The Luxury of Time and the DIY Revival

It’s ironic, isn’t it? We spend our whole lives working for a more luxurious lifestyle, so all the jobs we don’t want to do ourselves can be done by experts, tradespeople and artisans. And then along comes the coronavirus outbreak and suddenly we’re all struck by the do-it-yourself (DIY) bug.

As if by some magic spell of cultural oneness, we homeowners now find ourselves rooting around in our tool sheds (once we’ve managed to cut through the ivy that had grown over them with the kitchen scissors) for hammers, saws, chisels, screwdrivers, spanners and… what’s that under all those cardboard boxes: a Black & Decker Workmate?! Who even remembered that was there?

It’s almost as if this pandemic has somehow redefined some of our ideas of what it means to have a luxury bathroom or kitchen or conservatory. Now, more than ever, luxury has become more about the sheer amount of time that this awful virus has given back to us in a strange, ironic twist of fortune, enabling us to build, renovate, modify and remodel our own. For fun, no less!

Working from home, undisturbed by colleagues tapping us on our shoulders to yack about the latest episode of Grand Designs (nice as that might have been, it sure was distracting), we’re wrapping up work projects quicker than you can say “falling infection rates.” Our kids are kept busy in Zoom meetings with their teachers and friends, so that’s them sorted. So what now?

Well, there’s always that leaking shower tap to replace. There’s always that nasty plastic bathtub to upgrade. Heck, we can even get ourselves a Corian washbasin, either off-the-shelf or made-to-measure, at the click of a few buttons, which takes no time at all – so the least we can do is install it ourselves!

DIY resources

Thing is, it’s not as if we all suddenly learned the tricks of the trade and are now DIY gurus akin to The Property Brothers, Nicole Curtis or Nick Knowles. Exciting as the prospect of fixing up our own homes may be, the last thing we want to do is make a botch-job of it. We’ve taken painstaking measures to ensure that we have beautiful houses and apartments – we’re not going to sacrifice that all so that we can scratch our do-it-yourself itch.

So in the wake of the “new normal” and the free time it’s given back to so many of us, we’re finding ourselves looking online for DIY courses we can do at a distance, like the brilliant and huge range available on the ever-inspiring global online learning resource, Udemy. Or even just on YouTube, where you’ll find a ton of free hints and tips to take you from DIY zero to home improvement hero.

The trick is, don’t run before you can walk. Take a little bit of time to learn the basics. Practice on areas that aren’t going to have huge cost implications if you don’t get it perfect the first time. But, you know, by all means go for it. Luxury living, after all, is about becoming the best person you can be. Plumbers, electricians and joiners may not be superhumans but they’re a bit more super than those of us who don’t have those skills. Luxury humans. Right?

A short, sharp shock to the trade

The flipside of all this is, of course, that the global spread of COVID19 has negatively impacted on the businesses of those builders, plumbers, electricians, carpenters and joiners we once so squarely relied on. Which is, of course, terrible.

Not being able to work because your job requires you to be around people is an awful thing indeed. We know very well the value of independent tradespeople and artisans and just how important it is that these people are able to make a living.

One positive we might, however, take away from this is the idea that the new wave of DIY hobbyists could actually force “cowboy” workmen either out of existence or back-to-school, whilst also encouraging true craftsmen and women to really up their games and outperform each other in terms of helping us to realise our interior design dreams.

In the past, we simply didn’t have the time for DIY and tradespeople were a necessary, if expensive and not always up-to-scratch, answer to that. But times are changing and you’ll very much find it’s separating the wheat from the chaff.

The plumber who can come in and re-route your bathroom pipes in half a day with minimal damage to the plasterwork will be alright, just you watch. It’s the one who spends most of the day drinking tea and going on ‘supply runs’ to B&Q so that it ends up taking a week and still doesn’t function properly who’ll have to re-think their business model.

What happens to all that DIY knowledge after the crisis? 

The final irony of this new trend is that it sort of loops back around to a negative perspective for a lot of people, who’ll be thinking to themselves, ‘well, it was nice to learn all these new DIY tricks and everything but I’m only going to be frustrated when I go back to work full-time and no longer have the time to use them.’

To that, we say: cheer up, Eeyore! It’s bad enough that we’ve got this messed-up global pandemic turning our lives upside down. The least we can do is to try to make something good of the “new normal” and, even when you do go back to work (which you may already have done), you’ll be doing so with a whole host of new skills to show off to your mates.

There are still evenings and weekends. And doing DIY actually keeps you fit, so you’ll have more energy at those moments of free time to get your sleeves rolled up and get stuck in. So embrace your inner crafts guru. Surprise yourself by unlocking potential you never even knew was there. Heck, if you’re that good, you might even find yourself edging towards a new career in one of the trades.

It’s really down to you. Talk about feeling empowered.

Photo credit: Pexels