Recently we’ve seen a massive rise in the number of people undertaking DIY jobs on their homes. Given we’ve been confined to our houses for months on end over the last couple of years, it’s not surprising, DIY was one of the few things we were able to do during the pandemic. Being stuck in our homes has also given us time to find more jobs on the house, to discover problems we’d never noticed before, or to simply get bored of looking at the same walls every day. It’s also made us realise that in a lockdown-type situation, the garden is the only outdoors time you can really get, leading to more people now focusing on making their garden more comfortable and inviting.
Despite lockdowns easing now, DIY is still quite popular and something we whole-heartedly encourage. However, we do always want you to be safe, which is why we put together some tips on how to remain safe while doing DIY on your home.
Tip One: Dress for the Job
This sounds really obvious and maybe some of you have already started skim reading on the basis that you already know the importance of wearing the correct safety gear, but it is also one of the things that gets overlooked when it comes to DIY in the home. There are lots of reasons why you should always wear the correct safety clothing, this interesting blog goes into the importance of safety clothing in much more detail and directs you to places you can buy your own safety clothing. As a general rule of thumb, if you’re doing DIY, you probably need safety goggles and a dust mask and gloves, at the very least. If you’re doing bigger DIY jobs, you might nee more safety gear, use your judgement and always play it safe.
Tip Two: Prepare the Environment
Whether you are doing DIY on your home, or on a construction site, you should always prepare the environment first to make sure you are working as safely as possible. The area you are working in should be clear from anything you could fall over or bump into, the tools you need to do the job should be readily available and the space itself should be well organised so you know where everything is, which is far less likely to result in accidents. Also plan ahead, if you are drilling into the walls, check the electrical plans to make sure there aren’t electrical wires right behind the place you’re about to drill, and if you’re using paint, varnish, glue or anything else that emits fumes and/or is toxic, prepare how you intend to ventilate the area to keep yourself safe. Finally, keep the environment the way it is, don’t do things like bring a drink in, because what you’re actually doing is adding an unnecessary hazard into your work space.
Tip Three: Know your Limits
One of the biggest causes of accidents in home DIY is people trying to do something that is outside of their skillset and/or ability. It’s easy to forget you have limits, or to ignore your limits on the basis that you want to be able to complete the DIY work yourself, but it is important to recognise when you need help. If you try to do something that’s outside of your skillset/knowledge base and it goes wrong, you could end up hurting yourself, and/or you could end up costing yourself more money to rectify any damages you’ve caused. Equally, don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Yes, you might want to get the job done today, but there’s only so many hours in the day, you can’t get everything done and if you try to rush, you are much more likely to have an accident, or do something wrong.
Tip Four: Know and Love Your Tools
To be safe you need to make sure you use the right tools for the job. If you try to hammer a nail with the end of your screwdriver, you’re most likely going to hit your fingers, because a screwdriver isn’t designed for that job. So always make sure you do have the right tools to do a job before you start and when you prepare your space also prepare your tools. Make sure they are working properly, it also helps to regularly maintain your tools so you can be confident that they are in full working order and much less likely to malfunction on you, potentially causing you an injury.
Tip Five: Be Cautious in Everything
Ladders are a big one here, people know the correct way to use a ladder and they know the advised guidelines regarding making sure someone spots the ladder to stop it from falling, but yet so many of us ignore all of that when we do DIY in the home. We take the “I’ll be fine” approach and this is the wrong approach to take. Instead we should eb overly cautious and we should do things like remind ourselves about the correct and safest ways to use a ladder.
