About Us
NestKoo DIY Tiny Home
NestKoo is a DIY tiny home improvement website for tiny home owners and renters.
At NestKoo, we share DIY tiny home house painting, furnishing and home repair guides, with a focus on teaching non-handy guys and girls how to carry out basic fixes around their small house, apartment or other tiny home living space.
In this digital age, and increasing costs of living, maintaining a home is both challenging and expensive for many people. Basic home maintenance skills our forefathers had have fallen out of general knowledge, and the cost of hiring professional tradespersons is a tight stretch for those of us on low incomes.
This is why learning to do your own low cost tiny home fixes is so important, now more than ever. And the good news is, that a lot of that work is absolutely DIY-able, easy to learn, and really empowering!
At NestKoo, you will find all the information and help you need to take care of your tiny home yourself, from patching holes in your walls to recovering your scruffy sofa cushions, and keep it functional and beautiful for years to come.
Whether you live in a tiny house, camper trailer, converted shed, mobile home on wheels, house boat or small apartment, we’re here to show you that DIY home improvement is possible for anyone, even if you’ve never held a power drill.
The NestKoo Team
Our Story
Hello, we’re Sara Kooring and Rach Baxter, friends and co-owners of NestKoo!
Sara and Rach met through a permaculture course many years ago; we connected through our mutual love of nature, self-sufficiency and handicrafts, and we’ve been close friends ever since. About 5 years ago we decided on a tree-change after living in the city most of our lives. With the city house market in a bind and our hearts set on living in the bush, we decided to share our dreams of escape and bought a rural property together.
We purchased an affordable fixer-upper in country Australia, and run-down it was! The tiny timber roundhouse (aka yurt) had been unlived in for almost a year, and had been taken over by mice, rats, spiders and cockroaches. Some people will tell you that rats and mice don’t co-exist, but our experience proves otherwise! I still remember the first night, sleeping on a stinky rug in the middle of the lounge room, listening to a huge rat gnaw a hole in the sliding door while mice skittered around the skirting.
The previous owners left the place in a filthy, half-broken dump… a far-cry from the romantic notion of moving to the country many of us have. Needless to say, it really needing some fixing up. So, we spent the next year on a home DIY mission, patching up cracks, painting walls, fixing the water pump and solar, installing wardrobes, repairing the rodent holes, fixing doors and windows and what have you. It was a huge learning curve, and took a lot of energy. But if we could get this (former) dump of a house up to a respectable living standard using our own DIY skills, then you can too!
It looks great now, but of course, it’s still a work in progress, and like any tiny home or big home… there is always something to fix or improve!
Our Team
NestKoo is made up of a team of experienced writers and contributors, who love sharing their DIY tiny home house painting, home repair, and furniture upholstery and upcycling tips.
Sara Kooring (owner)
Hi, I’m Sara. I’m a formally trained fine artist (painting), but several years ago when I realized that a career as an artist is near impossible, I moved to web design, graphic design, PR and writing instead. I love being close to nature, and my main area of specialty in NestKoo is DIY tiny house painting and furniture upholstery and upcycling, where I bring my skills in classical fine art and contemporary design together into a practical home DIY context.
Rach Baxter (owner)
I grew up on a sheep farm in Australia with four siblings and moved to the city in my early teens. We had great parents that taught us heaps of essential home DIY skills and basic auto repair skills. As kids, we spent most weekends in the farm or yard, fixing a tractor or putting up a shed, or helping the neighbors with odd jobs; essential life skills that I still use today at home or helping others.
Martina Gray (former contributor)
Martina Gray is a former contributor on NestKoo. The daughter of two tradespersons, Martina grew up learning how to DIY whatever was needed to keep their home (or car) standing. Her specialty is in home security and safety, and she has published several articles on this and other home DIY topics.
Todd Davis (former contributor)
Todd Davis is a former contributor on NestKoo. A jack of all trades, Todd has been a DIY enthusiast, traveler, and writer for many years. He has a deep understanding of all types of painting tools and door hardware, and has shared many articles on these topics throughout the years.
Justine Brown (former contributor)
This is Justine, I’m an interior designer with a soft spot for furniture, including choosing the right chairs and furnishings for your home decor, making and reusing preloved pieces, as well as upholstery maintenance. Justine is a former contributor on NestKoo, where she has written several articles on furniture repair and refurbishment.
NestKoo Disclosure
Affiliate Disclosure – Financial Transparency
To cover costs of running this website, pay writers and pay for our own living and DIY home improvement expenses (we gotta live too, after all!) we do earn commissions from Google display advertisements and product links on this website. It’s how we can afford to do the work that we do, and we don’t mind being upfront and honest about that.
How does that work? We are reader-supported, which means if you use one of our links to buy a product, we earn a small commission as an Amazon affiliate. This does not mean we compromise on our reviews, we will still only ever recommend products that we genuinely believe will work for you. If you like the sound of a product, please follow the product links in the article so we may earn a few dollars while you get the product you need; you wont get charged any extra for doing so. Only through this mutual system can we continue to afford sharing this great information with women around the world.
Thank you so much for your visit to NestKoo. If you have any questions, are interested in contributing as a writer, or have ideas for future articles please feel totally free to drop us a line on our contact page.
Many thanks and happy DIYing,
Sara and Rach
