Anyone taken their DIY skills professional?

Participant

Participant

Participant

Caporegime
Joined
13 May 2003
Posts
34,601
Location
Warwickshire
Hi

Just wondering if anyone here has left a 'normal' job to become a professional [insert trade here] having grown tired of the grind (and hopefully been glad they did?!).

I guess it's quite a leap from keen DIY enthusiast to relying on it for your livelihood, but it seems that some trades are in great demand with short supply, so to be free of the 9-5 might be a great thing.

I'm not going to do this by the way (yet anyway) and obviously there are downsides, like pressure, risk, people not paying you, working all hours / weekend etc.

Interested to hear any stories though, including ones where it didn't work out.
 
The guy who had 50% of my house did this. I think he is about mid 50s. Got made redundant and decided to make the plunge.
This was 2 years ago and it's really worked out for him. He is still really busy now but is very good at what he does. Doesn't even advertise as all his work comes from recommendations/word of mouth.
 
I am a keen DIY builder and have thought about this a few times. However, being "on the tools" is not a feasible way to go about it in my opinion, you'll likely never make consistently as much as through a corporate job, and unlike with a corporate you wont be sitting there drinking coffee as they pay you.

The way to do this is to tender for building jobs and project manage them, be the face of them, be a renovations salesman. A good friend of mine left the corporate world and started a local domestic building firm - demand is high for local "builders" with abilities which most direct tradespeople simply do not have - professionalism, reliability, good verbal and written communication skills. He is doing quite well only 2 years into it - although he is in a similar situation to me in that he doesn't really need the money to live any more. He does spend a lot of his time on site helping out, while subbing the actual tasks to people he used casually on and off for years anyway to build out his own properties.

As is very clear just from this forum, people generally simply don't know where to start when it comes to home extensions and remodelling - and are also willing to pay large margins to purchase your confidence and assurance.

I guess this isn't what you meant really, but is my take on it. Becoming a direct tradesman might be practical if you just want to tick over and do it fairly casually.
 
Do the maths properly. Corporate grind usually provides a pension, sick leave, benefits etc. Also, cost in your health. I know a lot of tradesmen that are on their last legs in their mid-fifties. It takes a toll on your body (not saying sitting in a chair for 9 hours doesn't either, but it is different).

As above, being the foreman offering the ability to deal with the general public and the sometimes unreliable tradies is key.

A lot of handyman work around where I am if you can get your name on an estate agents records and basically be their lapdog (because if you refuse a job more than once they'll just remove you from the list).
 
A guy in our SOC Team DIY plastered his downstairs and when VR came round took it, set himself up as a plasterer and last time I heard he was turning work away, was going to contact him soon as we're have the hall stairs and landing decorating and was thinking of getting him to plaster it all 1st.
 
It's one thing researching a a topic your interested in thoroughly, takin your time and completing it to your own level of perfection within your own home, & all the satisfaction & cost savings that come with that.

Absolutely no way i'd want to do it professionally, every week, for money, for other people.
 
Ops probably in a DIY bubble without all the headaches and problems that come with doing jobs for other people.

I'm sure it's not as stress free and simple as people picture.

even when your not working your probably still working


If your only doing work for rich people it's probably different
 
arknor said:
Ops probably in a DIY bubble without all the headaches and problems that come with doing jobs for other people.
Click to expand...

Absolutely - what you can potter away at when you're DIYing suddenly becomes a) Uneconomic and b) "When are you going to be finished?" You have to be fast enough to not charge too much and yet have enough time for when the unexpected crops up. Not easy!

arknor said:
I'm sure it's not as stress free and simple as people picture.
Click to expand...

Absolutely - just making sure you have the right insurance puts you £1500 in the red before you earn a penny and then you can't get on the better trade reference websites until you've done 10 "paid and happy jobs". Oh - and the customers never want to pay you. And a bad review on facebook can completely stuff your business before it even gets started.

arknor said:
even when your not working your probably still working
Click to expand...

Absolutely - you're ALWAYS working because you can't really turn down work just in case you don't get anything next week.

arknor said:
If your only doing work for rich people it's probably different
Click to expand...

No, they seem to be worse. They definitely don't want to pay, amend the job spec on the fly then argue with the on-costs and they are 50:50 in my experience whether they're utterly lovely or absolute female genitalia. There doesn't seem to be a happy middle ground.

All that said, I love my side-gig :)
 
arknor said:
Ops probably in a DIY bubble without all the headaches and problems that come with doing jobs for other people.
Click to expand...

If you brute force the job finished you'll be surprised at how many of your customers don't notice whatever was giving you a headache.

WJA96 said:
Absolutely - just making sure you have the right insurance puts you £1500 in the red before you earn a penny and then you can't get on the better trade reference websites until you've done 10 "paid and happy jobs". Oh - and the customers never want to pay you. And a bad review on facebook can completely stuff your business before it even gets started.
Click to expand...

That's only for serious businesses though. The Polax and Romanians don't have insurance... the people that hire them are too tight to pay a professional company with insurance so they accept the cheaper and un-insured work. Just make sure they know upfront that you're not insured. If you're kind and do a decent enough job there is no reason for someone to leave a bad review. The bad reviews are usually for really bad tradies.
 
SquirrelMadness said:
That's only for serious businesses though. The Polax and Romanians don't have insurance... the people that hire them are too tight to pay a professional company with insurance so they accept the cheaper and un-insured work. Just make sure they know upfront that you're not insured. If you're kind and do a decent enough job there is no reason for someone to leave a bad review. The bad reviews are usually for really bad tradies.
Click to expand...

Well, we're going to have to disagree. Anyone operating without Public Liability Insurance is almost certainly trading illegally and they should preferably have Professional Indemnity insurance as well.

And I also disagree about people leaving you a bad review even if you do a good job. I've certainly been threatened with it. It's always there in the background.

And as for the Eastern Europeans - I find them highly skilled and willing to work for less money which means they can afford insurance. All the ones I've met have been scrupulous about trading legally. They're serious competition and I would never underestimate them.
 
I'm not at all risk averse, i don't buy insurance for my own house as i dont generally believe insurance to be value for money, but you'd have to be nuts or extremely dodgy and able to disappear without trace to work on someone else's without insurance.

If you so much as flood some water through a ceiling that could be a total nightmare, not an issue in your own house, totally different in someone elses.
 
Jez said:
I'm not at all risk averse, i don't buy insurance for my own house as i dont generally believe insurance to be value for money
Click to expand...
Wtf

Jez said:
If you so much as flood some water through a ceiling that could be a total nightmare, not an issue in your own house,
Click to expand...
Wtf

SquirrelMadness said:
That's only for serious businesses though. The Polax and Romanians don't have insurance... the people that hire them are too tight to pay a professional company with insurance so they accept the cheaper and un-insured work. Just make sure they know upfront that you're not insured. If you're kind and do a decent enough job there is no reason for someone to leave a bad review. The bad reviews are usually for really bad tradies.
Click to expand...

Wtf


What forum am I on?
 
What is WTF about saying you think someone would be mad to operate in someone else's house without any insurance (unless you are super dodgy and can disappear like del boy)?

By saying i am not risk averse i am emphasising that you really would have to be mad to do this - you could cause so much damage so easily. In your own house you accept that, it doesn't matter when its your own. Totally different ball game somewhere else.
 
I went the other way. I started working life as an apprentice brickie, worked as a brickie until my early 20s and then moved into a desk job, where I've been since.

I love building things in my own time, working on my house, but the thing that makes DIY different to the trade is that I'm not working against the clock.
 
Jez said:
What is WTF about saying you think someone would be mad to operate in someone else's house without any insurance (unless you are super dodgy and can disappear like del boy)?

By saying i am not risk averse i am emphasising that you really would have to be mad to do this - you could cause so much damage so easily. In your own house you accept that, it doesn't matter when its your own. Totally different ball game somewhere else.
Click to expand...
The fact you don't have home insurance!
 
Having insurance is a selling point for your customer. I wouldn’t take on a trades person that didn’t have insurance why do you ask?

Well everyone makes mistakes from time to time, sometimes those mistakes are big and cost a lot of money to rectify. In my experience good trades earn good money, but that doesn’t mean they are sat on a pile of cash within the business (normally alts company) to to rectify a mistake they made.

For example, if an electrician make a mistake that lead to a person being electrocuted, you’ll never get paid any actual compensation unless they were insured because it’s highly unlikely the company will have any meaningful assets available to pay it. It will go insolvent and die. The person who made the mistake will just carry on as they were.

A less extreme example could be a trades person going though a mains pressure water pipe causing tens of thousands in damage before they could get the water stopped. Good luck getting that sort of money of out them.

So yes, it adds to consumer confidence as much as covers your own back for mistakes and mistakes happen.
 
dLockers said:
The fact you don't have home insurance!
Click to expand...
That's my own choice, it affects nobody else, personally i don't think it worth buying. My own house i will deal with any eventuality myself.
I was merely using that point to emphasise that even i wouldn't work at someone else's house with no insurance. Totally different ballgame :p
 
Jez said:
That's my own choice, it affects nobody else, personally i don't think it worth buying. My own house i will deal with any eventuality myself.
I was merely using that point to emphasise that even i wouldn't work at someone else's house with no insurance. Totally different ballgame :p
Click to expand...

What about the neighbouring properties? I believe you're semi detached aren't you, so what if your house burnt down and took your neighbour with you?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom