DIY & Home Improvement: With or without Brexit best learn some DIY
How are DIY and the EU Referendum related? We join the dots to clarify.
You’d have to be completely ignorant, rather than blind or deaf, not to have noticed that in 2016 the UK is set to make its biggest economic decision in decades.
Should we stay with the EU or go out alone again? Opinion is deeply divided, with both sides guilty of scaremongering as part of their campaigns. But the potential repercussions go much further than most voters would assume.
So let’s say for a second that we do collectively decide to leave the European Union (or at last the majority of us do). And let’s say the so-called DIY recession this could cause, according to the Treasury, actually happens. That means a lot less money going round than there used to be. With that in mind it can pay dividends to learn a few skills for yourself now, potentially saving money on hiring in handy and tradesmen if things need fixing in the future.
There are numerous tasks that we can perform well at home, without the need to bring in extra help. We’ve all had that friend who spent years making incredibly slow progress on a ‘doer-upper’ of a property investment, but whilst larger renovation jobs may be best left to the experts unless you want to share a bed with bathroom tiles for a few months, there’s nothing to stop you dealing with some of the less challenging requirements.
An obvious example would be redecorating. Paying someone to come in and paint for you may be easier, but realistically this is something anyone can do providing they have relatively good mobility. Similarly, unblocking drains and external guttering are other jobs we can all tend to when the need arises, if we have a quick look online for explanations on how to do them.
A little more knowledge is needed to put up a shelf, along with the requisite tools, but this is really just rudimentary woodwork and is simple enough to pick up. As a general rule of thumb, then, assess whether it can be done by you first, and if it can then go and do it. If it can but you don’t know how then go learn and then do it. And, even if we’re still sticking with the whole EU experiment, it never hurts to save a little on unnecessary expenditure, does it?
