Welcome to Property Workshop (PWS)
PWS was born out of my love for home improvement and a desire to create a one-stop shop for home renovation and repair. My background is in Electronics, and shortly after finishing University and starting a full-time job, I saved enough cash to buy a flat in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
Abingdon is a lovely old market town, and the flat was part of a converted grade II listed building. Although this gave the property plenty of charm, it had many problems to fix, including plumbing and heating issues. As money was tight at the time (I’d just invested my life savings!), I needed to take on some of these issues myself, and I got hooked on home improvement.
Only six months after buying the flat, my career in Broadcast Technology took me to Montreal, Canada. Luckily, I had no problems renting out the flat, and after three years of living in Canada, I decided to buy a ‘condo unit’ in Montreal. At this point, I added property investment to my long list of interests.
A few years later, I moved again and bought a house in Toronto with my wife and two-day-old son. While the house was livable, it needed a lot of work, which my wife and I undertook ourselves, building on the skills I had learned in Abingdon.
After returning to the UK to work on a project for BBC Wales, I bought a small one-bed flat in Llandaff, Cardiff. The property was in a bad state after being neglected since the 1980s, but it was in such a great location I knew it had bags of potential. So, using my extensive knowledge and home improvement experience, I transformed the Llandaff property into a modern-day one-bed flat.
See the images below for a taste of how the property transformed in just over four months:
Before
After
OK, a professional took the last three pictures, but still…
After renovating my flat in Llandaff and adding it to my portfolio, I returned to Toronto for a new challenge. Having spent several years building websites, I thought combining my two passions and developing a property investment blog would be a good idea.
After hearing about the difficulties many millennials faced when getting onto the property ladder, this idea took hold. However, property investment is a very competitive niche and is well served by sites like the Property Hub. Moreover, I found very few high-quality UK-based home improvement sites after researching property-related topics. I also noticed that many of these sites leaned towards interior design rather than technical DIY skills. So I decided to ditch the investment blog idea and focus on UK home improvement instead.
Enter Property Workshop. A team of DIY enthusiasts using their expertise and experience to produce easy-to-follow advice on renovating your home.
Good luck transforming your home, and don’t forget to enjoy the process!
All the best,
Russ
