Having the right furniture in your home is essential to getting the look that you want. Unfortunately, furniture can be both expensive and generic. Solve both of these problems by making and customizing your own pieces of furniture with our simple guide below.

Creating a sewing machine table is a lot easier than you think. First, you need to get hold of an old-fashioned cast iron sewing machine that comes attached to its own table. While these are very decorative items in themselves, there aren't too practical as all the space it used up by the sewing machine already. To find one of these check out free adds in the local paper and Craigslist. These are also likely to be in good supply in your local reclamation yard, or you can even try auction sites like eBay.

Once you have this item, you will need to disassemble it, as it is just the ornate legs that you're after. Once you have the legs, then you need to find yourself the perfect table top. You can use a long thin piece of wood for an occasional table style. This works best as it should fit the legs well. Use recycled wood or visit places like George Hill Timber merchants to get your materials.

Then you need to fix the legs onto the table use screws and an electric drill. Make sure that the legs will adequately support the weight of the plank that you have chosen. To make the whole thing more secure, you can add a strengthening bar along the bottom. This should be fixed between the two sewing machine table legs, as it will add extra torsion and stability.


A quick and simple DIY hack for your home is a pallet bar. This just takes a few screws, two pallets and some stones for the top.

Briefly sand the pallets down to get rid of any stray splinters. Then paint them in whatever colour you would like. Then once they are dry fix them together with the tops facing outwards. Use screws and an electric drill for this.

Once that is done stand them on end. Then fix the stone slabs to the top with something like a strong, multipurpose glue, or screw them in if you are able. Then affix to the wall for added stability, and there you have it a quick and easy pallet bar!


Maybe you love the idea of making something by hand, but aren't too keen on woodwork? Then how about treating yourself to an old chest of drawers and giving them a DIY facelift.

You can actually make a really beautiful piece of furniture in the shabby chic style with a lick of paint and some paper and glue.

Once you have decided on your item of furniture, you will need to give it a quick sanding down to create a rough surface for the paint to adhere to. Use a chalk paint to cover the entire piece including inside the draws. Let this dry, and touch up any areas that need it before moving on to the next step.

Then take your chosen decoupage paper. This is fine tracing paper like sheets that are glossy and patterned. Rip them up into small pieces and use the decoupage glue to fix them on the piece of furniture. The idea is to get a solid covering of pattern. If you do it right, it doesn't look like little bits of paper, but like that pattern is covering the item, curves and all.

You can choose to cover the entire item, or you can pick out certain features. For example recesses in draws and doors look great covered in decoupage with white paint creating a bordered round it.


Another DIY home project that is particularly relevant to this time of year is creating your own DIY present wrapping station. Sound like a bit of a luxury doesn't it? But in fact, it's simple and easy and makes wrapping gifts come Christmas time, so much easier.

All you need to do is get a kitchen stool. It needs to be that is fairly tall and has two set of bars going all the way around. Then just turn it upside down, and you affix canvas tie bags to the different rungs. In these bags, you can keep your sticky tape, scissors, and bows, while all the wrapping paper can be stored in between the legs in the middle.

The great thing about this is that you can keep it stored in a cupboard this way, so you will always have everything you need for wrapping on hand. The legs of the stool protect the wrapping papers rolls aswell, so ensure that it stays in good condition for whenever you want to use it.