Even if I do say so myself, I am quite handy with a power drill, saw and a hammer. I get things built, neatly and they stay standing, and I take things apart carefully and without damaging anything else. I’m not as fast as the professionals, but I do a good enough job.

So, the latest project is to pull down half of the little wall in the living room, next to the fireplace, to make a cupboard still ‘house’ for the meters, instead of a box style one (lift up top) which means we cannot use that corner at all.

Now then, do I do it myself, or do I get someone in?

The risk of me doing it is that I’ve never worked with brick before, and I don’t fancy a big mess in the run up to Xmas, but getting a handyman in might be expensive…

Top Tip: handyman to do the brick stuff, me to do the cupboard stuff. Job sorted!

We are fast approaching that time of the year when the weather gets cold, and things start to freeze - inside the home as well as outside!

To ensure that your house is safe, always make sure that your pipes are insulated (encased or surrounded by foam) to keep the heat in and the cold out.

However, before even getting to this stage, you need to make sure that the pipes are in good working order, and that there are no gaps or holes in the surrounding walls; this way you make sure that once you’ve checked them, nothing else is going to get in and destroy your pipes!

Top Tip: plan ahead; be proactive, not reactive.

Assembling flat pack furniture is often a lot harder than it first appears, and as the item you’re assembling gets bigger, the task itself gets harder.

Many people have written numerous self help guides on how to easily assemble flat furniture, and in all honesty, the tips ain’t rocket science!

Simply put, open the box, get the instructions. READ THEM! When taking things out of the box, put them in order as per the instructions. Make sure that the nuts, bolts, screws, nails, etc, are kept in piles or (better yet) little pots to keep them together and in their individual piles. Then let the assembly begin!

Having a compact kitchen might seem like a great idea, but from a practical point of view, it often leaves you without work-top space to prep things on.

The sink and cooker top tend to take up most of the ‘usable’ space, and they’re not things you can move to other locations )like a microwave or toaster).

Well, an ingenious idea occurred to me - place something over the top of them to create workspace.

Having had a look about online, I’ve found a couple of companies that make toughed glass tops that fit over your hob to create surface to work on (you can’t use the hob whilst this is happening obviously!). In addition to this, there are several options for a similar set up to cover your sink and draining board to create a better work surface to use.

So before you start ripping out the old kitchen to “make more space”, have a think about how you can adapt the space you’ve got.

Having recently moved in to a “2 up, 2 down” terraced house, which has the standard ground-floor kitchen/bathroom extension, we have been struggling to fit wardrobes into the spare room, as well as a double bed.

The spare room has a cupboard like recess (the bit that goes above the stairs) and rather than work around it, we’ve decided to put horizontal poles in it and a neat curtain across the front - instant wardrobe! We’ll add a shelf to the top of it later on (handy place to store bedding), and the room will be perfect.

Top tip from this - think outside the box when fitting a room for furniture, sometimes, you don’t even need it.