Spring has sprung and the nation’s Diyers respond

Kirsty Mcluckie on the dubious pleasures of a project

April is National Home Improvement Month and you can understand why.

Some atavistic drive in even the most sluggish of homeowners stirs us to look with critical eyes at our properties at this time of year ––perhaps the extra hour of usable daylight shames us into confronting our peeling paintwork, cracked rendering and dirty windows.

Or it could be that the lull after the Six Nations finishes suddenly finds us with time on our hands at the weekends, but certainly the lead up to the Easter Bank Holiday is one of the busiest times for DIY outlets.

Gardens are beginning to wake up, lawnmowers will soon be required and it won’t be long before the threat of frost has passed and we can pot up our hanging baskets.

Meanwhile, television adverts are extolling us to buy a new kitchen or bathroom at neverbefore-witnessed spring sale prices.

NAEA Propertymark has published a report that finds UK homeowners have spent a total of £48 billion doing up their homes over the last five years – an average of £8,000 each.

It says that with growing house prices making it difficult for many to move up the housing ladder, 98 per cent of British homeowners have made improvements to their properties over that time.

The most popular changes are redecorating, adding new flooring, landscaping the garden and a bathroom refresh.

Asked about their motivation for such work, more than half carried out a project to improve the look of their home and a quarter thought doing up their property would be a good investment and add value.

A further one in five bought a fixer-upper on purpose, with the

intention of making improvements, whereas one in eight wanted to create more space.

Some people I have met also carry out home improvements because they say that they enjoy doing so – although I find that hard to believe.

However, despite being the least house proud person I know – apart from my Other Half – I am not immune to the call of a project.

Having started to landscape the front garden last year, I am at least staring with intent at the shrubs planted in the hope that a Scottish winter – and my haphazard gardening skills – haven’t seen them all off.

So far, the hostas and camellias are looking healthy, but the Virginia creeper, positioned to hide a bit of discolouration on a wall, and the clematis, likewise planted to screen the downpipe from the upstairs loo, look to have suffered from an overzealous pruning in the off-season.

Inside, our projects tend to be less about home improvement than trying to retain the standard before the house became a victim in a war of attrition within the family.

New glass for the kitchen door has been ordered because of a crack mysteriously appearing during an unsupervised teenage party. Witnesses to the incident have been unforthcoming.

The Other Half is midway through replacing a wooden sink surround which had begun to rot, but the project has been ongoing for three weeks in total – so far.

To be fair, it is now a functioning worktop but he hasn’t got round to cutting out the hole for the sink, so it is more of an additional table than a place to wash up.

As such, I’m not convinced that it will add much value.