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Needle, thread and buttons
Needle and thread: the most important DIY kit you already own? Photograph: Jurgita Vaicikeviciene/Alamy
Needle and thread: the most important DIY kit you already own? Photograph: Jurgita Vaicikeviciene/Alamy

Perfect shelves and unblocked drains: 10 easy DIY tasks to transform your house quickly

This article is more than 3 years old

From hanging pictures to resealing the bath, now is the time to tackle the jobs you have been ignoring – many of them much simpler than you think

While you have been stuck at home staring at the four walls and everything inside them, you may have noticed that some of what you see is broken. Small problems that may not have bothered you when you spent all day at work – a wonky curtain, a creaky door – suddenly demand your attention. But how do you fix things without professional help, armed only with limited tools and even more limited competence? We asked the experts for advice on the 10 simplest DIY tasks you can tackle right now.

Basic sewing

Siân Berry is the co-leader of the Green party, a member of the London Assembly and a candidate in the now-postponed London mayoral election, but she is also the author of Mend It! 400 Easy Repairs for Everyday Items. She thinks the humble sewing needle might be the most important DIY tool you already own.

“I totally recommend sewing,” she says. “Replace those buttons, get those hems exactly the right length.” But what if you can’t sew? “Hemming is surprisingly easy,” she insists. “There’s a special stitch for hemming where you’re basically hanging the fabric off very tiny stitches which don’t go through to the outside. It’s a really good skill because you can get all your clothes to fit you perfectly.”

Hanging pictures

All you need for smaller, lighter pictures is a hammer and a nail. Photograph: Hinterhaus Productions/Getty Images

This is a basic skill, requiring only the most basic tools. “If you’ve got a hammer and a nail, it will be enough,” says Jay Blades, a furniture restorer and the presenter of the hit BBC series The Repair Shop. “Hammer a nail into the wall, being mindful that there are no wires around. And you should only be going through the plaster. You don’t need to hammer the nail all the way through to your next-door neighbour.” This should be sufficient for smaller pictures, he says, “as long as it’s not a Picasso that weighs quite a lot”.

Affixing other things

If you want to stick anything heavier to the wall – a shelf, a towel rail, a Picasso – you will need a drill, screws and some kind of fixing plug. Jo Behari, one of the authors of Beginner’s Guide to DIY & Home Repair, says you first need to determine what kind of wall you are dealing with – a stud wall or a solid wall.

“Stud walls are just partition walls that cut off rooms,” she says. “If you knock on them they’re really hollow sounding – they’re made of wood and plasterboard. You don’t want to hang anything really heavy on those.” To put up a flat-screen TV or a big mirror, you need a solid wall made of brick, plus a masonry drill bit.

“A masonry bit has a wide spiral and a little arrow at the tip, which is made of tungsten carbide,” she says. A wood bit, preferable for stud walls, has a sharply pointed tip. Once you’ve drilled your hole, tap in a suitable plug with a hammer. Stud walls require butterfly fixings that “poke through the hole and grab at the back of the wall”. Brick walls take a more bullet-shaped plug.

Resealing your bath

Resealing your bath is easier than it sounds – but be sure to practise using the cartridge gun on a piece of card. Photograph: MyrKu/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Behari makes this sound easy. “To remove the old sealant you just need a Stanley knife,” she says. Slice through the top and bottom edges of the seal at one end. “Then you dig a little bit out and just start to pull, and it will all come out quite nicely.” Remove any extra old sealant with a scraper and clean down with white spirit.

“Before resealing, fill your bath up with water, because then it’s at its heaviest point.” That way the gap between tub and tile is at its widest. If you have never applied sealant with a cartridge gun, Behari recommends practising on a bit of cardboard, until you get the hang of it.

“Try to keep a consistent run all round the bathtub. To smooth it off, you can use a bit of washing-up liquid on your finger or water and a teaspoon. It will dry within 24 hours. You can’t wash for that period of time, but, you know, who’s washing these days?”

Bookshelves

Makeshift shelves can be produced with no tools, from scrap wood. “You can probably still find random bits of wood on your state-sanctioned walk,” says Berry. “Bits of wood and bricks make a lovely, sort-of-temporary bookshelf. At a pinch, you could use books for the uprights.”

A dripping tap

First: shut off the water. If you do nothing else during lockdown, Behari strongly recommends you locate your stopcock and make sure it is operable. “It’s normally under the kitchen sink, or in the hallway, or in a cellar.”

Another vital tip: put the plug in the sink or the bath before you start, so that if you drop anything small it doesn’t disappear down the drain.

A dripping tap probably needs a new rubber washer. More modern taps have ceramic washers, which don’t tend to fail. “To work out if it is the washer,” says Blades, “take apart another tap that’s not dripping and swap the washers over.”

How do you get at the washer in the first place? “There will be a way to access the screw that allows you to take apart the tap,” says Behari. “It might be under the little caps that say hot and cold, they might lever off, or there might be a tiny little hex screw at the back of the tap which you can undo.” Seek out a YouTube demonstration of the repair for your specific type of tap.

No matter what, you will need to secure a new washer, but this is not impossible. “You can actually still get stuff delivered.” says Behari. A pack of washers of mixed sizes can be had for as little as a quid online.

Cracks or holes in walls or furniture

“It’s best to fill cracks that are going to move – doorways, windows, those kind of areas – with something called caulk,” says Behari. “It’s a bit more flexible.” Otherwise, ordinary filler – powdered or pre-mixed – will do, but if it is a deep crack you need to apply the filler in thin layers, so the stuff at the back gets a chance to dry.

For a really big hole in a wall, there is another solution. “This sounds like a massive bodge, but it’s not,” says Behari. “Scrunch up bits of newspaper and fill the hole, so the filler has something to grab on to. And always fill your hole slightly proud of the surface so you can sand away the excess.”

If you have got a crack in a wooden surface and nothing to hand, you can make your own filler. “If you saw a piece of wood, you then create some sawdust,” says Blades. “You can put that sawdust into the crack, mix it up with some glue on top, and then that will create your kind of wood filler. You can sand it back, you can even stain it, because it’s basically wood shavings with glue.”

A blocked drain

“Really simple – and it doesn’t even need any tools,” says Behari. “It’s just a case of putting bicarbonate of soda down the drain, flushing it through with vinegar. That really clears all the blockages out of your kitchen sink. That’s a really simple thing that people should be doing on a regular basis, but probably aren’t.”

If your shower drain is blocked, however, it’s probably hair, according to Blades. “What I do is take the drain cover off and pull out whatever’s in there with a metal hanger – unravel it obviously. Hair being hair, if you twist it around it will latch on to it normally – nine times out of 10.”

A stuck door

A door that catches in its frame could have loose hinges, so check that. If the screws are loose and refuse to tighten, Behari and Blades offer the same solution: plugging the screw hole with matchsticks. “Stuff as many as you possible can in there,” says Blades, “then cut them off so the hole is flush, and when you screw your screw back in that will be unbelievably tight.”

If the door is still catching against the frame or the carpet below, then you’ve got to check where it makes contact, and mark it with chalk. After that, there is only one solution: “ This is good exercise for your triceps,” says Blades. “It’s rubbing down with coarse sandpaper.” And don’t stop when your sandpaper becomes clogged with dust and you haven’t got any more. “I hoover my sandpaper,” says Blades. “Then it becomes new sandpaper again. I haven’t bought sandpaper in years.”

Tackling draughts

Siân Berry’s sausage dog draught excluder. Photograph: Siân Berry

Repairing or rehanging a draughty door may be beyond the skills of a DIY initiate, but making a patchwork draught excluder isn’t, according to Berry. She favours a dog design (hers is pictured). “You can do a snake,” she says. “Snakes are easier. But the dog’s face is just one of the nicest things; you just start filling it with old socks or tights, or whatever you’re using, and it gains a personality immediately.”

To make the snake excluder, you will need a piece of fabric 40cm wide and 5cm longer than the width of your door. “Fold the material over inside-out, sew the long edge together into a tube and close off one end of the tube,” says Berry. “Then turn it inside-out again so the hem is inside and the best side of the fabric is facing out.

“Use the leg of an old pair of tights as the inner lining and fill with stuffing. You can use rice, lentils, sand or similar – just make sure you sew it up tightly, so no bits can escape. Then drop the stuffed tights into your material tube.” After that, you can sew up the mouth end, including a red ribbon for a tongue, and add buttons for eyes.

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