Homeowner quoted £45k for extension does it himself from YouTube tutorials

Watch: Homeowner saves £35k on home extension by 'watching YouTube tutorials'

A homeowner claims to have saved around £35,000 after he decided to build a house extension on his own by following tutorials on YouTube.

Marketing manager Scott Baggaley, 30, and his girlfriend, who wishes to remain anonymous, moved out of rented accommodation and bought their first property – a doer upper they wanted to renovate – in 2021.

But when he turned to local tradesmen to build an extension on the property, Baggaley said he was quoted "crazy prices" for the job – up to £45,000 – so decided to take on the project himself.

After watching YouTube tutorials, he bought reclaimed materials in the hope that a local builder would become available, but nobody did, so he just carried on.

Baggaley, from Stoke-on-Trent, said: "Because the market was busy, the tradesman were fully booked up, so I started learning from YouTube and picked up skills there."

He brought in building inspectors to make sure his craftsmanship was correct and within the law.

The roof of the extension proved particularly difficult, but he managed to push on without any help.

He added: "When I started the roof, that's when it got tricky without professional staff. Skilled thing to be doing roofing.

"I was dreading going outside because I didn't know what I was doing."

Baggaley also suffered a major setback, when he accidentally dug through concrete and hit a lead pipe, which forced him to halt work and fix the whole system.

But he completed the roof as well as the whole extension project in just six months and spent just £9,170 – saving over £35,000 compared to some of the initial quotes and adding an estimated £30,000 value to his home in the process.

Baggaley added: "Managing my time around my nine-to-five job and my girlfriend, who has given birth to our son, was the biggest difficulty."

The extension was not the first piece of building work that Baggaley undertook, having previously built a beauty salon in the backyard for his girlfriend to work from home.