See the DIY light
‘It’s marvellous the way it all went together. Anyone with common sense could easily put it up themselves’
MOTHER-OF-TWO Katherine Drake never thought she wanted a conservatory but now it’s her favourite room in the house. It may be too full of her children’s toys at times but it’s the heart of the family home: “It’s as if I’m in the garden – that is how I feel when I’m in there,” she says.
Katherine’s 4x6 metre garden room is an orangery from self-build specialists Conservatory Land, which offers several styles of DIY conservatories from Edwardian and sunlounge to bespoke.
They come as pre-assembled flat-pack kits with the option to buy ready-made bases and ready-built brick-finish dwarf walls and pillars – all manufactured by Conservatory Land and comes complete with a 10-year guarantee.
Before making any decisions, Katherine, from Bleasby Nottinghamshire, decided to visit Conservatory Land to ask for advise and make suggestions.
“They gave us a vision of what it would look like, which is very difficult to imagine,” says Katherine. “We were able to see where different sized windows would work, whether we should go for bi-fold doors or French windows, so everything was straightforward and easy.”
Katherine chose to find her own builders to complete the job, although many of the Nottinghamshire company’s customers choose to do it themselves.
These include 90-year-old Fred Clark, a retired precision engineer, who built his smaller conservatory – “it’s about 10ft by 9ft” – almost entirely by himself last year.
“My old one was in a bad state so I rang up Conservatory Land. It came as a flat pack and I thought I would enjoy myself making it,” says Fred, a widow, who lives near Hampton Court in Surrey.
Fred built the base and walls himself and managed to move the glass alone by making rollers out of old piping.
“I did it all by myself except for the roof,” says Fred. “My granddaughter’s chap came and put the glass in position but I screwed them down.”
Admittedly it took Fred a bit more than the four days Conservatory Land suggests its products take to build but that’s because he didn’t use the pre-built base and walls and enjoyed building it “gradually”.
“It’s marvellous the way it went together,” he says. “Anyone with common sense could easily put it up themselves.”
Fred has enjoyed using it all year-round and particularly likes sitting out in the evening, although he is currently fitting a radiator to make it cosier for the coming winter.
“It’s the best buy I have ever made,” says Fred, echoed by Katherine who declares: “There’s nothing I would do differently about it. What we’ve got is exactly what we wanted.”
Conservatory Land has many satisfied customers like these, says national sales manager Rob Smith, because they can self-build or project manage a conservatory for about half the price of having one built by other companies.
“Anyone with a very basic DIY knowledge could do it. As all of our conservatories are made to measure, each order is carefully pre assembled and labelled up to make it very simple for our customers to install,” he says.
And with more people extending their homes instead of moving he’s convinced Conservatory Land has a winning formula.
“This year our order book has increased around 30 per cent on previous years. There seems to be a shift of people not moving – but improving.” INFORMATION To get a free quote and a brochure, head over to conservatoryland.com or call 0800 952 8000.