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There’s no B&Q down the road if you live on a Scottish island - so what do you do?

5 5
28.07.2025

They say nesting is one of the universal stages of pregnancy. An uncontrollable, immediate urge to sort your life out in its entirety; whether it be the garden, kitchen cupboards, or the slightly squint curtain rod in the front room, it has to be fixed in that very moment - or else.

When you live somewhere as remote as the Isle of Rum, that nesting looks a little different. The desires are still there, and my to-do list can be summed up with an effective ‘everything’. The ability to complete a task, however, is much trickier. For starters, there’s no B&Q just down the road. There’s no nipping out for a stroll around IKEA for inspiration, or second hand furniture shops to keep costs down.

There’s not much point in ordering paint samples either - delivery fees are high, or just non-existent - I realised after filling my basket for a particular DIY store that they don’t even entertain the idea of delivering here. There’s no way of seeing how a shade looks in your actual house before committing to five litres of it. Out here, you pick a colour on a screen and hope for the best. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it gets packed away as quickly as it was unboxed.

It’s not that you........

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