What DIY task should I do this weekend? We’ve all got things at the back of our minds that need to be done around the home, from clearing and cleaning to full-on DIY projects. It’s always the smaller tasks that get put off until another day, but sometimes that day never comes and we just live with the little snagging job until the next time we fully redecorate.
So, in the interest of getting things done, I’m sharing my own list of little DIY tasks that I never get around to. This will give me accountability to get those jobs done AND might inspire you to tackle some of your own decorating tasks this weekend..!
Painting touch-ups
There are lots of painting touch-ups that I need to do around the house – some from over 6 years ago! But that’s just the kind of thing that I never quite get around to. For example, there’s a chip in the stair-rail paintwork that reveals the black paint beneath the white topcoat and, at first glance, I always think it’s a spider on the rail!
There are four patches above my bedroom window where we took down the curtain rail and filled the holes – but we never finished the job by painting over the filler. There are a few areas like that around the home, and there needs to be a few more – but we’ll come to that in a minute.
Painting exterior doors is something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. At the moment, the back door to our porch isn’t painted along the edge after it was planed down and therefore isn’t sealed. So, if I’ve accidentally left the back door open when it starts to rain, the edge gets absolutely soaked.
This leads to the wood swelling up and then I can’t even close the door again because it no longer fits in the frame! This means I need to leave it ajar until the sun dries it out and the wood shrinks to fit in the door frame again. It’s definitely time to paint it.
Filling holes
You know what it’s like; you move a painting, a shelf or (as I mentioned before) a curtain rail, and you don’t fill in the hole it leaves behind. There are countless tiny little holes all over my home that need filling, sanding and painting over.
Why do I need to fill holes in the walls? In my living room and hallway, we’ve rearranged the artwork so many times that most of the pictures are accompanied by a couple of little holes above or to the side of the frame where it has been slightly moved or has replaced a different-sized image.
Plus, we have bigger holes to fill too. Where the TV aerial comes into the house, part of the brick and plasterwork was blown out on the inside of the wall during the drilling process. So, if you put your hand close to it, you can actually feel cold air coming in from outside. This desperately needs filling, but it’s hidden behind a unit at the moment so it’s a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’.
Sealing
This is something I don’t want to do at all, but it’ll save me a bigger job in the long run. Where the kitchen worktop meets at the corner, the seal has come out of the join. So, potentially, moisture could get in there and cause a problem with the wood or the cabinets below, which would be much more difficult to sort out.
Also, the silicone seals around the bathroom need redoing soon. They’re about 7 years old now and some silicone beading was removed when we needed to sort out a plumbing problem – and then the gaps around the toilet were never re-sealed. Plus, the tiles could go with regrouting in some places.
Sanding and varnishing
Although it seems like a time-consuming job and one that doesn’t really need doing, ideally I would like to take all the handles off my kitchen units. Why? Well, they’ve become a bit tatty over the past couple of years since they were installed.
How can you keep wooden handles looking good? Well, the wooden handles in the kitchen were varnished with a spray-on clear protective topcoat BUT it wasn’t protective enough. The handles have little speckled watermarks on them now, which I would love to sort out and get them looking as good as new again. I would recommend painting on a thicker varnish rather than a thin spay-on varnish, as this will make them more resistant to water and staining.
What do you think? Will you join me in getting some of those little ‘one day’ DIY tasks done this weekend? Let me know in the comments below what jobs you want to tackle and how long you’ve been putting it off for!
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