A new study has revealed that just under half of construction workers don’t carry out DIY jobs around their own home, despite the nature of their jobs. ‘A lack of time to do DIY’  and ‘lessened confidence with different capabilities’ emerged as the most common reasons behind respondents lack of DIY skills.

Almost half of construction workers in the UK refuse to carry out any DIY jobs around their own homes, according to a new study conducted by a leading business insurance website

In a bid to further extend its research into the habits and lifestyle preferences of those working within the UK construction industry, the team at www.constructaquote.com polled a total of 2,038 UK based construction workers for the study. Those taking part in the study were all aged 21 and over, with participants selected from an even range of construction sectors

Respondents were initially asked to reveal how often they carry out DIY tasks around their own home. Of those polled, just under a quarter (23%) carry out DIY jobs at home at least once a month, with 12% revealing they do so at least once a week. Just under half (48%) of construction workers polled admitted that they never carry out DIY jobs within their own homes.

Of those who stated that they often carry out DIY at home, the majority (69%) admitted that they consider themselves to be a perfectionist and wouldn’t trust anyone else to work on repairs or DIY jobs in their own abode. The most common DIY tasks construction workers are likely to oversee in their own houses included painting walls and furniture (64%), changing fuses (41%), fixing leaky pipes (23%) and putting up frames and pictures (18%).

In a bid to further discover their reluctance to work on DIY in their own homes, researchers next asked relevant respondents to reveal the reasons behind their reluctance to do so. Individuals were given a list of potential reasons and asked to choose those which applied to them, with the top five most common answers revealed as follows:

1. I cannot find the time to carry out DIY at home- (39%)
2. I am not confident in my DIY capabilities- (26%)
3. I would prefer to ask/hire someone else to carry out the work- (16%)
4. My partner/ family member prefers to carry out the DIY jobs around the house- (11%)
5. I am too lazy to carry out DIY at home- (8%)

Lyndon Wood, CEO and creator of www.constructaquote.com, made the following comments regarding the study and its findings:

“There is the common belief that bakers can’t abide the taste of cakes, butchers get sick of eating meat, and baristas learn to loathe coffee. This theory could, therefore, explain why such a large number of construction workers polled in our survey find the idea of doing DIY in their own homes such an off-putting thought.”

He continued:

“Whilst this is a perfectly logical reasoning, it might also be explained in the fact that construction is an industry with such a wide plethora of sectors and trades. Often an individual that excels in one area will not necessarily feel as confident if tasked with another kind of job. The fear of being made to look like a novice in front of loved ones if they can’t fulfil the task at hand might be enough to put construction workers off DIY altogether!”