CrossTeam Properties Offers Advice on Home and Garden Improvements

Space is always a problem in a family home and nowhere more than in the bathroom. In particular, mornings can be a nightmare. Yet with a little careful planning there are simple ways to maximise the space in the bathroom and avoid full-scale family arguments.

Try dividing the room into clearly defined sectors. Separating the shower enclosure and bath into its own space and doubling the sink capacity is a useful aid to increase the number of people able to use the bathroom at any given time. Another idea is to create one long vanity unit, again with a double sink and installing a continuous mirror along the wall is another. Walling off the toilet is a good aid to privacy.

If you have small children, safety should be the watchword. Be sure to include a small step to enable them to get in and out of the bath safely. Non-slip bath mats should be included both inside and outside of the bath.

Be sure to fix safety catches on the toilet seat. If the children are slightly older and trusted to shower on their own, adjustable showerheads should be fitted as standard.

Perhaps the most important safety point is to place the medicine cabinet at as high a point as possible and always fit a childproof lock.

If these criteria are borne in mind, then sharing a bathroom may not be quite such a nightmare after all. More importantly, everyone will be safe.

With Christmas approaching, none of us want to be afflicted with a major repair job in the Season of Goodwill, chiefly because goodwill could be amongst the first casualties, if this were to happen. As prevention is so often better than cure, here are a few simple DIY precautions for a worry-free holiday. They involve no painting and decorating, no plastering, no building, and certainly no architects.

Beginning with the outside, check the gutters, a small, portable compressed air jet can be an enormous help, here. Rotting, slimy, leaf grunge can freeze, making a dam, which will result in an overflowing gutter and water pouring all over your wall. Get rid, as soon as possible. Clear all your paths of leaf-fall and moss, they’re tricky when wet and utterly treacherous when frozen. If you’re worried about suspiciously lanky trees outside your property, inform the council and get them to cut them back. If they’re in your garden, cut back any overhanging branches that could bludgeon your property in high winds.

Inside the house, the first and most pressing issue is to make sure you’ve had the boiler professionally serviced. Eating sandwiches and crisps on Christmas Day in thermal underwear and overcoats is unlikely to be much fun; if your boiler croaks, this could definitely be you. Plug draughty gaps in doors and windows with DIY-store draught excluders and you’ll stay warm and toasty.

None of this amounts to heavy-duty property development, of course, but together, these simple steps will keep you and your property warm and safe.

You may think that once you have taken the decision to have underfloor heating you have nothing left to worry about, but your work is not quite done yet. There are three main types of underfloor heating systems and you need to decide which is best for your property. Your choice will be determined by a number of factors, from the state of your property, is it a new build or is it an existing build that you want to have underfloor heating installed in. It may come down to money, whether you can afford the system you would prefer and many other factors.

The main options are wet underfloor heating and electric underfloor heating, which has two main subtypes. Wet underfloor heating uses a series of bent pipes to pump heated water under the floor and this is ideal for new build properties where flooring work has not yet commenced. Electrical underfloor heating offers a choice of heat cables and mats or carbon film heating elements. Heat cables and mats are great for use with tiled floors, as they work best with that type of material, while carbon film heating elements have been specially designed to work with laminate and wooden floors. Electric underfloor heating systems are also ideal for an existing build that needs a new heating system, as they are easy to install on pre-laid floors. To install the pipe work for wet underfloor heating, you would have little choice but to dig up the floor.

Anyone giving their home a DIY facelift with a little painting and decorating may well decide to replace old, tatty interior doors before they start. Fitting new interior doors in a property development project will, of course, be inevitable, the more you can do yourself, the more you’ll save on contractors’ fees. If you get it wrong, though, it’ll look terrible, so here are some hints, which should work a treat.

Place the new door against the frame to measure the fit; it should be 2mm less than the frame, all the way around. Mark the overlap with a pencil and cut the excess off, but remember to keep any pattern on the door, you must cut equally from top and bottom and both sides. When you have finished sawing, smooth the edges with a plain.

If you’re using existing frames, align the door at an angle, in the opening and mark the tops and bottoms of the hinge recesses on it. When fitting new hinges, make sure you position them between 125.5mm and 150mm from the top and 175mm to 230mm from the bottom of the door. Again, mark the tops and bottoms, before carefully chiselling out the marked-off area on the side of the door. Fit the hinges to the door, drill pilot holes to stop the wood from splitting and make sure they’re flush.

Support the door in position and fix the hinges to the frame, placing one screw at the top of each hinge to begin with. Check that the door closes and opens easily, if it doesn’t, remove the screws and reposition the hinge in the frame. Fix all the remaining screws to the hinges and the job is complete.

Getting out of bed on a cold winter’s morning is certainly not one of life’s great pleasures. It is made infinitely worse when undressing in a freezing bathroom while waiting for the shower to heat up.

Fortunately there is a wide range of electrical heaters available on the market to fit into every size of bathroom. A quick checklist of safety considerations should make certain that no unfortunate accidents occur.

Most electric heaters are plugged into the nearest existing external socket. This makes them safe to set on timers, so the bathroom is warm as soon as you enter in the morning. Be careful to avoid placing the heater in front of bathroom accessories such as towels or shower curtains.

Ensure that the heater has a safety switch, which automatically shuts it down in the event of it toppling over. A quick look at the manufacturer’s guidelines should satisfy you of this.

In general, there are two types of heater, ‘radiant’ and ‘forced air’.
A radiant heater works by heating coils, which are situated behind a protective grill. The beauty of this system is that it allows heat to pass into the bathroom continuously, at an even temperature. They are also more energy efficient, as they do not use a fan system.

Conversely, forced air heaters operate by means of a fan emitting warm air through a metal grill. Although they heat the bathroom more rapidly, the inbuilt thermostat does not allow for very high temperatures. As previously noted, they are also more expensive.

More and more people are buying gazebos as a decorative feature for their garden.  Used for thousands of years and built in a variety of materials, today’s garden gazebos tend to be wooden structures not only because it is a cheaper material but also because they can merge into the landscape as a more natural feature.  This appeals to those who view the gazebo as a place to become closer to nature.  A choice of woods can be used to build the gazebo and can look both striking and attractive.

Traditional gazebos were structures that were open but modern gazebos can be built fully enclosed or with lattices that can be used as a structure for climbing plants such as wisteria or clematis.  In parts of the world where insects such as mosquitoes are a problem, screen slides can be built on wooden gazebos in order that the owners can relax and enjoy the beautiful views without the nuisance of mosquitoes.

Before purchasing a gazebo it is important to determine its purpose as this will have a bearing on the construction material and its design.  It is also essential that the gazebo be constructed on the correct site, taking into account landscape, weather conditions and planning permission.

A good site for a wooden gazebo would be on an incline that would offer attractive views or beside a garden pond, where favourite flowers could be planted.  A gazebo is a place where one can find tranquillity and appreciate ones natural surroundings.

For anyone who loves gardens but hates gardening, the idea of a maintenance-free version has enormous appeal.

Whether you’re a DIY aficionado or into some serious property development, it’s a big mistake to neglect the ‘outdoor room’: there are few sights more off-putting to visitors or potential buyers than overgrown, tatty, unloved gardens.

Whether you’ve got architects revamping your property or you’re about to get stuck in to some painting, decorating or plastering indoors, here are some ideas for creating a stylish, genuinely low maintenance garden that’ll looking great all year round. I

If your idea of gardening is a quick sweep once in a while, building a low maintenance garden is a must.

If you don’t especially want a tennis court or a football pitch in your garden, assuming it’s that large anyway, you can afford to start visually carving it up into zones without making it look smaller.

Simple lines using different materials and colours can work wonders, and the boundaries can be softened with judicious planting with no maintenance plants like ‘verbena’.

Bamboo can also be a good choice: it looks the same all year round, but pot it before you sink it into the ground, or it’ll send shoots through your gravel and paving.

When choosing materials for hard landscaping, don’t be afraid to be adventurous with colour combinations; slate gray tiles and skelpings can look stylish and classy next to red-stained decking and salmon-pink gravel, especially with a row of verbena between them.

Box hedging planted in a block can add a splash of low-maintenance panache to an otherwise featureless paved area.

There are two main ways to install an electric underfloor heating system and one of these is using carbon film heating elements. This is an underfloor heating system, which has been specifically designed for use with laminate flooring, so if you are looking to have this type of material installed then this could be the ideal system for you.

The way a carbon film heating element system works is, as it sounds, by using a layer of film, which is made of a semi-conductive material that is wafer thin. It is unrolled, like a sheet, across the floor that you want to heat and is an ideal way to install an underfloor heating system in an existing building, as it is so thin it will not, to any great degree, impact on the floor level in any way.

The edges of the carbon film have copper electrodes built in and these are connected to the electricity supply, which is what provides the heat. Once the floor has the carbon film heating element laid on it, a layer of insulation is needed to help conduct and spread the heat evenly over the top of the laminate floor. Ideally, this should be no more than 18mm thick or the heating is not going to be as effective as it should. The level of heating is controlled by a simple digital thermostat, which makes your life easy as you can simply adjust the temperature of the floor at will.

Loft conversions usually need the expert input of architects, not just for the design but to handle the necessary planning permission. However, whether you’re embarking on a property development project or just feel confident to make a large DIY attempt on your own home, there are some tips which a building project like this could always benefit from.

It will require a lot of skill, involving more than a bit of painting, decorating and plastering, but you can spare yourself trouble later by being clear about your plans at the beginning.

Always physically go into the loft and work out exactly what is and what isn’t usable space (headroom is a big factor). Areas where there isn’t headroom are often used for storage.

It’s important to consider how you’ll get natural light into the space. Velux windows are good, but Dormer windows are great, giving you precious extra space.

Think carefully about the function of the space – is it an office or a bedroom? If the latter, do you want an en suite bathroom too (if you do, you’ll have to get water into it and out again). Don’t go to all the trouble of installing a bathroom/WC that will never get used.

Give a lot of thought to the new staircase – it must comply with building regulations and should look and feel pleasant, as opposed to a glorified loft-ladder. Always remember to insulate, preferably double the requirements of the building regulations (it’ll save a lot of hard-earned money on heating bills).

When buying a bath it is of the utmost importance to decide exactly what you are looking for. After all, they are not cheap and probably represent a significant investment.

The first things to consider are the space you have at your disposal and exactly how much you can afford. A good rule of thumb is to consider that any freestanding bath will be both more space-consuming and expensive than a built-in fixture.

If space is a little cramped, then consider combining a bath and a shower unit. In particular, a P-shaped bath, with a curved shower screen and a large anti-slip area, will drastically free up precious room.

If you do have an existing separate shower, then it may be the case that you do not find it necessary to bathe every day. This enables you to concentrate on the type of bath that specifically suits your need.

Do you have children? Then perhaps a double-ended bath would be more suitable. Or if you are child-free, a smaller but deeper model may be a better option.

A metre-deep Japanese bath with straight sides will offer a completely different experience than a low-slung contemporary bath where you are lying almost horizontal.

Never be afraid to test the bath out before buying. After all, you wouldn’t buy a car or a bed without seeing if it was first right for you. So get in, see how it feels.