diy schools - any good??

[jonny round boy]

When I was self employed (as a kitchen fitter) I took it upon myself to do a plastering course, as this was an area I had never attempted and had no confidence in.

It was a 4-day course, and it cost me £300. There were (IIRC) eight of us on the course. It turned out I was the only one who had paid for it - the rest were all dole-dossers who got it paid for by benefits

Anyway, I digress. In general, I'm glad I did the course. It covered the basics, like how to mix the plaster, how to apply it, etc and it gave me a bit more confidence to do small patch jobs on the kitchens I was fitting. What it didn't give was the practice time, which for plastering is absolutely critical. That's why I would never attempt to plaster a full wall.

I also thought about doing a plumbing course too, but I decided not to. Instead, I bought a plumbing 'starter kit' (torch, flux, solder, mat, etc), some copper & some yorkshire fittings, and I started playing. As I got the hang of it I did more and more. That gave me the confidence to do my own plumbing on paying jobs, and to this day I've never had a problem.

I've also installed CH in our own house myself, aside from connecting up the boiler for which I got a plumber in.

I'm glad I decided to do it this way, as I now feel that a 4-day plumbing course would (for me at least) have been a complete waste of time & money.

Same goes for tiling too, BTW - I was shown how to tile by both my dad & grandad when I was a kid, and just built on that introduction over the years.

"but if it teaches me the basics and gives me the confidence to tackle these jobs by myself, then surely they're not too bad?"

If that's what you're looking for, then fine. Just remember that there are other (much cheaper) ways to achieve the same goal...