Julian Cassell's DIY Blog

If you’re a keen gardener, then building a greenhouse in your garden is probably going to be a job that you have to tackle at some stage. Clearly, before you begin, you need to take plenty of time deciding on position. You need to site the greenhouse in full sun, if at all possible – shade can be created, but the sun cannot be redirected! Make access to the greenhouse easy and consider benching and staging possibilities before you build it. read more »

Fitting a water butt and diverter kit to a suitable downpipe is one of the simplest ways of saving water and making use of the thousands of litres of rainwater that runs off the average roof each year. A plastic downpipe is shown here, which is the easiest type to cut into. You can still fit a diverter if you have metal or cast iron guttering – see ‘Rainwater diverter for metal downpipe’. read more »

A pergola provides an attractive garden structure for supporting and growing plants. In the past, you’d have to measure and cut all the components to size yourself, but these days building a pergola is made much easier as you can simply buy one in kit form. You can build a pergola in many parts of the garden to provide an attractive focal point or to act as a screen or even build one over a patio or path to add further interest to the area. Below is an example of a typical kit pergola. read more »

One way of gaining greater privacy in your garden is to add trellis to a fence. This also allows you to grow creeping plants along the trellis, which will clearly be attractive as well as obscuring. Fortunately, the process is very straightforward as all that is required to add some extra height to a fence post is a post extender – you may also find these called post collars or post extension collars. read more »

A paver path is straightforward to lay, and doesn’t require any mortar as effectively the whole thing is laid ‘dry’. Paver types and sizes vary with the ones shown here being a typical colour and design, but there are plenty of other options out there. The main consideration is how much compacting the sub base or foundation to the path will require. If you’re making a paved area for vehicles, read more »