Is there a culture of extreme DIY in the UK?
Posted by Alex_Strgzr@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 42 comments
Not sure if I should post on here or in r/housinguk, but it seems like there is a culture of what I would consider to be pretty extreme DIY in the UK, by people who aren't in the trades. I'm not talking about painting walls and things like that, I mean DIY electrics, plumbing, underpinning foundations etc. It seems a bit strange where I come from. A family friend is a builder but I don't think even he would wire his own house – not if he could help it!
Emotional-Brief3666@reddit
I've always done most of my own DIY work and taught myself. In the early days it was a financial decision but over the years it just becomes an easier decision to make. Call round different tradesmen, then chase for them to actually come round and look, then quote, then book in for them to do the job in two months........ Or just do the job yourself in a day or two.
HelicopterUnfair1826@reddit
Yeah if I think I'm realistically capable (even if it involves learning). I will do it.
I absolutely love it. I see it as a huge investment, why pay someone to rob me of the opportunity of adding another life skill to my bow.
Alex_Strgzr@reddit (OP)
Alternative viewpoint: it takes away time from your actual career which you get paid doing.
HelicopterUnfair1826@reddit
I don't take days off or skip work to DIY. What even makes you jump to that conclusion?
Alex_Strgzr@reddit (OP)
It's still time you could use for professional development, learning new things, or looking for another job.
HelicopterUnfair1826@reddit
That's absolutely ridiculous. Why would I dissolve my own successful business to look to become an employee?
Learning new things ? I'm learning so much, developing skills and accomplishment in my spare time through DIY.
I'm being challenged in a different way than I do in my working life.
The bigger the DIY challenges the bigger the sense of satisfaction, sense of accomplishment and pride I get from it.
We are clearly NOT cut from the same cloth.
jonpenryn@reddit
Its often driven by not being able to find a builder etc you can count on.
Ruadhan2300@reddit
Highly relatable.
Since buying my house, I have variously hired two plumbers, an electrician, three fencers, a gardening crew (who made my wife cry when they took "deadhead" to mean clearcut) and no less than six roofers.
Out of all of those.. I have a reliable electrician (He'sthe dad of a friend), and a roofer who I plan to call in again next year.
The rest either became impossible to reach, or did shoddy work, or did something that made me mistrust them.
The only reason I don't do this stuff myself is that I know my limits and won't fuck around with electricity, water or heights.
broken_freezer@reddit
I second this. I never intended on becoming any sort of a DIY'er apart from painting. Then you get a tradie in and decide you can do it twice as well for a fraction of the cost
Ruadhan2300@reddit
You pay for the convenience.. except that so often it's tremendously inconvenient.
jonpenryn@reddit
they all have five jobs on the go at any one time, they turn up at ten do half an hour, mutter about supplies and go off to another job till after lunch. Then disappear all together for days on end.
jonpenryn@reddit
my dentist had a new house built, in conversation he said he now does all his tiling etc himself as "i though i can do a half assed job for a lot less than their half assed jobs"
jonpenryn@reddit
Yes not keen on doing electric stuff (though i have moved power points and wired up the cooker) Not good with heights or gas either. The wife and I fitted all the new windows last year, we gave up on double glazing people, they either didn't turn up to quote or just didn't bother to send us a quote.
Electricbell20@reddit
I can accept my own mistakes. If I'm paying thousands for something, I expect less mistakes.
ForwardCity9803@reddit
You pay X amount for them to even turn up. Fair enough for a whole house rewire, but not to change the light fitting
ResplendentBear@reddit
Some people seem to know how to plumb and decorate and do carpentry whilst their day job is an accountant and they have a degree in physics. On the other hand they also tend to have no life, not because they're unlikeable, but because they spend every weekend fitting laminate flooring.
Extreme DIY though does sound like someone who replaces their left arm with a breakfast bar.
rice_fish_and_eggs@reddit
This is me!
Gauntlets28@reddit
Laminate flooring's pretty easy honestly. I definitely wouldn't put it in the same bracket as electricals and plumbing.
Typical-Ad2606@reddit
This... You never know, i mean sometimes you never knew you were good at things that other people consider to make a living off until you tried 😉
coffeexcoffeex91@reddit
Kind of?
Tradies are expensive af and both hit and miss on quality and if they'll actually show up.
I bought 100year old house last year and after being shafted by our surveyor missing SO MUCH BASIC STUFF, we now have:
A chimney sweep (who tbf left 2 bags of soot outside our front door) A pest control company (who had to come out 3 times to finish the job but were nice about it) Plasterers (and 1 who no-showed) - though they did plaster over a light fixture which had to be carved back out 🙄 A handyman (honestly a gem though we've only used him for floorboards and a mist coat. Electrician (plus 3 who didnt show and 1 who was aggressively unprofessional when I asked if he had insurance - recommended to ask by another tradie who vaguely recognised the name)
We also learnt to remove wallpaper, plaster, patch, install laminate and carpets, repair guttering, snake drains, dismantle the dodgiest outside electrical connection known to man, and a bunch of other unexpected random jobs to fix the bodge DIY attempts by the previous owner
JollyConfusion2545@reddit
This is one of the downsides - undoing bodges and bad workmanship when you move house. Every single move we've made this has happened and mostly not apparent on viewing.
Alex_Strgzr@reddit (OP)
If people didn't do all this diy there wouldn't be so many bodge jobs to undo in the first place!
geeered@reddit
I've seen a whole lot of bodge jobs from tradespeople, often ones that aren't that cheap either.
Optimal-Room-8586@reddit
I think that if you're looking at online DIY subs and forums, it looks like everyone is doing major amateur DIY. I'm not sure that's the case in "real life" though.
InvestigatorSoft3606@reddit
I am guilty of extreme DIY. I do it for a few reasons :
One example i have is when I was doing a renovation of a large room 12 x 6 metres. I needed to batten out the walls, plasterboard and install plasterboard.
I've got a really good builder who knows me - and his price to do the job was 5k plus another 1k for plastering. He suggested that I could do the battening & plasterboard installation - he gave me his discount at the timber yard and lent me a drywall screw gun. Did the job for less than £500 worth of materials - to be fair it took me 2 weeks and I worked from first thing in the morning until last thing at night. - but I really took the time to get things right and it worked out perfectly.
Basically - I've found doing things DIY can reduce the cost of most jobs by a huge factor. The cost is my own time.
I have my limits though -
I'm an electrical / electronics engineer with a masters degree. I wouldn't do electrical work that is notifiable. I'm totally competent to replace bits of circuits, add the odd socket and things like that - but I wouldn't do major stuff. I don't know the wiring regs.
Same goes for structural works - I just don't know the building regs and I want my house to stay standing.
Gas just isn't worth thinking about. - the most gassy thing I've done is temporarily cap off a gas pipe whilst other work was going on - then had a proper gas fitter come and connect it back in when we were ready.
I just cant get the hang of plastering - I've tried a few times, but admitted defeat.
sihasihasi@reddit
I pay people to plaster (because I'm shit at it) and work on gas, because it's illegal for me to do so. Anything else, I do myself.
SonOfGreebo@reddit
Throughout the 1970's, it was almost impossible for an ordinary family to find and afford a trustworthy builder. Plumbers in particular were notoriously bad, aggressive and expensive.
It may be co-incidence that through much of the 1960's, long-term prisoners nearing release were often given rehabilitation training. Usially, the trade was plumbing. It's easier to teach plumbing in a secure prison environment, than trades like electrician or bricklayer. Source: a relative who worked in the prison administration of the Home Office, 1970's.
Plus, older Victorian properties were coming onto the market. The previous generation of owners never downsized, but instead rented single rooms to lodgers. This arrangement was dying out by the '70's. Big old houses were now taken over by single families, with relatively well-paying managerial jobs and middle-class aspirations.
So young, aspiring adults were highly motivated to read and teach thenselves 'extreme DIY', and B&Q superstores arrived to support this.
The whole British culture of home repairs, decorating and building was transformed in the 1990's with the arrival of a huge new workforce of highly competent and affordable tradespeople, travelling from countries formerly under the USSR.
cagesound@reddit
It's relatively easy to find out how to do things online. I have designed and installed a completely brand new kitchen, a new bathroom, multiple fences, double glazing repair, concrete repair and numerous plumbing repairs simply by going onto YouTube. Next year I'm going to turn my front sloping garden into a gravel parking bay. I'm a support worker for vulnerable adults.
WarmCat_UK@reddit
A lot of tradesmen charge what would earn them over £150k pa, so what do you do? Do it yourself.
First_Folly@reddit
A lot of the time if you want something bespoke you either pay out of the nose for it or you roll your sleeves up and do it yourself.
I get tradies in for things that I know I can't do properly, lack the equipment to do so properly or just can't be arsed to do. Everything else is fair game.
Scary-Spinach1955@reddit
What else are you going to do when you are either scammed (quote 4 times what it should cost because they don't want to do it), ghosted (because they couldn't be bothered to turn up and do the work you were willing to pay good money for) or completely ignored (because your call was not enough to make them think it was worth it)?
MercatorLondon@reddit
The scary thing is that when you hire builders, there’s a good chance they weren’t even in the trade before coming to the UK. So you end up paying a hefty amount for someone from outside the UK who barely knows UK building standards or even names of the parts they need to finish the job.
You might be lucky and get skilled workers - or you might end up with a complete disaster, someone who was a farmer or taxi driver back home. One would think that they have at least a good contract with full specifications before work starts but no. It seems that people still work on a handshake - no contracts and cash-in-hand.
So often it is better to DYI-it.
Elegant-Fisherman-68@reddit
I feel like the stranger part is you know someone who's a builder but they don't back their own skills enough to do their own house.
No wonder people are doing their own DIY if the professionals aren't inspiring confidence 😅
nothingnew09876@reddit
I did an apprenticeship as a joiner, I know fucking loads about making things out of wood and very little about electrics.
I've worked with loads of electricians over the years, and they tend to be great at wiring but not to great at making things out of wood.
As a side note, you really shouldn't do any electrical work unless you're qualified and have the right certs for what you're doing.
GeggingIn@reddit
We did everything ourselves except the electrics.
Cost saving and sort of fun, if you don’t mind parts of your house being a shit hole for long periods of time.
quite_acceptable_man@reddit
Yes, it's one of the three acceptable pastimes for men in the UK.
A DIY Project (you must have at least one on the go at all times) Going to the pub Watching football on TV
nivlark@reddit
Of course a builder wouldn't wire his own house, he'll know a good electrician that'll do mates rates for him. For everyone else, if your time isn't valuable enough to justify paying, it just makes sense to DIY.
Electrical work is probably one of the few exceptions, the hard part is not the job itself but getting DIY work signed off under building regs.
therealhairykrishna@reddit
We renovated our entire previous house ourselves. Including putting in steels to support a removed chimney and wall, full plumbing of a new central heating system, partial rewire including a new consumer unit. New bathroom, kitchen, floors, windows etc. I even cut and welded the angled steel myself with my dad's assistance. The only thing we didn't do is plaster and even then I boarded it out ready for the plasterer.
Bugger ever doing it again.
Happy_Chief@reddit
If builders in the UK weren't such rip off merchants, it wouldn't be required.
Combine that with overly high house prices, if you want something nice, you've gotta do the place up to get value for money.
Hence DIY extreme edition.
anonaccount119@reddit
yeah, things get expensive fast if you use tradies for every task and most houses on the market require some level of work.
if you have 6 jobs that need doing but only have a few grand you'd pay for the worst one/two and do the rest yourself with youtube, google and a family member/friend.
Mrkopasetic@reddit
it’s pretty common, especially in older houses where everyone seems to know someone who’s lifted floorboards or patched dodgy electrics
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