Category Archives: DIY

How Do You Get the Grit Out of the Bottom of a Hot Tub?

So you have a hot tub, in my case a lay-z-spa Saint Tropez but obviously it could be any other kind of inflatable hot tub (and may well work on a fixed one too) and you have some bits of grit and dirt in the bottom of the tub. Are you trying to figure out how to get rid of the dirt out of the bottom without emptying the whole tub? Continue reading How Do You Get the Grit Out of the Bottom of a Hot Tub?

Eco-Friendly Newspaper Kids Party Bags

If, like me, you are trying to do your bit to reduce your waste footprint on the planet and reuse whatever you can, then this is just a small way to help with one of those things that can create unneeded plastic waste at kids birthday parties.

I decided this year that instead of buying (very cheap I have to say) themed plastic party bags I would either make something myself or buy paper bags.

To be fair you can buy reasonably cheap paper party bags so that is always an option, but I wanted to go one step further and make my own. Continue reading Eco-Friendly Newspaper Kids Party Bags

How to Remove the Ikea Maximera Drawer

So I recently had an Ikea kitchen fitted as I really liked the configuration in particular of the drawers – they have a range of drawers in different sizes including some really useful 10cm deep drawers.

In fact you can choose whatever configuration of drawers that you want to fit into your units using the Metod bases and Maximera drawer carcasses.

Ikea Drawers
Ikea Drawers

In fact there are so many configurations in the Ikea kitchen that I changed my mind about what size drawers that I wanted in both of my drawer units! However, once I had installed the drawers I had trouble figuring out how to remove the maximera drawer from the rails and tried to Google to find that information but what I found fell short of helping me.

So for that reason I decided to inspect the one maximera drawer that I hadn’t put together to figure out how to get the drawer out. Doing this made me realise how to take the Maximera drawer out and I made a short video for anyone else who is trying to do this and is struggling:

In case you can’t see the video then what you need to do is find the two little clips that are quite near to the drawer front – they look like this:

Maximera Drawer
Maximera Drawer

There is one clip on either side of the maximera drawer and you need to push them both to get the drawer to release from the rails. You can then reposition the drawers where you want.

Where Can you Get RAL Tester Pots?

With many more items being offered in colours in the RAL colour range, it can be useful to know where to get RAL tester pots so that you can check the colour before ordering.

RAL colours come in 210 shades for the matt colours and 183 in a gloss finish. They have been around since 1927.

You can actually buy RAL spray paint colours online for around £10 plus postage and you can get some more common colours in spray paint form from Amazon (see example to the left).

For example, many doors and windows come in anthracite grey which is RAL 7016, so if you need a touch up for that you can certainly get hold of something like that on the left.

In another example, a well known kitchen company offers kitchen that can be painted in any colour in the RAL spectrum. But obviously if you want to check out the colour that you are thinking of buying, then you might want to know where you can get RAL tester pots.

One place that you can go to in the UK is to Homebase where they have a Dulux mixing desk. here they can pretty much mix to any colour that you want including colours in the RAL spectrum.

So it is worth buying a couple of tester pots for £3.29 to decide on what colour you want the whole kitchen to be painted before going ahead with a big purchase like that.

Obviously when you get paint from different sources there may be slight differences in the actual result of the colour achieved so complete matching may be tricky.

In fact if you look online at pictures of specific RAL colours (for example google RAL 1013) you will get a massive variety of shades for one actual colour which will make it difficult to decide what it actually looks like!

Can I Use a Wallpaper Stripper to Strip Paint?

So if you are in the unfortunate situation where you need to strip paint from walls (and this really must be one of the most hated jobs around!) then you may be looking for some easier way to do it other than scraping it off bit by bit.

Well unfortunately there isn’t really a quick solution to scraping paint off a wall but if you are wondering if using a wallpaper stripper will get the paint off quicker then the answer is yes! you need to be careful to not damage the plaster, just as you would if you were stripping wallpaper off the wall, but the steam from the stripper does make the paint a bit softer and easier to remove.

Remember to keep your scraper sharp as you continue the process as this will also make stripping the paint a bit easier and I also found that it was a good idea to steam some of the paint and then strip it as it was easier to remove the paint using both hands rather than just one.