Never DIY on your bank holiday again
These days there’s an expert on call for even the most obscure jobs
Planning to spend your precious Bank Holiday traipsing around B&Q juggling paint pots and drill bits? Off to ikea and dreading the row you’ll have later when your husband attempts to assemble the flat- pack bookcase with the wrong allen key? nope?
Well, you’re not alone. The British have officially fallen out of love with old- style DiY. Declining paint sales and closing superstores speak of abandoned home improvement projects the nation over. Many of us are just too busy — the British work an average of 43.6 hours per week compared with the 40.3-hour average in Europe — and our children aren’t interested, unless they’re paid to do it.
Just 6 per cent of 18 to 25-year-olds know how to bleed a radiator, a recent survey suggests, and a fifth of them have no idea how to hang a picture — though university students may wield a paintbrush for a fee.
instead, we are ditching DiY for gMi — getting a Man in. Over the internet. no one waits for a decorator to come and quote for a job he can do six months later. instead, we’re digitally outsourcing the work — and making it happen the next day.
Take fuss out of flat-pack
SO fiEnDiSH are the self-assembly instructions on some ikea cupboards, one american psychologist calls them ‘divorce-makers’. ‘We’ve saved at least one marriage that i know of,’ says Peter arenas, of london and Home Counties-based justflatpack.co.uk, a firm that pledges not only to assemble your Swedish storage system, but to pick it up from the shop for you, too.
‘More women than men use our service. They’re often people who don’t have the time for DiY. and it’s easier for clients to do everything online.’
COST: from £25 (delivery extra).
Queuing by proxy
THE newest digital plasma screen goes on sale. You absolutely must have it, but there’ll be queues around the block and who wants to spend their precious free time queuing?
no problem. Using your phone, hire someone to queue for you from an on- demand services app such as Bidvine. Meet them at the end of the queue to pay in person, or pay over the phone, and then — using the same app or another online service such as Bizzby — employ someone else to mount it on your living room wall.
Hey presto: Call The Midwife in ultra-high definition by the time you get home.
Bizzby will also install the latest smart home technology, letting you change the thermostat or monitor security cameras remotely. ‘ People will hire queuers for tickets to sports events or to get the latest gadgets for the home. The great thing about doing it all via an app is that you can track the progress of the job on your phone,’ says founder and CEO Rohan Sinclair luvaglio.
COST: Queuing from £15 per hour; mounting TV on wall: £45 per hour.
Call to change a bulb
EVERYOnE has a list of small irritating jobs that are put off — hanging a picture, putting up a shelf, re-grouting the bathroom. Or changing a spotlight.
Banish your to- do list today by using an online handyman app such as TaskRabbit or Handy. Select the task and time you’d like it done, then tap on a virtual handyman, and the job’s booked in. ‘There just aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything. Consumers use us to help get time back,’ says James Hamlin, TaskRabbit’s European managing director.
COST: from £30 an hour.
New kitchen in a day
RE-fiTTing a kitchen can take months and cost thousands, but a kitchen makeover, ordered online, can be done in an afternoon.
Dozens of companies offer websites for browsing new cupboard doors and worktops with a one- stop measuring and installation service.
‘We largely serve the 55-plus market,’ says Troy Tappenden, managing director of kitchen makeover firm Dream Doors.
COST: from a few hundred pounds, depending on the size of your kitchen.
Redesign a room
OnlinE-OnlY interior designers are big business in the U.S., and are a growing trend here, too. for a fraction of the cost of traditional on- site designers, internet companies offer remote advice including detailed floorplans to show where furniture should go and clickable shopping lists for clients to order accessories such as coffee tables and rugs. (and if you haven’t got the time even to click, some will provide an online assistant to do the shopping for you.) ‘Our clients are very varied,’ says Cornelia de Ruiter, co-founder of homewings.co.uk, which has 50 online interior designers on its books.
‘We get young people moving in together for the first time, but also older clients who want some tips and inspiration and don’t have the time to look at dozens of table lamps.’
COST: from £149 per room.
Get a student to paint
BRanD new outsourcing app Toptask has a unique selling point: all its contractors are UK university students. You can hire them to sort out your digital photos, design your housewarming invitations and then waitress at the party, or for basic home decorating.
Once a person posts a job, they’re presented with a list of willing students in the local area, alongside the name of the university they’re attending and the subject they’re studying.
Each has ratings from past jobs; you simply tap on the one who fits the bill.
The students are guaranteed £10 an hour from the fee you pay Toptask, and you get a welleducated youngster who might help with the children’s homework, too!
COST: from £ 15 per hour, depending on the job.
Transform furniture
fEW of us have the time or the patience to sand, paint and artfully distress an old pine dresser, but plenty of companies will do it for you.
Tired chairs, scratched tables and even upright pianos are transformed into new pieces — at the click of a mouse.
Most will collect the furniture and deliver it back, and some of them will even decorate a room to match.
‘We’ve done dining room chairs in fun bright colours, and we do a lot of lime paint, which gives a lovely french feel,’ says David Harris, of upcycling company Stipple and Dab in Essex.
COST: from £85 to transform a bedside table.
Unique wallpaper
fOR the ultimate in customised interior design, upload pictures of your children — or your own arty design, or that sunset you captured on holiday last year — on to one of the many DiY wallpaper websites, and in just a few clicks you will have ordered a whole new look for the living room. Some companies will come and hang it for you, too.
‘ People are tired of the standard mass designs and want something that’s much more personalised,’ says Stefanie Mros, spokesperson for customised wallpaper company Bags Of love.
‘it’s very simple to do, too: you could easily design your own wallpaper in your lunch break.’
COST: from £70 per roll.