DIY Skills In Decline?

Half the population of the UK believe they are not as competent at DIY tasks as their parents. But is this such a bad thing?

A study by a leading home insurer reports that half of us do not feel as comfortable with DIY as the generation before us. Despite these misgivings over tackling DIY, though, it’s estimated a third of the UK’s households will have attempted some DIY project over the recent Easter weekend.

Only a quarter of us would be happy tackling some tiling compared with two-thirds of us happy to try a spot of wallpapering and three-quarters of us willing to wield a paintbrush. It’s no surprise that fewer than one in ten will attempt larger jobs like fitting a new bathroom or kitchen without some expert help. Many struggle with more simple home DIY / maintenance – the study showed that a fifth of us aren’t entirely confident when it comes to changing a lightbulb. No matter how many other people we have with us.

However, this may not be such a bad thing. Whilst the plethora of home improvement programmes on TV make it all look so easy, attempting some home improvement projects by yourself could invalidate your home insurance. Particularly jobs involving structural work, gas or water supply plumbing or any electrical work. Attempting such DIY jobs could leave you without cover and liable for the cost of any subsequent damage or disruption.

Professional home improvement companies have the tools and experience to go beyond basic repairs and create something special for your home. Beyond that, if things start to go wrong they know how to deal with the issues. These before, during and after pictures, sent to us by Real Kitchen Solutions, show this in action – they use Computer Aided Design (CAD) Packages to plan out the perfect design for the space available, and create a really special kitchen for each of their customers

Here at KitchenQuoter, we get lots of online enquiries from homeowners who’ve started re-modeling their kitchens only to find obstacles and problems before they’ve even started assembling the new units. Uneven walls and floors, plumbing and electrics that need moving (remember all gas work should be carried out by a Corgi registered engineer), not to mention not knowing whether walls are supporting walls or not before they started taking them down.

It often works our far costlier for a company to come in, undo what’s been done before starting the installation themselves. So if you’re thinking of having a new kitchen or bathroom installed, then give KitchenQuoter and BathroomQuoter a try first. Instant no obligation online quotes there and then backed up by a UK wide network of professional installers like Real Kitchen Solutions.

5 Tips to consider before you begin planning a Garage Conversion

How to……………Get a Garage Conversion

A garage conversion could be the easiest and cheapest way to add a new room to your house, and increase the value of your property. If you are considering getting work done, here are five tips you must consider before you begin:

1 – Explore the possibilities
Even if you hadn’t considered a garage conversion before, think to yourself “how much do I actually use my garage?” If you think you could live without it, then there’s a huge amount of potential space in your house that isn’t being maximised. If your garage has just become a storage space for old wine bottles and bags of cement or lawnmowers, you could be wasting a great opportunity to extend the living space of your property and significantly increase its value. When it comes to deciding what you want the new room to be, the possibilities are enormous: a kitchen, a dining room, a bedroom, a home office, a TV/home cinema room, a playroom, or even a new bathroom. And remember, you can convert single, double, tandem, or detached garages into new rooms for your property.

2 – Check for permission
Make sure you contact your local council to find out if you need any permissions before work begins. Generally speaking, planning permission will not be required for a garage conversion as long as no additional volume is being added to the property, but some local councils (mostly in London) have different interpretations of regulations so it’s definitely worth checking!


3 – House deeds
Another potential stumbling block might be the deeds of your house. It’s sometimes the case – particularly on new housing estates – that developers put clauses into the sale of your house that prevent you from altering its appearance. This is basically so that they can sell the rest of the houses in your estate, so normally these restrictions are lifted once the selling process on the estate is over.

4 – Don’t forget insulation
Remember that your garage didn’t have any insulation, so the walls, floor and ceiling of the new room will need to be upgraded thermally. The company you choose to do the work will be able to achieve this to the required standards, but may not have included it in their original quote, so make sure you ask them about it first! If you are planning to turn your garage into a bathroom or kitchen, don’t forget to factor in the water or gas points into your budget, and remember that there are regulations concerning the placement of these points as well.

5 – Blend the new room in for maximum return
To add the maximum value onto your property, potential buyers need to think that the new room was always there, and it doesn’t look like a garage conversion. There are several methods you can use to achieve this: firstly, make sure the entrance to the new room goes onto the hallway in the same way as the rest of the house. Secondly, try to ensure the floor and ceiling of the new room is at the same level as the rest of your house – this can be tricky as many garages are set a step below. Finally, the room needs to look good from the outside too, so ensure the brickwork and window(s) you choose are consistent with the rest of the house.


When looking for firms to carry out work for you, the universal rule for all home improvement companies applies: make sure that you employ a reputable firm with a proven track record! http://www.garageconversionquoter.co.uk can help you choose your supplier.

Supply only kitchens - are they real value for money?

Is that 'supply only' kitchen the value for money you think it is?

A price tag of £1000 or £1500 for a brand new kitchen sounds tempting doesn't it? For the sake of a few hours with a screwdriver and a drill surely that's a worthwhile saving over the price of a full installation?

Not always. Even taking advantage of many suppliers' planning and advice services may not provide the results you're looking for, and don't forget that the showroom that shows off supply-only kitchen units has been designed around the units – not the other way around.

At the KitchenQuoter.co.uk desk we receive calls every day from people who have got as far as half way through the installation of their flat-packs and then end up calling us to see if we can recommend a local tradesman.

Kitchen Quoter's Vernon Baptiste explains: “There's a lot more that goes into the design, planning and construction of a kitchen than people often think. Unless you happen to live in a brand new house, the chances are the kitchen will be far from square for a start, so off-the-shelf units will only fit to a point. After that you either put up with gaps and unused spaces or you have to embark on some pretty fancy carpentry.”

“The other difficult parts come along when you need to plumb in appliances. Modern integrated appliances will often need some degree of coordination with the cabinet design or require the manufacture of doors or panels to blend in with the rest of the kitchen. It's these touches that add those extra thousands of pounds of value to your house and that extra quality of life.”

“There are also lots of specialist and unusual products available that our network of installers can suggest and source for you. Taking a flat-pack design off the shelf probably means you're going to be limited severely by the range of the catalogue you're choosing from.”

By law you will also require competent certified tradesmen to make plumbing or routing changes to gas or electric supplies, and these are all costs that need to be factored into any price comparison. By the time these are added in and you've done with the hammer, chisel and plane yourself then there's always much less of a difference than you think.

If you're thinking about a new kitchen, make sure you get independent quotes from registered and approved local companies to you by using KitchenQuoter for an instant online quote. Click here to get your online quote now.