Buying your home is likely to be the most expensive purchase you will make in your life, so naturally you would want to make the most of your investment – either for when you come to resell or just to make the place more comfortable.
Unfortunately, this is where the problems start. One in five of us admits to being a bodger when it comes to DIY, but only three per cent of DIY-ers have called in a professional to fix their DIY disasters, according to research from National Savings and Investments (NS&I).
You only have to see some of the disasters on the BBC’s TV programme DIY SOS to know just how badly things can go wrong. Perhaps (be honest now) you only have to look round the room you’re sitting in! The annual bill for DIY bodges could well run into millions of pounds.
Professionals were called out to up to one million jobs that had been bodged, costing in the region of £477 million in the last year. The two in five bodgers who paid less than £100 for a professional to put right their DIY wrongs forked out roughly £21 million in total, and a fifth spent more than £1,000 each.
Men admit to fewer mistakes than women (it’s a guy thing, okay). Only two per cent have called in a professional when they have bodged a DIY job, compared with four per cent of women.
Your DIY disaster may not just be a matter of badly hung wallpaper – the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) estimates that 10,000 people in the UK visit a chiropractor with DIY-related injuries each month. Chiropractors treat problems with joints, bones and muscles and the effects they have on the nervous system.
But it’s not only the chiropractic couches that see the DIY walking wounded. Nearly 4,000 people a week are treated in hospital following a DIY disaster. There is a right way and wrong way of doing things to |
|
A YELLOW PAGES STUDY REVEALED THAT 70 PER CENT OF BUYERS WOULD REDUCE THEIR OFFER ON A PROPERTY BECAUSE OF BAD-TASTE HOME IMPROVEMENTS
 | avoid hurting yourself – from banging a nail in a wall to painting a ceiling.
The reason for so many DIY disasters may not be inability but a lack of preparation. While nearly a fifth have described themselves as a bodger at one time or another, they could be saving themselves a lot of time and money if they prepared more carefully before undertaking a job. A third of DIY-ers said they did nothing to prepare for a job, just diving straight in instead.
The chiropractors’ advice is not to rush any DIY task but to plan ahead and do it properly. Treat DIY like normal exercise and make sure you warm up and down. Dress appropriately and don’t wear tight, constricting clothes. Vary your activity. Spend no more than 20-30 minutes on any one thing and take regular breaks.
Home ‘improvements’ may make a substantial difference to the value of your property but not necessarily in the way you would think. A Yellow Pages study revealed that 70 per cent of buyers would reduce their offer on a property because of bad-taste home improvements. A bad DIY project will always detract from the resale value.
Central heating is one of the few additions guaranteed to recoup all of its initial cost as it is virtually essential |
for any desirable house these days.
John Prout, sales director at National Savings and Investments, commented, “Whoever’s undertaking a DIY task could save themselves time and money by researching the task ahead of them so they’re able to get it right. And this way they can help avoid the indignity and financial sting of having to call in a professional to put right their bodges.”
But whether you’re a bodger or a DIY demon you’ll still be left with the question of how you pay for your home improvements. I trust you will already be aware just how expensive store cards can be.
For example, the B&Q ‘You Can Do It’ card has a standard annual percentage rate (APR) of 26.8 per cent. Its ‘You Can Do It Card Homeplan’, which offers interest-free credit of six months on sums between £2,000 and £25,000 or four months on £500 to £1,999, reverts to 14.9 per cent or 19.9 per cent respectively after the open to spend period.
Compare those figures with the clutch of nought per cent introductory offers available from many credit card providers and ‘go to’ interest rates that are comfortably under 14 per cent.
Alternately, you may want to consider a personal loan with many providers offering loans under seven per cent. Take out a personal loan and your monthly outgoings will be fixed and you will know for certain that the loan will be paid off and when.
A final option is to add the cost of any home improvement to your mortgage. For big projects, many mortgage lenders will give you a home improvement loan in the form of a further advance, secured by the value of your home. This may be the cheapest way to borrow money on the basis of your monthly outgoings but you could end up paying more interest because you will be paying it over the lifetime of the mortgage. |
