Make It! A NEON SIGN
Draw your design onto paper with a pencil to the exact size you want your sign to be.
Trace over your design with a piece of string to determine the length, then match the string to some wire (16-gauge metal wire works well) and cut using wire cutters.
Bend the wire along your lettering to form the right shape/lettering.
Secure your neon light to an electroluminescent (EL) wire using a hot glue gun, starting with the bottom of the EL wire (the part connected to a battery pack). Move slowly from one end of the wires to the other, carefully using the glue gun to seal them.
Cut off any excess neon light at the end of your design with scissors.
doesn’t have a traditional layout, so I felt it needed a more eclectic mix of old and new with much more colour.
All coming together
Once we made bigger changes, like replacing the bathroom and kitchen, I gradually began to feel settled. In the kitchen, a pointless side door was blocked up and we built a false chimney breast to make better use of the space. At first I played it safe with cream Shaker-style units as I was still trying to recreate my old kitchen. But I regretted the colour choice and a year later found a company who resprayed the units blue.
Hard labour
With the interior more or less finished, we turned our attention to the garden. With two dogs, it needed to be low maintenance. I told my husband it would be a quick job, but it turned into moving ten tons of soil and five months of hard work every single weekend! Finally, we had new anthracite grey windows and
‘I TOLD MY HUSBAND THE GARDEN WOULD BE A QUICK JOB BUT IT TURNED INTO FIVE MONTHS OF HARD WORK EVERY WEEKEND!’
‘I wanted to add colour to the main bedroom, but not on the walls. I’d always wanted a pink bed so that set the tone – this one is from Loaf’