On Saturday at 6pm the DIY Doctor, aka Mike Edwards, will be making an appearance on radio station FromeFM on their ‘Our House’ programme with presenter Mags.
Mike will be talking to Mags about home improvements and all things DIY, including some of the do’s and don’ts of doing up your house.
FromeFM is an online radio station found at www.fromefm.co.uk, so get online at 6pm on Saturday 19th November and pick up some tips from the DIY Doctor himself!
Apparently property experts say that home owners should be spending 1% of their homes value on home improvements every year. This was discussed in a very interesting article by Sarah Edworthy who has found out in her own life, what happens if you don’t do the maintenance.
The article states that, according to Land Registry figures, an average house in the UK costs £162,109, therefore this would mean we should spend £1621 on home maintenance annually. But Sarah and her family learnt the hard way what happens if you don’t bother with the upkeep, as for ten years they concentrated on bringing up their children and didn’t put money into their house.
Recently, when they had a valuation done on their property they were told that the value could have been 15% highter if the condition of the house had been better maintained. And 15% equals quite a lot of money in anyone’s book!
The article goes on to quote Robert Barr from Kerr & Co as saying “Be vigilant to the need to keep your home in good condition — not in terms of what is in vogue, but good old-fashioned internal and external maintenance”.
“The longer-term cost of not keeping up a cyclical maintenance programme will be a lower property value and a higher bill when you do carry out repairs. Prevention is better than the cure”.
These are wise words, and we should all learn from Sarah Edworthy’s experience. Depending on the size of your house, if you can aim to refurb one room a year plus an extra ‘area’ such as front or back garden, or maybe a hallway or utility room, this will go some way to keeping on top of maintenance. But don’t forget the exterior of the property as well. Seemingly small problems can easily escalate into something a lot more costly.
Don’t forget, if you need to find a tradesman to help with your home maintenance, whether it be clearing gutters or tiling your bathroom, you can get up to 5 free quotes from insured, reliable tradesmen via our Find a Tradesman page.
DIY retailer Wickes has opened a new smaller high street store in Tunbridge Wells.
At only 700 sq ft it is much smaller than their other 200 plus stores which average 25-30,000 sq ft. It is a trial to see how sales go and they will be stocking 2,500 items in store, with another 2,500 available for next day pick up.
The company plans to roll out more trial stores next year, so watch this space……
The proposed government policy called ‘Green Deal’, designed to improve the energy efficiency of homes, will be consulted on by ministers later this month.
Under the scheme, apparently families will be offered ‘cashback’ of up to £150 as an incentive to get involved. Householders can then have their homes made more energy efficient by having loft and wall insulation fitted as well as double glazing, and pay for this in installments. This cost would of course be offset by lower energy bills.
The idea of ’cashback’ is under discussion as a form of incentive, although Labour’s climate change spokesperson Luciana Berger said that “it would be wrong to classify it as a true incentive given it would have to be paid back over time by consumers who took up the deal.”
So, watch this space……….
Thailand has been facing the worst flooding it’s seen in 50 years, and people there are coming up with some great DIY ideas to help in the most dire of situations.
A folding portable toilet has been developed by the Faculty of Engineering at the Prince of Songkla University. The toilet consists of a folding wooden seat and a plastic curtain hooked onto a steel frame. The frame can also be adapted to create a mobile shower unit if a water tank is connected.
Other practical help has included the automatic sandbag loading machine which has been created by the Faculty of Engineering at the Rajamangala University of Technology in Thanyaburi.
Plastic bottles have also been collected and used as buoyancy aids when water levels are high, as well as being made into life saving jackets and rafts.
Permaroof UK have just launched their new product range of Permaroof In A Box®. The first range is for shed roofs and the benefits are that it comes with a lifetime membrane guaranatee, and the kit contains everything you need to water proof your shed roof, all packaged neatly into one box.
The system comprises of a one piece epdm rubber membrane that is adhered to a timber surface using a safe water based adhesive. No joints to fail, and totally UV stable.
They come in 5 different sizes that should cater for most popular sheds but they also offer bespoke orders for larger sizes.
Also coming soon is a range of Permaroof In A Box® for domestic flat roofs, again in 5 different sizes – single garage, double garage, kitchen extensions etc and all packaged up so there is no working out what materials are needed.
All kits come with full easy fitting instructions. For more information, take a look at our Building a Shed project which includes Roof in a Box fitting instructions, and you can click through to purchase from Permaroof UK.
Busy, busy, busy!
Mike Edwards, aka The DIY Doctor, was on the go for the three days as people flocked to the Tricks of the Trade area to pick up new skills and learn tips and tricks for their home improvements.
Mike was also kept busy signing copies of his ‘Master Basic DIY’ book at the show as well as talking to people about their own projects and giving advice including using a contract such as our ‘Desired Outcome Building Contract’, getting references and using our ‘Find a Tradesman’ service to ensure your tradesman is reliable and insured.
As always, the feedback we received was brilliant and we would like to say a big thank you to everyone who came to see us at the show.
DIY Doctor in action at the Tricks of the Trade
It’s the first day of the Harrogate Homebuilding & Renovating Show and DIY Doctor are giving LIVE demonstrations over the next three days on the Tricks of the Trade stage.
Mike Edwards, aka the DIY Doctor, will be giving ‘how to’ demo’s and talks with the following daily timetable:
10.30am and 1.30pm – Skim Plastering a Wall
This presentation takes you through preparing the wall for plastering, mixing and applying the plaster and finally how to get it flat and smooth. You will also find out how to mend holes in plasterboard.
12noon – How to Avoid Cowboy Builders
There’s a lot of news in the media about ‘Cowboy Builders’ and how they ruin lives – but there is very little advice given to help you avoid them. This presentation gives advice on how to find reliable tradesmen and covers how to make sure you obtain accurate references, your builder is adequately insured during the work, you are covered against accidents, the finished work is satisfactory and the follow-up snagging is completed.
3pm – Tiling a Bathroom
The smallest room in the house but the most difficult to decorate! Learn how to get tiles to fit perfectly around toilet, basin and bath with minimum wastage and maximum effect.
The show is on until Sunday at the Harrogate International Centre and you can still get free tickets by clicking here!
DIY Doctor set off from Somerset for the Harrogate Homebuilding & Renovating Show!! Hope to see you there over the weekend…….
Although the value of the contents of an average garage in Britain is £3,429, over two thirds of households with more than two cars choose not to keep a car in their garage. Even though the vehicle is probably worth nearly four times as much.
These are the findings of a recent article from Aviva, which highlights that people have a tendancy to keep their DIY materials, tools and gardening equipment in their garage.
But it may be more of a case that we just don’t find the time to clear out our garages and keep them tidy – if we did maybe we would fit it all in! Nearly a fifth of households polled still stored unwanted boxes from their last house move in their garage, and although 38% said they would clear out their garage once a year, one in ten said they would never clear it out.
You can get a whole range of workshop benches and shelving units as well as other storage solutions for your garage from Screwfix.
