How to grow the ultimate outdoor cubby for your littlies – they’ll totally dig it!

How to make a fabulous garden seat with none other than fence pickets.

Turning a plain bed into a place of enchantment is simple to do using pine you’ll find at most timber yards. Just start with a basic wooden bed, make up L-shaped posts and canopy rails, sprinkle with a little fairy dust and your princess will drift off to sleep for a night of sweet dreams.

Don’t toss out your sideboard just because it’s a little worse for wear, simply sand it back and reapply oil or varnish. Or go all out and give it a new top, trim with moulding, coat in water-based enamel and add Perspex doors to hide the clutter.

For a laid-back beachy look, these classic boards are gold – simply add a plywood base for an inexpensive coffee table that will look great on your deck. And you don’t have to retire your favourite board because old surfboards are common discards in council clean-ups. It may be dinged, but it all adds to the charm. You can also sometimes pick one up for $30 or so from a recycling centre.

The gap between the floor and threshold is a high-traffic area. In this case, the floorboards themselves probably don’t have much movement as there is little movement along the grain. However, the threshold with the side grain will expand and contract markedly. Any filler in the gap tends to harden and crack over time. Replacement is simple – just clean out the gap, sand and refinish the threshold, and fill the gap with a matching sealant.

Draughts can occur when there’s a gap around a door or window frame. And, as shown here, gaps can look shabby. Not a pleasant way to be welcomed home each day! But they can be fixed using a paintable sealant.

This storage-space is open fronted and acts like a mini walk-in wardrobe! Made from an old bookcase, all you need to do is cut and re-position the shelves, then install hooks to cater for your collection of bags, shoes, scarves and belts. It's so stylish, and makes keeping your bedroom clean and tidy a whole lot easier.

Exterior stained cedar doors and windows are high maintenance as they need to be coated at least once a year. If left for a few years, the coating may blister or abrade and the timber will turn from its original colour to a grey or even black. This is due to exposure to strong sunlight, grime and mould. To repair the door, it needs to be stripped back to the bare wood.

There are several reasons as to why paint lifts from an interior door. Here, there were successive layers of oil and acrylic paint over an original base coat of varnish, going back about 80 years. The preparation between coats appears minimal, the paint isn’t always compatible, plus it’s always difficult for paint to stick to old varnish. Repainting properly means removing the multiple layers and preparing what’s left for a modern paint job.

This jewellery box will ensure that beads, bracelets and those bangles will never go missing again. This clever solution uses an old art box. Who said something old couldn't be made into something new...

Surfboards, boogie boards, skis, snowboards and paddles can be bulky to store so give them their own rack. They’ll cost less than $5 each.

Paving a small area is actually a simpler project than you might think. It’s really just a case of fill, level and lay. Before you undertake any landscaping projects such as paving, check your local council guidelines.