Do you remember back in the old days of the internet?When you needed to know anything you used to Ask Jeeves? Now you just Google it or if it's something complicated you ask Wikipedia...
...but before the internet became the information super highway, and everything you ever wanted to know was available at the click of a button (if only you could remember what it was you wanted to search for...) before that time, books were used to gather useful information, and even before that there was word of mouth and the sharing of years of learnt experience.
I am a fan of useless information - and often find that it is much more useful than you think! I have a number of books (most of which are second hand, and often from unfashionable organisations such as Readers Digest) which I have found to be an enormous source of fascinating facts and tremendous tips.
So... I thought it might be nice to start a new regular feature 'Tuesday Tips' with the intention of sharing traditional word of mouth knowledge and experience whilst making use of modern computer technology to do so!
To kick things off, I'm going to share some of the things I learnt from my recent craft room makeover Believe me - many of these tips were learnt after a lot of mistakes! I only hope they will help stop you making the same ones!
- PLAN! Try to have some idea what you would like your room to look like when you have finished. Measure both the room, and all furniture that you are going to keep and check that it will definitely fit where you think it will. Don't forget to take into account things like skirting boards, radiators, plug sockets and window sills when you are measuring up. Many a time I have had to move everything back to where it started from because of a misguided guess about the width of a sofa!
- CLEAR A SPACE! If you are building any new furniture make sure you have enough room to do it in. Cramped conditions lead to more mistakes. Mistakes lead to grumpiness - and no-one should be grumpy when doing DIY!
- MOVE IT OUT! If you are moving a lot of things around it is worth considering removing everything before you start. That way you can easily position the furniture and large items before finding homes for the smaller items. If everything is still in the room you'll end up stepping over it, stepping on it, moving it, moving it again, and then eventually you'll take it out of the room so you can see what you're doing!
- EMPTY IT! Under no circumstances should you attempt to move a shelf, cupboard bookcase or CD rack with anything still on it. Always take everything off. I had a very near miss when a staple gun fell off the top shelf and bounced off my head - luckily the safety catch only came off after it hit the floor... but this anecdote could have had a very different ending...
- ENJOY! Don't start if you haven't got time to finish it, always double the amount of time you think you're going to need, make sure you have a lovely cuppa at least every hour and give yourself a treat when you're finished!
I hope that helped! I'll be back next week with more hints and tips
Very enjoyable post... With you on the 'EMPTY IT' tip...Oh so true!
ReplyDeleteGreat post and many handy tips which have, have also learnt some of these the hard way :o))
ReplyDelete{Dab and a dash.}