Home improvement is a fantastic hobby for anyone who wants to improve their living conditions and at the same time save themselves a lot of money. The satisfaction of building your own furniture or creating a great layout for one of your rooms is palpable, and at the same time you?ll be sure to impress any guests who you tell.
That said though, DIY can have its drawbacks. Of course there?s the chance that your items will end up looking shoddy, and it can make quite a mess, but more importantly you also need to think about the potential risk involved when doing DIY which is a very practical job. Here we will look at some elements of home improvement and how to make them more safe.
Going on the Roof
If you are making a roof garden, clearing out or replacing your gutters, or changing your roof tiles, then you will likely be going up on a ladder to reach. This is of course potentially dangerous so you need to ensure you take every precaution possible to be safe. First of all, make sure that you have someone with you at all times to help hold the ladder and to be on standby in case you should need help. Meanwhile ensure that you wait for good weather before you attempt to get on the roof and don?t rush it. Finally, never ?reach? across the roof and make sure that as you progress along you take the time to climb down, move the ladder, and then climb up again. Otherwise you can tip the ladder and fall.
Building Your Own Items
When working with wood it?s important to take precautions to avoid hurting yourself. For one you should always invest in some thick leather gloves and this way you can avoid hammering a nail into your finger or sawing it. At the same time you should look into using goggles which can prevent wood chippings etc. from getting in your eye.
The other potential risk when making your own furniture and working with wood is that you end up creating a piece of furniture that is dangerous. One precaution to take that some people forget here is to sand down corners which can be sharp and cause you to cut yourself or cause a splinter ? so make sure you remember that.
The other issue is that people build furniture that can?t hold the weight that it needs to ? this might cause a chair or a bench to collapse and cause you to fall, or it might result in a bookshelf falling apart and injuring someone by bombarding them with books. The solution is to ensure that you design your furniture to take at least three times the weight that you expect it to need to stand up to, and that you ensure that you test your furniture too under safe circumstances before going on to use it day-to-day.
Lifting
Finally moving things around your rooms can be quite dangerous as this can cause you to pull a muscle, slip a disk or generally injure yourself. It?s important here to make sure that you practice proper lifting technique and that means that you should always squat down and then push through your legs to lift ? never use your back to bear the weight and aim to keep it straight at all times.
More precautions when lifting are to make sure you have both hands underneath the object to support it and to get help lifting whenever something seems like it could be too heavy.
Jamie Kirk is a home improvement blogger and recommends sites like http://www.cheapconservatories.co.uk.
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