About Us

What is NestKoo?

At NestKoo we love to share useful, high quality articles, tips and recommendations to make your nest more secure, safe and comfortable.

NestKoo is a DIY home improvement information website, specializing in DIY home security, home repair and painting. Our articles focus on teaching readers how to carry out cosmetic and minor repairs around the house, apartment or small business, and basic fixes around the home.

Essentially, we teach you the fundamental home-owner skills that our grandparents probably had as second-nature, but which have fallen out of common knowledge as we’ve moved to a more digital lifestyle and feel pressured to hire a professional to do our home fixes instead. We’re here to show you that DIY home improvement is possible and can be a reality for you, even if you are a total beginner at this DIY thing.

We pride ourselves on helping you develop a broad knowledge on products for your home, and explain how to choose the right products based on their features and specifications, as well as guides for how to install or use them. A NestKoo you will find all the information you need to understand the product options available to you, how-to guides and detailed product reviews.

The NestKoo team

Our Story

Hello, we’re Sara & Ethan Kooring, the owners and managers of NestKoo!

About 5 years ago we decided on a tree-change after living in the city most of our lives. We purchased an affordable fixer-upper in country Australia, and run-down it was! The timber house 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 our bedroom 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 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 home repair, home security and painting tips.

sara diy painting nestkoo
Sara Kooring (owner)

Hi, I’m Sara. I’m trained as a 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 Painting, where I bring my skills in classical fine art and contemporary design together into a practical home DIY context.

You can read about Sara’s experiences and challenges from around the NestKoo house in the Sara’s Stories segment.

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Ethan Kooring (owner)

I grew up on a sheep farm with four siblings and moved to the city in my 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.

marcus home security nestkoo
Marcus Gray (former contributor)

Marcus Gray is a former contributor on NestKoo. His background is in home security and automotive, and he has published several articles on this and other home DIY topics.

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Todd Davis (former contributor)

Todd Davis is a former contributor on NestKoo, and has been a DIY enthusiast, traveler, and writer for a long time. 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.

jason furniture refurbishment nestkoo
Jason Brown (former contributor)

This is Jason, I have strong knowledge and personal experiences about a variety of chairs include how to use, maintenance guide, and recommendation so you can pick the right one. Jason is a former contributor on NestKoo, where he has written several articles on furniture repair and refurbishment.

Why NestKoo?

As home-owners and avid DIYers ourselves, we want to share the knowledge we’ve learnt with likeminded people, who are enthusiastic to learn DIY home improvement skills but need help getting started.

While we enjoy discussing and writing about the benefits of owning and maintaining a home, we want to do more. We want homeowners to visit this site, finding valuable information, helpful articles, and answers to the all the questions they may have. If you are considering buying a product because of a review you find on NestKoo, we want to help you make the most informed decision possible.

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 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 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 Ethan