The origins of the DIY wave
Posted on février 25, 2013 by Frank
While surfing the web, you probably bumped at least one time into the term “DIY” without really knowing where it came from. This acronym, though, is getting more and more popularity across the years. Short for Do It Yourself, DIY is a symbol of freedom for many home owners that take pride in caring themselves for their home improvement. A lot of websites, magazines, TV shows and even videos surf on this trend by offering help to these people that refuse to hire professional workers. Let’s go deeper into the DIY movement.
Where does it come from?
We would tend to believe that Do It Yourself became a punch line only a couple of years ago, but we would be deeply mistaken. This popular expression actually started more than 60 years ago. Back then, self-builders grew in numbers, probably in order to save money from expensive companies. However, as mentioned before, a strong sense of accomplishment could also be drawn from doing everything themselves.
Example: Furniture stripping
To demonstrate how somebody could benefit from this trend, let’s take the example of Michelle, a 25 years old single mother that just bough used furniture in order to furnish her new apartment in Montreal. She just saved a lot of money doing so, but she’s not exactly proud when she sees old paint stains on her shelves. Even though it does not look THAT horrible, she’d like to do a bit better!
A couple of years ago, Michelle would have definitely struggled to perform such a daunting task. She would have probably been forced to ask her ex-boyfriend or her father to help her, even though she hates relying on other people. Today, however, there is a way for her to solve the issue in a better way.
Thanks to Youtube, she could easily find a tutorial that explained clearly how to perform he task. The author of the video showed her a specific brand of paint remover, specified for how long she would need to apply it and gave specific tips on things to avoid. It was a breeze for Michelle to follow the video. Then, she went on a second website and found great advice on how she could improve the look of her shelves. Only a couple of hours later, everything was done.
DIY: Sometimes free, sometimes commercial
As DIY gained popularity, people saw a great way to make money out of it. We can see an impressive number of TV shows today touching that subject. A lot of websites give free tips but make money by placing different kinds of advertisement on their page (affiliate marketing being a rising trend in this specific industry). A lot of guides are also published: in Quebec, for example, you could find many titles under the “X for dummies” brand. Since we see a big market for these products, however, we can say that even though companies are making money out of it, consumers are thoroughly satisfied by these resources!
What are you waiting for to challenge yourself? Do you have any table to repair, any roof leakage that would require some attention? Just do it yourself!