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Home improvement guides
Practical, reviewed advice for planning repairs and projects, choosing the right pro and knowing what to ask before you hire.
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494 guides
- Guide
Asphalt Shingle Roofing guide
Asphalt shingles are not what most British roofs are made of, and a guide that implies otherwise is selling something.
13 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Metal Roofing guide
Metal has been on British roofs for centuries, but usually in pieces rather than across the whole slope. Lead at valleys, flashings, chimney soakers, parapet gutters, bay and porch roofs is the traditional British use,…
12 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Flat Roofing guide
Flat roofs are everywhere on British housing even though almost no British house is a flat-roofed building. They sit over back additions and outriggers on Victorian terraces, over kitchen and side extensions, over…
12 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Cedar Roofing guide
Cedar roofing means western red cedar shingles or shakes laid in courses on battens, and in Britain it is a minority covering rather than a mainstream one.
11 min read21 September 2026 - Guide
Slate Roofing guide
Slate is the covering that made the modern British roof. Once the railways could move Welsh slate cheaply, it went onto terraces from Cornwall to Caithness, and a very large part of the housing stock built between the…
11 min read21 September 2026 - Guide
Roof Inspection guide
A roof inspection is a piece of reporting, not a piece of building work, and the reason people buy one is almost always a decision: whether to buy a house, whether to accept a roofer's diagnosis, whether to claim, or…
10 min read21 September 2026 - Guide
Roof Maintenance guide
Roof maintenance is the arrangement where somebody looks at the roof on purpose, at an interval, instead of when the ceiling stains.
10 min read21 September 2026 - Guide
Skylights guide
British homeowners usually call them rooflights or roof windows, and the Planning Portal defines one as a window installed within a pitched roof or flat roof, normally to give more light to rooms or spaces within the…
14 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Guttering Installation guide
Guttering is the cheapest part of a British house and the most expensive to neglect. The Planning Portal's drainage guidance sets out the vocabulary plainly: surface water drainage carries rainwater, and melted snow and…
12 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Guttering Repair guide
Guttering repair is the small job that protects the expensive ones. A joint dripping onto a wall, a run that has dropped between brackets and holds standing water, a downpipe that has come away from the wall, a hopper…
11 min read21 September 2026 - Guide
Fascias & Soffits guide
Fascias and soffits are the boards at the eaves: the fascia standing vertically at the ends of the rafters and carrying the gutter, and the soffit closing the gap underneath between the wall and the fascia.
11 min read21 September 2026 - Guide
Siding guide
Siding is an American word. In the United Kingdom the same work is called cladding or rendering, and the people who do it are renderers, plasterers and cladding contractors, working with render, pebble dash and…
13 min read14 September 2026
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