The Plant That’s Been Holding Your Windows Together Since the 1600s
A small, blue-flowered plant has been keeping British homes standing since long before anyone called it maintenance, and its legacy…
Posts by Owen Pritchard
Maintenance Speaks With a Regional Accent
So, a plasterer in Huddersfield and a plasterer in Guildford are, on paper, doing the same job – mixing stuff…
The First Thing We Do When Someone Dies Is Redecorate
There's a smell that follows bereavement into a house. It's not the smell of flowers or sympathy cards going soft…
The Line That Says Making Something Better Counts as Doing Less
There’s a moment, usually shortly after a large bill arrives, where you wonder whether ‘better’ is always actually better. You’ve…
The Bill That Handed You a Gutter and Wished You Luck
There is a particular kind of British homeowner who walks past the same patch of damp on his ceiling for…
The Shark Behind Your Sandpaper
Run your hand along a shark's skin from tail to head – against the grain, as it were – and…
The Snail That Rewrote Your Loft Conversion
May Donoghue was served a ginger beer float at the Wellmeadow Café in Paisley in August 1928. Her friend had…
What Your House Is Actually Trying to Tell You at 3am
Nobody plans their best DIY thinking for three in the morning. And yet there you are, lying in the dark,…
What the Pub Landlord Knows That You Don’t
Walk past a Victorian pub on a wet Tuesday morning and there's a decent chance you'll see a van outside,…
The Law That Woke Up After the Fires
There's a moment in most DIY projects where confidence peaks. You've watched the YouTube video, bought the right screwdriver and…