We updated this research much more recently, when SIRC was commissioned by the tea company who make PG Tips to do a study on home-improvers. (This was not quite as daft an idea as it sounds: we found that any DIY task requires the consumption of vast quantities of tea.) In terms of numbers, we found that nothing much had changed, except that the proportion of women involved in DIY is probably now even higher. And if anything, the English were found to be even more obsessed with their nestbuilding.27
I was not directly involved in the SIRC DIY study, but it was conducted in a manner of which I approve - not by ticking boxes on a telephone questionnaire survey, but by actually going out and spending time in the temples of the DIY faith (Homebase, DoItAll, B amp;Q, etc.), talking at length to DIYers about their motives, fears, stresses and joys. My colleague Peter Marsh, a devout DIYer himself, reasoned that some special temptation would be needed to persuade these fervent nestbuilders to interrupt their Sunday-morning pilgrimage to talk to our researchers. His ingenious solution was tea and doughnuts - a familiar, established part of the DIY ritual - offered free from the back of a van parked strategically in the DIY-store car parks.
It worked a treat. Stopping For Tea is such an integral element of the DIY routine that nestbuilders who would never have allowed a conventional researcher with a clipboard to intrude on their twig-gathering were more than happy to gather round the SIRC van, gulping mugs of tea, munching doughnuts, and telling our researchers all about their home-improvement plans, hopes, worries and disasters.
The Territorial-marking Rule
The most common motive for DIYing among our car-park sample of typical nestbuilders was that of 'putting a personal stamp on the place'. This is clearly understood as an unwritten rule of home ownership, and a central element of the moving-in ritual, often involving the destruction of any evidence of the previous owner's territorial marking. 'You've got to rip something out when you move in,' one young man explained. 'It's all part of the move, isn't it?'
He was right. Watch almost any residential street in England over a period of time, and you will notice that shortly after a For Sale sign comes down, a skip appears, to be filled with often perfectly serviceable bits of ripped-out kitchen or bathroom, along with ripped-out carpets, cupboards, fireplace-surrounds, shelves, tiles, banisters, doors and even walls and ceilings.
This is a 'rule' in a stronger sense than an observable regularity of behaviour: this kind of obsessive territorial marking is, for the majority of English people, an obligation, something we feel compelled, duty-bound to do: 'You've got to rip something out...'
This can be a problem for those who move into brand-new 'starter homes' or other new houses, where it would clearly be ludicrous to start ripping out virgin bathrooms and untouched kitchens. Yet we found the DIY temples full of such people, eager to add whatever 'personal touches' they can to mark their bland new territory. Even if you can't rip anything out, you've got to do something: a house that has not been tinkered with barely qualifies as a home.
CLASS RULES
The English obsession with home-improvements is not just about territorial marking, of course. It is also about self-expression in a wider sense: your home is not just your territory, it is your primary expression of your identity. Or at least that is how we like to think of it. Almost all of our DIY-temple sample saw themselves as exercising their creative talents, and other interviews with nestbuilders in furniture shops, department stores and homes confirm that although DIYing may be, for some, merely an economic necessity, we all see the arrangement, furnishing and decorating of our homes as an expression of our unique personal taste and artistic flair.
And it is, but only up to a point. The more closely I researched this question, the more it became clear that the way in which we arrange, furnish and decorate our homes is largely determined by social class. This has little or nothing to do with wealth. Upper-class and upper-middle-class homes tend to be shabby, frayed and unkempt in a way no middle-middle or lower-middle would tolerate, and the homes of the wealthiest working-class nouveaux-riches are full of extremely expensive items that the uppers and upper-middles regard as the height of vulgarity. The brand-new leather sofas and reproduction-antique dining chairs favoured by the middle-middles may cost ten times as much as the equivalent items in the houses of upper-middles, who despise leather and 'repro'.
In the homes of the middle-middles and below, the 'lounge' (as they call it) is likely to have a fitted carpet (among the older working classes, this may be a patterned carpet; among nouveaux-riches, deep-pile). The higher castes prefer bare floorboards, often part-covered with old Persian carpets or rugs. The middle-middle 'lounge' might have a cocktail cabinet, and their dining room a hostess trolley. The contents of lower-middle and some upper-working 'front rooms' will often be obscured by net curtains (useful as a class-indicator, but otherwise something of an annoying obstacle to peeping-tom researchers) but they are likely to be dominated by large television sets and, among the older generations, may boast embroidered or lacy covers on the arms of chairs and carefully displayed 'collections' of small objects (spoons, glass animals, Spanish dolls, figurines) from package holidays or mail-order catalogues.
Younger lower-middles and upper-workings may have less fussy tastes - their 'living rooms' are often uncluttered to the point of dentist's-waiting-room bleakness (perhaps aspiring to, but never approaching, stylish minimalism). They will compensate for this lack of visual interest with an even bigger wide-screen television, which they call the TV or telly and which is always the focal point of the room (and, incidentally, currently shows at least six programmes every week about homes and home-improvement) and a high-tech 'music centre' with big speakers. Many upper-middle homes also have big televisions and stereos, but they are usually hidden in another sitting room, sometimes called the 'back room' or 'family room' (not 'music room': when upper-middles say 'music room', they mean the one with the piano in it, not the stereo).
Coasters (little mats for putting drinks on to stop them damaging the tables) are another useful class-indicator: you are unlikely to find these in upper-middle or upper-class houses, nor will you often see them in lower-working-class homes. Coasters are the preserve of the middle-middle, lower-middle and upper-working classes - or rather, more specifically, those among the upper-workings who aspire to middle-class status.
Matching and Newness Rules
The lower-middle and working-class lavatories, which they call toilets, may have matching coloured loos and basins, which they call bathroom suites, and even matching coloured loo paper. Those of the upper-middles and above will almost always be plain white, although you will sometimes see a wooden loo seat.
At the highest and lowest ends of the scale (upper-middle and above, lower-working and below) you will find old, threadbare and mismatched furniture, while the classes in between favour brand-new 'suites' of matching 'settees' and armchairs, 'sets' of matching dining tables and chairs, and yet more 'suites' of bedroom furniture with matching bedspreads, cushions and curtains. (These carefully co-ordinated furnishings may involve cottagey-chintzy flowers, Conran-Ikea 'simplicity', or television-inspired 'themes' but the principle is the same.) The upper echelons, proud of their eclectic antiques, sneer at matching 'suites'; the lower echelons, ashamed of their ill-assorted cast-offs, aspire to them.
In fact, an English person's social class can be gauged immediately from his or her attitude to expensive brand-new furniture: if you think it is 'posh', you are no higher than middle-middle at best; if you think it is 'naff', you are upper-middle or above. An upper-class Tory MP once sneered at fellow Tory Michael Heseltine by remarking that Heseltine had 'had to buy all his own furniture' - the put-down implication being that only nouveaux have to buy their furniture: genuinely upper-class furniture is inherited.