National DIY Day falls on Sunday April 2 this year offering the perfect opportunity to start those all-important DIY jobs around the house. Get your home set for spring and summer with our top tips for a DIY filled Sunday.

Give your home a face lift

Looking to give your home a bit of excitement and brighten it up? Start from the outside in. Simple fixes to the front of your home can offer a fresh spring feeling. Choose a bright colour to repaint your front door, add some ornate house numbers, invest in a new welcome mat, or add a touch of spring with a hanging basket.

Whip your garden into shape

Tackling the garden during the colder months isn’t everyone’s ideal weekend job, but now the weather is getting warmer and the ground is becoming easier to manage, it’s the perfect time to start completing some of those spring garden jobs. Check out our top tips for a beautiful spring garden here.

Dress your windows

You don’t need a big budget to lift a room. If you’re looking to add some spring touches to your home, why not try dressing your windows to enhance them? Add light, floral fabrics with plenty of length and flow; heavy winter curtains will block out light and make your rooms feel smaller. Utilise flowers that are in season, such as daffodils, to add bursts of colour on a windowsill. Hanging crystals or placing mirrors on the windowsill will bounce light around your room too.

Maintain your guttering

After the rain and wind of the winter, gutters can often become clogged with leaves and debris that can turn to mush. This makes them inefficient and can cause more pressing problems further down the line. To ensure you clean your guttering safely and with care, use a sturdy ladder, wear heavy work gloves for protection, as well as wearing a pair of safety goggles or glasses to stop any debris that may accidentally fly up. Click here for a more comprehensive gutter maintenance guide.

Get your view back

With (hopefully) better weather on the way, you’ll want to enjoy the sunshine to its full potential. Ensuring that your windows are clean and functioning allows you to appreciate the view and open them with ease. Take a look at our window maintenance tips for more information on how to do this properly. If you notice that even with vigorous cleaning, the glass is still cloudy or misty, it’s more than likely your double glazing has failed. Get in touch with your local Cloudy2Clear branch today to fix this issue for you.

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Getting the garden ready after the winter months can sometimes feel like an arduous job and it can often take a while for it to start resembling the beautiful oasis you envisaged. Below we outline the key tasks you can undertake to kick-start an immaculate outdoor space.

Scarifying

To really give your garden some ‘oomph’, revitalising your lawn is a great place to start. During the winter, grass is neglected and put through harsh conditions, such as freezing temperatures and excess moss. This means that new growth will have struggled to push through and your lawn lacking the nutrients it needs to flourish.

Scarifying your lawn allows the grass to gain a new lease of life by removing the dead layer of moss and mulch. By gently raking over your lawn, fresh growth has the chance to prevail and by keeping up this technique over the next few weeks, you should see a transformation to a sumptuous spring lawn.

If you have some sparse patches of grass, March is the best time of year to start the reseeding process. Ensure you scarify first to really assess the damage.

Once you’ve completed the above, wait for a dry day to arrive and give your lawn a good mowing.

Planting

The warmer the temperatures get, the harder is to prepare your garden, as the ground begins to harden. Ensure you remember to put in any supports you may need for taller plants in March, as attempting to do this further along in the year, may cause unnecessary damage to your plants.

If you are a keen vegetable grower (or just starting out), now is the time to get your onions and shallots in the ground.

Make sure you plan, especially if you want a garden full of beautiful flowers in the summer. Get your summer-flowering bulbs in the ground now so they reach their full potential by the time the sun shines.

Pruning

If you have any winter flowers in your garden, such as heather, winter flowering jasmine, and pansies, ensure you cut these back so that they don’t ruin the aesthetic of your garden during the spring. It will encourage new growth for next year too. You should also prune any bushes or climbing roses too, as these will be encouraged to grow when the warmer temperatures and April showers arrive.

Preventing slugs

Warmer weather, with damp conditions, encourages slugs to take over your herbaceous plants (and anything else they can get their feelers on), and although these molluscs play an important part in the ecosystem, they tend to cause problems for prolific gardeners.

There are many natural ways to reduce the number of slugs in your garden:

• Introduce other wildlife, such as hedgehogs, slow worms, beetles, and centipedes
• Draw their attention to other plants and vegetables, such as lawn camomile, which will stop them from eating your more desired plants or vegetables
• Create barriers utilising copper. Slugs are not fans of copper and you can easily buy cable or tape from garden centres. Even pennies would be effective!

Other top gardening tips

• Make sure your tools are in good working order and are clean and ready to start being used
• Attract more birds by providing high quality feed
• Install a small pond to encourage even more wildlife
• Add a top layer of fresh compost
• Remove damaged branches from trees

If your view from your kitchen window or conservatory is being ruined by failed double glazing, don’t let all your hard work in the garden go to waste. Contact your local Cloudy2Clear branch today for a free quote.

Images courtesy of www.pexels.com. Images are free for any personal and commercial purpose. Photos can be edited, modified and distributed. Attribution is not required.