Chelsea Flower Show 2019: How The Show will Influence Home And Garden Trends Going Forward

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For the past two days I have been in attendance at the Chelsea Flower Show: the world-renowned, quintessentially British, annual celebration of all things horticultural. It has been a delight. As a lover of colour and a pretty flower, there is nowhere better to soak-up a sunshine filled day. The show is also attended by the creative elite - from interior and furniture designers to actors and musicians - the show provides incredible inspiration and sows the seed (if you will) to many new designs and ideas. This year there were a few key themes, messages and colours which I think will infiltrate the way we design and style our homes, plus affect the purchases we make.

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Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Composite Deck With Trex Pro Installers & Landscapers The Greenkeeper

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So, our new composite deck is complete! Landscapers The Greenkeeper spent two weeks dismantling our rotten timber deck, building new framework and installing Trex deck boards and accompanying railing. If you missed the big reveal then you can find it here. If you want to see the build process then click here. Otherwise, I spent a lot of time chatting to The Greenkeeper during the deck build and it was a real eye-opener to how the innovative product of composite deck is revolutionising our exteriors. With its zero-maintenance appeal and eco-credentials, it is the perfect product for the time-poor consumer who would prefer to invest in sustainable materials within their home. I thought it would be interesting to do a Q&A with The Greenkeeper to find out all about how they came to be Trex Pro installers, and why they think that Trex is the future of decking, especially in the UK....

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My Garden Overhaul: The Trex Transcend Composite Deck REVEAL!!!

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I am SO excited to finally reveal on the blog my brand new decking area, made from Trex Transcend Composite Decking and Trex Signature Railings. If you’ve been following our garden overhaul progress you will have seen why I had given up on our traditional timber deck, as well as a progress report of the build. This post is all about how the finished decking area now looks and how I have styled it so it is perfect for alfresco dinners and summer parties. So, without further delay, here are all the final photos of my finished raised decking area in my garden. As you can imagine, I am delighted with how it has turned out!

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Garden Progress Update: Replacing My Old Timber Deck With Trex Transcend Composite Decking

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Last week on the blog I talked about my big garden plans and how I had given up on our rotten, raised timber deck area of our garden. Instead, it was all going to be ripped out and replaced by something called Trex Transcend - a strong and durable composite decking made from 95% recycled materials. Well, as you can tell from the header image to this post (!!) the exciting news is that the big garden overhaul has begun! Landscape company The Greenkeeper arrived to dismantle and and re-lay the deck just over a week ago. After some initial framework problems, the actual installation of the Trex Deck was pretty interesting to watch. So, here is the build progress so far.....

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My Big Plans For The Garden Deck This Summer

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Hello and welcome to my garden! I have not featured the garden on my blog in a long time and with good reason - it is a disaster that I just cannot keep on top of. Well, not the garden itself but actually the decking area. We have a really large area of the garden that is raised decking, but the truth is the past couple of years it hasn't even been used - in fact I've actively cornered it off as I feel it is unsafe for the family.

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Sprucing Up My Outside Space With Exterior Paints By Sandtex & Sadolin

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Bank holiday weekends for me, like a lot of people, are all about DIY! The three-day period just gives that extra amount of time to complete any projects both inside and outside of the home. With the bank holiday weekend just gone having been dry, warm and sunny, I used this time to spruce up my outdoor balcony. It had been a few years since I had painted the deck boards in this space and they were looking weathered and bare. The metal railings had also peeled and cracked in the sun from summers gone-by. This summer, I wanted to bring an old wooden bench that had been left at the bottom of the garden up on the balcony as a colourful seating area, so I set about transforming the deck, railings and the bench using exterior paints by Sandtex and Sadolin.

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Blue Hues: Bringing The Inside Out With Garden Furniture From Marks & Spencer

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I have a small balcony accessed via some arched doors from my living area that is an absolute sun trap, so in the summer months I spend more time here than in the garden. Last year I created a really kitsch miami-pink style space here, which although was fun for one summer, it did not work at all with the living space and felt completely disjointed. This year I really wanted the area to be an extension of my living room as I felt it would work better than as a completely separate area to it. I wanted the furniture to be really good quality, while also fit in with the stylish pieces I had indoors. My living room is a warm blue hue, so when I discovered that Marks & Spencer were focusing on Artisan Blues for Spring/Summer 2018, I just had to check out their Alfresco range of garden furniture and accessories.

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Celebrating #britishflowersweek: How to make hand-tied bouquets and other DIY floral displays for your home

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This week is British Flowers Week - but did you know only 10% of flowers sold in Britain are grown here? To highlight this fact, and to celebrate our home-grown flowers and foliage, New Covent Garden Flower Market launched British Flowers Week in 2013 to promote British flowers, their growers and the independent florists working with them. One of those independent florists is Agent F, whose bouquets are a riot of colour and who I first met just before Xmas when I made a festive table centrepiece with them.

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How To Make An Outdoor Wall Mounted Welly Boot Holder

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It's dark at 5pm, it's suddenly really cold - yep - winter has arrived! Along with your winter gloves and scarf, the welly boots need to be on hand for those really bleak days. Although a necessity, I really do hate welly boots in the house. They are bulky, flop over on their side, leave dried up mud bits around and generally just get in the way when left by the back door or in the hallway. Earlier in the year I was watching a C4 Kirsty & Phil 'Love It or List It' property programme.  Kirsty showed the participating couple a 'space saver' house with welly pegs on the wall by the back door to house filthy wellies, rather than store them inside. Inspired, the next morning I knocked out this simple welly boot holder to hang on an outside wall on our house.

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DIY Back Door Re-Vamp With Home-Made Awning

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The back door to our house was needing a little bit of love. Its paint was peeling and it was just generally uninspiring. It also still had a bloody Christmas decoration on it which I had been meaning to take down in like forever. Instead of just giving it a new lick of paint, I decided to add a few more features to really jazz it up properly and give it a bit of 'wow-factor'.

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How We Made Our Garden Furniture

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How much would you expect to pay for one garden bench made out of a beautiful thick piece of oak? £100? £200? We made four large garden benches that now seat 10 people in our garden for a minimal amount of money, although it was quite the effort. I have to say before I delve into this post that this piece of DIY was not easy! The wood is heavy and it was a joint effort of three people (me, my husband and my dad) to create them. However, if you have people to help and you are determined you can save yourself so much money creating bespoke beautiful outdoor benches yourself!

It all started when we moved into our new London 'burbs home with a gorgeous garden. Our previous Central London home only had a small piece of shaded garden, which you got to by going down some iron stairs, so we didn't use it much. On the list of things to get for the new house was 'garden furniture' as we did not have any. The previous owners of our current house had landscaped the front of the garden in their time living here, and had left four long pieces of left over sleeper wood in the back garden. This lovely wood was just sitting there untreated getting mouldy and eaten by woodworm, but it would be perfect to transform into garden seating.

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Before & After: Turning My Tired Balcony Into My Own Kitsch Rooftop Botanical Bar For Under £250

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When we moved into our current home last year, one of the great things about it was a balcony you accessed from the living room. As we live on a hill it has great views (especially on Fireworks night.) It is also a total suntrap, so I want to utilise it this summer.

Yet before it could become my evening wine drinking haven, this balcony needed some proper DIY love. Its decking was worn and faded, the paint on the balcony doors weathered, but the worst problem was something I couldn't do anything about - wood-rot and damage to the neighbours property that was clearly visible. The balcony needed a tart up, and I needed to cover the neighbours wall damage from view....

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The Non-Gardeners Guide To Planting The Most Stylish Summer Flowers

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Hooray! My favourite part of May is here - Chelsea Flower Show week!!!! When I really got into interiors, I also found myself really getting into plants and flowers. A pot of flowers always adds to a room as the finishing touch, and I guess if the inside of your home is really important to you - why wouldn't you want the outside to be just as fab? I started really taking notice of what was growing in peoples gardens when I walked past, and poured over all the details that made up bouquets in the florist or supermarket. When I visited Chelsea Flower Show in 2012 and saw Nikki Tibbles' window box displays I was HOOKED. Her displays were just so beautiful, I wanted my outside space to look just like that! Nikki is still my absolute favourite florist (her Instagram account is worth a follow for the most opulent displays she creates @nikkitibbleswildatheart), although luckily I didn't discover her before my wedding otherwise I would have literally blown the whole wedding budget having her flowers everywhere...

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Summer DIY: How To Make These Geometric Hanging Planters With Plastic Straws, Garden Wire And Spray Paint

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I was window shopping in H&M Home recently when I saw the cute little hanging planter below. As I've previously mentioned, I'm currently doing up my balcony at home for the summer and initially thought this gold number would be a good addition. After contemplating it for a few minutes I decided this planter would not work for several reasons. Firstly it was made of glass, making it perfect for an inside terrarium, but a disaster waiting to happen as a hanging planter outside swinging against a brick wall. Secondly at £24.99 each they were far too expensive, especially as I wanted two of them..

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Summer DIY: How To Make A Gold And Grey Planter

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I'm currently re-vamping my tired looking balcony (full reveal coming in a few weeks!) Since the sun has been shining in the past week (even though it's now pouring as I write this) I decided to get out and get some Vitamin D and work on part of the project which was to build a tall planter trough ready for summer flowers. To build and paint the planter takes no longer than a day, so it is perfect for a sunny Sunday DIY project. First stop was to get some load-bearing wood. My top tip if you are going to build a planter like mine is first check if there is anyone in your area selling used scaffold boards. Building regulations state that builders scaffolding boards have to be changed regularly, so you often get scaffold and building companies selling off their old scaffold boards for cheap on Ebay and Gumtree.

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