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I was standing in my back garden last Tuesday, watching a particularly stubborn gust of wind try to do the work of a sledgehammer on my western boundary, when I realised something. Most people think that if a fence starts to lean, you just need to slap on a bit of wood glue or a […]

I was out by the old stone barn last Tuesday—a sturdy piece of 18th-century masonry, mind you—and I saw young Miller from down the lane trying to stack his logs against a damp garden wall. He’d spent a fair bit of money on some fancy, decorative metal log holder he’d ordered online, but he was […]

I spent forty minutes yesterday afternoon staring at a pile of rotting vegetable peelings and damp leaves behind my shed, wondering why it looked more like a neglected construction site than a garden asset. Most of the glossy magazines will tell you that you need fancy plastic bins or specific chemical additives to get things […]

I was standing in my back garden last Tuesday, staring up at the old Bramley near the old stone wall—the one I spent three days rebuilding back in ’09—and I realised something. Most people think that if they aren’t being aggressive with the shears, they aren’t doing it right, but that’s a load of nonsense. […]

I was standing in my back garden last Tuesday, looking at the uneven mess of flagstones near the old oak—the one planted back in 1924—and I couldn’t help but shake my head. Most people think that learning how to lay a patio is all about picking out the prettiest limestone or slate from the garden […]

I remember standing in a Victorian terrace over in Chawton back in ’94, looking at a homeowner who had just spent three thousand pounds on “specialist” anti-mould sprays that did nothing but mask the smell for a fortnight. He looked at me like I was the intruder, but the truth was, he was fighting a […]

I was standing in the hallway of a mid-Victorian terrace in Amesbury last Tuesday, staring at a patch of wall that looked less like a feature and more like a topographical map of the Andes. The homeowner had spent a small fortune on high-end emulsion, but because they’d skipped the sanding and the priming, the […]

I was halfway up the stairs in my cottage near Chawton last Tuesday—a lovely little mid-Victorian build, though the timber hasn’t aged as gracefully as the stone—when that familiar, piercing groan erupted from under my left foot. It’s that specific, sharp protest that makes you feel like a burglar in your own hallway, especially when […]

I remember a Tuesday in mid-January, back when I was still valuing properties near Sevenhampton, when the frost was thick enough to crack a stone. I was sitting in a lovely mid-Victorian terrace—built, if I recall, around 1875—when the heating suddenly gave a pathetic, metallic wheeze and died. There is nothing quite like the hollow […]

I remember standing on a ladder outside Miller’s cottage—a lovely little flint-walled thing built around 1840—feeling the damp chill of a November morning settle into my bones. I had spent three hours trying to brush out a stubborn clog, only to realise I’d been using the wrong tool for the job and making a right […]