There’s nothing worse than having to stare at ugly exposed piping all day long, so JOE’s here to lend a DIY hand.
If there’s anything that will take away from the beauty of a newly finished redecoration project, it’s having to look at ugly exposed pipes. However, there are a few easy tricks to help cover them up.
What you’ll need:
Some screws or nails
A screwdriver or a hammer
A chisel
Wood or MDF (medium-density fibreboard, a.k.a very handy fake wood)
Mounting brackets
1: Measure it out
You’re essentially making a rudimentary box, so measure out how long and wide the exposed part of the pipe is, as this will be the length you need to cut your material to. You’ll also need to find out how close to the wall the pipe is. Don’t be afraid to leave a couple of millimetres of extra room when you’re cutting out the pieces, as it’s easy to file them down afterwards.
2: Fail to prepare, prepare to fail
Now you can start getting ready to fit your material around the pipes. Have a ‘dry run’ first and place your material around the pipes in the position that you want them in once you’re finished.
3: Making a start
Before you start work make sure you have enough nails/screws and a pair of safety goggles (you can never be too safe). Attach the mounting brackets to your wood so that the mounts face inwards – this way, when the front of your casing is put on, you wont be able to see them, which will make things look even better.
4: Mounting
Screw the side panels in place firstly on either side of the pipe. Once you’ve that done you can start on placing the ‘face’ of the casing. If you want to be really fancy, you can always use hinges on the face of the casing so that if anything goes wrong (such as a pipe bursting and causing havoc to your house) you’ll be able to reach the problem pipe with ease.
5: Alternatively… Just hide it
If you’re not that bothered going to the effort of cutting up lumps of wood to hide hideous looking pipes then you could always sweep your problem under the rug by just hiding the pipes behind a bin or some form of decorative piece – like a plant.
If you go down this route, this five-minute DIY tip could be completed in all of 30 seconds. Nice work…
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