The AnswerBank Articles

Effect some change with paint

By Tom Gard WE'VE all seen it on the TV home makeover shows. Owners bored with staring at the same old walls, ceilings and floors call in the experts armed with a myriad of clever paint effects,01:00 Mon 19th Feb 2001

Punchy asked about planting times...

By Tom Gard PUNCHY asked about planting times and it would make the gardener's life loads easier, if a lot duller, if the great British weather allowed us to predict down to the month, or even week,01:00 Mon 19th Feb 2001

Dip into pond life

By Tom Gard THERE'S not a garden in the country that couldn't benefit from water. Not the stuff that comes out of the sky with alarming regularity, but a pond, however small. Nothing is more01:00 Mon 19th Feb 2001

Fireplace formula needed

By Tom Gard THERE have been some genuinely testing questions -and some brilliant answers - posted over the past few weeks. Before we have a look at some of the matters that have been exercising01:00 Tue 13th Feb 2001

Gearing up to grow

By Tom Gard LIKE plants and animals, this is the time of year gardeners begin to come out of hibernation and take their first tentative sniffs of the air outside. The weather has not been kind01:00 Tue 13th Feb 2001

Doing your homework

By Tom Gard IMAGINE if commuting to work involved arming yourself with a cupper, stepping over a toddler or two, negotiating the stairs and then sitting down in front of the computer. For millions01:00 Tue 13th Feb 2001

Are you ready to become a virtual estate agent

By Tom Gard IT is all too familiar to anyone who has been house hunting. Stacks of estate agent details with grainy pictures and descriptions that push the very limits of truth followed by hours01:00 Mon 05th Feb 2001

Back to the future

By Tom Gard THE predominant image of the modern day housing development is of lines of identical boxes standing in neat rows. From the outside number one looks exactly the same as number 99, and01:00 Mon 05th Feb 2001

Beware the alien invaders

By Tom Gard THE British Isles is in the grip of an alien invasion of Triffid-like proportions. Across the land there are plants on the move capable of breaking through concrete and forming lethal01:00 Mon 05th Feb 2001

Keeping your houseplants in order

By Tom Gard WHEN it's cold, drab and wet outside the green-fingered brigade tend to turn to the houseplants for a little winter solace and colour. Plants weren't naturally designed to grow inside,01:00 Mon 29th Jan 2001

Removing the stress of moving

By Tom Gard WHEN it comes to levels of stress, moving house is up there with divorce, weddings and coping with teenage kids. PhotoDisc.co.ukFinding the right property, negotiating through estate01:00 Tue 30th Jan 2001

Help is at hand

By Tom Gard NEED help to save a flagging plant or some practical advice on where to find the right builder for the job This is where theanswerbank.co.uk can come to the rescue. Our Home and Gardens01:00 Tue 30th Jan 2001

Can sport clean up its act

By Tom Gard ANYONE still looking at sport through rose-tinted glasses must surely have had them knocked off and crushed under foot by recent events. The Grobbelaar scandal, cricket's Cronjegate,01:00 Wed 24th Jan 2001

Keeping the home fires burning

By Tom Gard THIS is the time of year that we whack up the central heating, adjust the thermostat and, if we are city dwellers, try and pretend the gas-effect fire is a real one, logs in the basket01:00 Mon 22nd Jan 2001

Going wild in the garden

By Tom Gard IF your idea of attracting wildlife into the garden is slapping a bird table in the middle of the lawn and watching the local cat population lick their lips, it's time to think again.01:00 Mon 22nd Jan 2001

Digging in for winter

By Tom Gard TO the fair weather gardener, anyone spotted wielding a spade or secateurs amidst the mud and frost of January must have a screw loose. All but the most hardy plants have gone into01:00 Mon 22nd Jan 2001

Prepare to decorate

By Tom Gard DOES giving all or part of your home a much needed makeover feature in your list of New Year's resolutions Once you've decided what you want to do, it is always tempting to throw01:00 Mon 15th Jan 2001

Warding off the worst of winter from the garden

By Tom Gard THE weather is doing its level best to test gardeners up and down the country to the limit. After what seemed like months of continuous rain and mud the icy fingers of real winter01:00 Mon 15th Jan 2001

Steering clear of the cowboy builders

By Tom Gard IT is the stuff of nightmares and fly-on-the-wall docu-soaps. The firm of builders you hire to work on your house turns out to be a bunch of cowboys, emptying your bank account and01:00 Mon 15th Jan 2001

Get spruced up for next Christmas

By Tom Gard THE decorations are coming down, the hoover is clogged with needles and now you're facing the annual poser of what to do with that balding Christmas tree. If your not one of the lucky01:00 Wed 03rd Jan 2001