Doing jobs about the house, not having to wait for partners or tradespeople to fix it for you, may just be the best therapy there is
Growing up, Ash O’Buachalla’s father, a chartered surveyor, worked long 15-hour days, so to help out around the house, she started tidying and fixing up the place.
He had good tools, she recalls, and showed her the basics, like how to change a plug.
“There was no internet to consult in the late 1980s. Nor were there smartphones,” she says of what was her apprenticeship in the art of DIY – a skill she feels everyone should have.
The woman behind the highly successful Instagram page Doing Up My Home has more than 65,000 followers who like her no-nonsense approach. She’s also a regular on Virgin’s Ireland AM.
Seeing what she could achieve helped build her confidence to feel able to take on bigger jobs, and growing up she started flexing those DIY muscles around the family home, using it as a laboratory to test ideas and finishes.
“I pulled about 15 layers of wallpaper off walls,” she says. When a neighbour saw the results, they immediately asked her to paint their whole house, a sizeable four-bedroom property.
She was just 14 years of age - the offer of IR£500 helped her decide.
“It was a lot of money then.” She brought a friend in to help with the work.
She learned on the job, paying attention to the detail and asking “lots of questions” in her local hardware shops.
“Today, professionals now charge amounts like €10,000 to do the same,” she says.
And so was born a real understanding of the savings that can be made by doing jobs yourself.
When she left school, she trained as a valuer. Her brother and sister also work in the property business, but neither is as hands-on as she is.
Her followers are 85 per cent women. While they message her publicly, the 15 per cent of men who also check in to get updates prefer to DM her with queries.
She's now a bit of a paint expert and often gets asked for advice on using new shades to choose.
She’s tried and tested most brands. Her approach is to proffer two options, a safe one and a more directional choice.
“There are hundreds of colours and it can be overwhelming."
Cheap paint is a false economy, she says.
“I deal with colour all the time. You will just have to put on more coats.”
With the more highly pigmented paints, Ash says she has to apply fewer coats, so while the product may cost more, it takes less time to execute.
But her knowledge extends well beyond paint cards.
“DIY is therapeutic,” she says. “Once you do one little job, you’re hooked.”
In her own home, she’s changed light fixtures, installed new laminate worktops – she likes Noyeks Newmans and used a grout pen to change the white tile grout to black. She painted the bulk head same colour as kitchen units to give the appearance of a taller kitchen and painted her stainless steel extractor hood black.
She repainted the kitchen glazing to update it and installed a study area in the dining space, where before there had been a cupboard, repurposing the cupboard door to make a desktop, painting the recess a deeper colour to add visual interest and added a task lamp.
Elsewhere she's added beading to create a panelling effect in the living room and in bedrooms, updated wardrobes.
Outside she updated her home's kerb appeal, refreshing the look of her cobble lock by staining it. Finnish paint company Tikkurila does a patio paving stain that comes in a range of tints that dye the concrete.
She’s even had a go at making small, simple pieces of furniture.
A bench for her dog, so that he could look out the front window, was made using an existing seat upholstered in a fabric from Home Focus at Hickeys, recently acquired by the Dunelm Group, to which she added legs that she bought on Amazon.
“I know how to use a drill. So should everyone,” she says.
“Fear comes from not knowing. Even I still have to look things up, but everyone should know where to turn off the mains water in the home and where the fuse box is and how to switch off both.”
