Most people have drills, saws, paint pots, mitres and much more besides sitting in a cupboard or shed at home. But how much use are they getting at the moment?
There has been a lot of speculation about how well the home DIY market will be able to ride out the recession. Recent reports focusing on Easter and the first May Bank Holiday in May in the UK seem to indicate that people are still making that journey to their local DIY store. Bank Holidays are always deemed as being the prime time for people to start doing some work in their homes. Clearly the market is hoping that this will continue throughout the year as the recession carries on.
The news of late seems to point to the fact that the recession is abating slightly. It isn’t getting any better, but it seems to have stopped getting any worse. Even the housing market has been a little more buoyant of late.
It is very much the case that people are putting off any thoughts of moving home and thinking about renovating the one they have instead. And with the cost of hiring people to help them often quite prohibitive in the current market, they really are doing things themselves.
This means that DIY stores are hoping that people will carry on making those small improvements to their homes. If they do, they will continue to buy bits and pieces on a regular basis to help them achieve those ends. This would be great news for an industry that might otherwise find it very difficult to get through a recession relatively unscathed.
Of course, people are reducing the plans they have for their homes and they are spending less. But in many cases they feel they are better off making small improvements – such as redecorating or repainting a room – than they are doing something larger and more expensive. A typical example here would be an extension.
Arguably it is those stores that recognise the shift in the current situation that will be able to benefit the most from it. Have you seen any DIY stores near you that are promoting cheaper products, and ways to improve your home for a budget amount of money?
If you have, you will probably find that such promotions garner a lot of interest from customers. They don’t want to give up on the idea of making improvements to their home completely; they just want to scale back on the amount of money they are spending.
So if you are thinking about making some improvements to your own home, think about ways you could do it on a budget. Sometimes all it takes to freshen things up is a lick of paint and a new picture or two. In cases like this, the result can benefit both the DIY industry and indeed the homeowner as well.
And of course this recession will come to an end eventually, and all the big projects can be postponed until then.