I never, ever change mine. I use a butcher block and a huge thick wooden cutting board, only taking care to keep my fruits from suddenly tasting like onions or garlic. Studies have shown that a wooden cutting board is naturally resistant to bacteria, so I scrape and then wash mine off with soap and water after use. All this absurd paranoia about cleanliness is the product of marketing, not science, and the supposedly more sterile plastic ones are actually much better petri dishes for bacterial growth, which is why they must be cleaned and disposed of regularly. Fine if you want to keep plastic cutting board manufacturers in China working, but not at all safer or cleaner.

It really depends what look you're after. Classically the rule of thumb is the skirting should be 1/17th the height of the ceiling. This is just a pleasant ratio from a visual perspective. I'm not keen on stubby low skirting because it often looks like the 'cheap' option (as if the architrave was used for skirting). It does depend on the style of house to some extent but there's not many instances low skirting really adds anything to a space. Do consider things like: the abuse skirting takes from vacuum cleaners, what height you have/want power outlets to be. What style of architrave you want (a nice thick architrave helps 'frame' doors and tricks the eye into thinking the doorway is larger than it is - I've attached a before and after showing how this works on window casing but it's the same principle) and other wood work nearby - how will it all look together? Also upkeep - complex profiles mean more dusting! I would also recommend buying pre-primed skirting where possible - it's so much easier when you only need to do one coat of paint!

Yellow was very popular in the late 1980s - often paired with royal blue or duck egg. As a colour it stimulates brain activity so it's sometimes used in school classrooms. If you must use it, use a F&B wallpaper for your feature wall which includes the yellow. Or scrap the existing feature wall and have the entire room yellow and go shopping for textiles that go with it

@Damian Farrell, the induction hob I've had since... what.. July or August? I think? Not that long. Took a while to get used to it, having always cooked on gas. Advantages: very quick, easy to clean, you can let it automatically turn off after a certain time. Disadvantages: sometimes the pans make annoying noises, has something to do with the resonance of the magnetic field I think? I don't know. But it can be a bit annoying. Make:Schott-Ceran, but the downdraft is from a Dutch company called Airo Design. Don't think they export to other countries. Anyway, almost every company does them now. Bora gets good reviews, Miele, Siemens... The videos on youtube show that the steam goes down and you think, yeah... right... But it really does go down. It works just as good, if not better than a regular one that is over the hob. I'm happy with it.