Making your home more draught-proof is as straightforward as these simple steps:

• Fit brush draught excluders around, or at least along the bottom of, your home’s external doors/doorframes to keep cold air out and heat in – simply cut them to size and screw them in place. These can also be fitted to interior doors, although you may prefer to add a piece of wood along the bottom of the door if there’s a large gap, providing you can blend it in with the rest of the door.
• Don’t forget to fit brush draught excluders or a letterbox cover to the back of the letterbox to keep out draughts and also make the back look neater. Even keyholes should be draught-proofed, especially on exterior doors. You can get escutcheons with covers in all shapes and sizes, and they just screw in place over the keyhole.
• Single glazing is rarely sufficient to keep your home warm and draught free, but if you can’t afford or don’t want double glazing, you can get various DIY secondary-glazing options. Probably the cheapest and easiest to fit is clear plastic film, which you can buy online or from DIY stores. It tightens over the windowpane when heated with a hairdryer to form a sort of secondary glazing. If you live in a listed building or a conservation area, you’ll be restricted about what you can do with your windows, so this could be a good option.
• Another inexpensive measure is weatherstripping or self-adhesive foam/brush tape, which makes windows and doors less draughty. It’s relatively easy to fit and is especially useful for period windows and doors, which tend to let in draughts.
• One of the draughtiest types of flooring is exposed period floorboards. The best solution is to take up the boards (an ambitious job for a DIYer) or get underneath them (if, for example, you have a cellar below) to lay insulation. An easier solution is to fill the gaps between the boards. You can use a number of materials for this, including thin strips of cork or wood, sawdust mixed with glue, and flexible filler.

DIY news bulletin

If you want to cut up your Christmas tree come Twelfth Night and use it for garden mulch, Bosch has just the tools for the job.

The cordless Keo saw (£89.99) can cut through branches up to 80mm thick and does up to 100 branches on one charge. And thanks to the clever A-Grip hook, which holds branches in place, you can use it one-handed.

For shredding the tree, there’s the AXT 23 TC multipurpose shredder (£369.99), which has eight blades and a fast-feed hopper. For more information, visit www.bosch-garden.co.uk

If you’re thinking of learning a new DIY skill, now’s the time to do it. All B&Q You Can Do IT classes, including kids’ classes, booked this month and next month and taken next month are half price, so there’s no excuse for not improving your home in 2012.

The seasonal classes on offer include:

• Get your garden ready for winter – preparing and caring for your decking, garden furniture and fencing.
• Securing Your Home for Winter – fitting locks, lights and shed alarms, and learning about different types of alarm, security lighting and CCTV.
• Hanging a Door – selecting, measuring, cutting and hanging new internal doors, plus fitting new locks and hinges.
• Power Tools – a course designed to give you the confidence to use power tools correctly.

Ask the expert…

Q: When drilling in walls, I find it difficult to gauge how deep I’m making the hole and sometimes go in too far. Is there a solution?

A: Yes, wrap masking tape around your drill bit to mark how deep you want the hole to be. When you drill, only go in as far as the tape and your hole should be the right depth.

Seasonal task…

Are your home’s water pipes insulated? This is especially important at this time of year when the pipes are at risk of freezing. The easiest sort of insulation to fit is foam lengths, which are pre-slit and fit over and around the pipe – prices start at less than £1 per length.