Do It Yourself

First House | Current House

I guess my interest in Home Improvement or Do-It-Yourself (DIY) began when I was a teenager. The prospect of a little pocket money for helping family and friends decorate was all that was needed to get me interested. My Dad had a very much instinctive method for how to do jobs about the house but my elder brother Richard had a more logical way of doing things - he read the instructions or 'consulted the bible' (a big, illustrated DIY manual). This latter method seemed much easier for me and using the bible I became confident enough to try all manner of jobs from electrical work, plumbing, plastering, you name it, if it was in the bible I was confident I could do it. Of course I didn't always get it right first time but then, since no-one was paying me professional rates, I didn't feel too guilty about doing sub-professional jobs! To be honest, I don't recall ever doing anything which was unsafe or which 'the customer' was dissatisfied.

So by the time I was at university, I normally ended up supplementing my grant during the vacations by fitting in at least one DIY job at either my Mum & Dad's house, my middle brother Anthony's house or my Grandma's house. Apart from the standard decoration and general repair jobs I guess the pinnicles of my DIY projects were the two kitchens I designed and fitted and the 30m x 3m ally-way I re-cobbled.

Now this was all well and good and passed a little time and earned a little money but it was sometimes a little annoying that I had to bow to the wimms of 'the customer', no matter how weird I believed them to be (Anthony!). What I needed was a house of my own where I could do exactly what I wanted.