim. Check the Kwik Fit Insurance website for details of what their contents insurance covers exactly in relation to the rest of their policies.

An alternative option is to insure all outdoor areas, such as the garage and the garden, separately if your existing insurance firm is not obliging about including this within your ordinary policy, though most will be open to some negotiation.

Do remember to check the wording of your policy carefully in order to check that you and your expensive items of DIY equipment are fully protected against any unexpected mishaps.

In my travels across the often-barren Interwebs I stumble upon some cool, useful sites once in a while that are worth more than just a quick link on some list somewhere that will sit and collect dust on some old page, in some forgotten directory, on a wheezing, sputtering old server in the broom closet of an abandoned junior college where the doors are boarded over and the windows have been covered with old newspapers and plastic sheeting.

So, with that being said, I found this site called DIY Guides, and I think it’s worth a visit. Right now many of the articles are about things like repairing plaster walls, wallpaper removal and repair, etc., so if you’re doing a project involving either of those two things, check it out for sure. The articles are pretty easy to follow and written for DIY folk like me and you.

Cheers!

Since the upgrade to WordPress 2.3.3 I have added some spam blocking tools.  I have also cleared out the 15,000+ comments awaiting moderation…all of which were spam.  The impetus behind getting caught up with the comments is I am working on a new project and documenting it here on the DIY Blog.  It’s a surf guitar based on a Fender Stratocaster design.  So for the near term, this blog will focus less on pure home improvement stuff, and more on DIY art and related projects.

I am really excited to start this guitar project.  I plan on capturing most of the process on my new Mini-DV camera as well.  Anyway, please send a comment if you’d like because the flood gates have opened again!  I’d love to hear what everyone has to say about these projects and/or answer any questions you may have.  Thanks for stopping back in!

I apologize for the weirdness around the DIY Blog lately. I have been doing some updates like upgrading to WordPress 2.3.3 from 2.3.1, and changing themes. This is not a simple process because the last iteration of the blog had a bunch of plugins and formatting that I added to the template. So, please be patient–ironic because I haven’t dropped a regular post for about six months anyway–as I finalize the upgrade to the new version of the DIY Blog.

If anyone has any suggestions on improvements, features to add, etc., please let me know – spartacus27 (at) gmail.com. Thanks!

This is a third post in the “cleaning the slate before we seal it” odyssey. Hopefully someone will find this to be useful information, because as I said before, there isn’t a whole lot of reliable, up-to-date information on this step of the process out there. That being said, I am happy to be the guinea pig here.

So we got the TileLab grout and tile cleaner product. Well as you may, or may not, know, slate tile is very, very porous. If you just spray this cleaner onto said tile, it will just soak it right up. You can’t even get the rag or sponge onto it quick enough before it just finds every last hole and pore to sneak into. Here’s my idea…and it is untested at this point.

Wash all of the tiles with a very mild soap and warm water, probably with the same type of sponge we’ll be using to clean off the excess grout. Something like this for example…

Tile grout sponge

Then after the tiles have been thoroughly cleansed with the mildly soapy water, then rinsed with clean water, we’ll wait for them to dry.  Just for clarification, this step is going to happen at least four or five days after we laid all of the tiles and the adhesive has totally set.  Then when the tiles are free of most of the visible dust, mud, etc., we’ll spray a bunch of the TileLab cleaner onto a sponge, and go in there to scrub the tiles down.  Hopefully this will get any remaining gunk that the soap and water didn’t get to.

Probably going to test this theory over the weekend, so I’ll get back to the blog next week with a full report.  Until then, enjoy your weekend, and if you’re in the Northen half of the country, try to stay warm!

UPDATED from earlier today

We rented the saw, cut all of the tile, and had them all set in place within four hours. The saw was returned, we went to eat at Bob Evans, and all was good! I was quite surprised that everything went as smoothly as it did. Although we did not actually clean the tiles yet, I did buy a product for it. We’ll get them cleaned probably Tuesday night, after the new tiles have had two days to totally set up and dry. The tile cleaner I bought:

“Tilelab Grout and Tile Cleaner” is a nonabrasive, citrus-based cleaner safe enough for everyday use.

Developed without harsh chemicals or fumes, it removes grease, stains dirt, mold, mildew and soap scum from any ceramic tile or grout. Wipes off without rinsing and leave a fresh citrus scent.

I will talk about how this product performed later, as a separate product review.  It was reasonably priced, and I had read some good things about it on a DIY forum that I frequently check out.  Anyway, just wanted to write up a quick followup to the post from this morning.  Success with the tile saw!  Huzzah!  Bob Evans’ cinnamon pancakes, Huzzah!

No one really tells you this part of the process I am seeing…at least not if you do a Google search. So since I am scheming to do just that very thing this afternoon, I thought I would share how I plan to do it. Of course right now it’s the morning, and I am researching the options online, so I won’t know until I come back and update later this evening.

Until then though, I have seen many hints on cleaning slate tile, but I think that they mostly refer to cleaning slate flooring after it has been grouted, sealed, etc. So this doesn’t really help me very much right now. I have heard that simply warm water is the best thing, especially since slate is so porous. That sounds logical, because if you throw any kind of general cleanser or chemical product at it before it has been sealed, then that tile will just soak it up like good pancakes soak up gallons of syrup.

The idea is to get the tile as good and clean as you possibly can before you start to apply any sealer or enhancer. You don’t want to have dirt, dust, grit, or any other foreign objects on the surface. I’m stopping by the local home store today anyway to rent the tile saw, so I will ask them as well. By the way, the best saw to cut slate tile is a diamond blade saw with water. This way you cut right through it with a very sharp blade and you get less chipping.

I’ll post an update later about exactly what I decided to use to clean the slate tile before I sealed it, and any other fun stories from all the cuttin’ and whatnot.

We’re just about at the stage where we need to seal the slate tile in the bathroom. We’re going to rent a wet saw this weekend to make all of the final cuts, and then we’ll be done laying the slate tile. After we let the adhesive dry for a couple of days, probably around next Wednesday, then we’ll go in there to seal them up.

I’ve been looking over a lot of stuff on the web about what types of sealer to use, how many times you should seal your slate, then should you seal the grout too? There are different opinions out there for sure. Here is a link to the Surface Finder at the Aqua Mix website. It helps you pick one of their home-grade sealing products based on what type of tile or stone surface you’re working with.

I’ve pretty much decided that I am going to put three coats of sealer on our slate tiles. I will wait one day at least between coats. Then I will grout using a dark gray color mortar. Then after that dries for a week, I will go back and use a grout-sealer to do just that, seal the grout, making it water resistant and hardening it further. Of course I’ll keep writing about how it goes, and whether or not I actually stick to this plan.

By the way, I also got a good deal on a mini DV camcorder, so I plan on creating video content for this site as well. I am still behind on getting my photos organized and labeled, but I am pretty excited about putting some video up. Hopefully I will be able to integrate into my future tutorials as well. Take care!

As you can see, I decided to update the theme for the DIY Blog. It took awhile to get it just right, but I think it looks cool. It’s certainly more stylish then the previous theme. I also think that it adds usability as well because there is less clutter, offers direct access to the categories, has clearer post formatting, and is in a generally more pleasing color pallette.

Let me know what you think. If you have problems with it, if you don’t like it, if you can think of additional things I can do to make it better–please add comments if you’re so inclined–thank you!

So far I’ve posted more in January than I had in the previous three months combined I think. I am back in the DIY spirit again, and I want to make 2007 a very productive year. I also want to be able to share more of my journey with you, so that’s why I am making more of an effort to update and revise this blog. Thanks for coming by!