Kat Williams

Renovation pro tip: If you want to get your significant other to step up their DIY game then plan a photo shoot in your building site of a home as a matter of urgency! A few months ago I booked a collaboration with a super cool wedding brand (more on this soon!) and had the idea to shoot some of their products in our house. At the time I figured that surely by November the rooms we wanted to shoot in would almost be finished… or could at least be passable for the purposes of some staged shots. WELL my friends, any of you that have embarked on your own renovation project will know that this was potentially one of the most stupid and stress-inducing ideas I’ve ever had. A week before the shoot and we still had the old curtains (that came with the house and looked like they hadn’t been updated since 1987) up, no skirting boards, power sockets hanging off the walls and a whole heap of junk in the corner. Brilliant. Luckily I am married to a man who works best under a very specific set of criteria – the foremost of these being A DEADLINE. I’m the kind of nerd who did her homework at least a week before it was due, Gareth’s the kind of infuriating bastard that would do his on the bus on the way to school and still get straight As. Give Gareth a hard and fast deadline and he shines…. Be it all at the last possible second. So three days before the shoot, Gareth comes to me and says “Hey, wouldn’t the shoot look better if we had a fireplace in the room?“ “Er yes, yes it would”, I replied, not thinking he’d actually tackle such a massive task with just 72 hours to spare. But deadline-loving Gareth not only got on with it, he got the project done in record time… even if he was still painting the walls 30 minutes before the photo shoot crew were due to arrive. Click the link in my profile to read the whole story + Gareth's tips on how you can knock through your own fireplace (oh, and by the way, it only cost us £19!) #rocknrenovation