Helping DIY SOS

2017 - The Big Build Telford (The Cooper Family)

DIY SOS TelfordDIY SOS: The Big Build is the BBC’s flagship home renovation programme; it has been running for 16 years, and attracts up to 9 million viewers per episode in its prime time slot on BBC One. The ambitious show presented by Nick Knowles and his team of ‘Purple Shirts’ takes on extremely big builds in just nine days.  They completely rely on the support and generosity of the local community of tradespeople and suppliers to carry out the work, to help truly deserving families transform their homes.

The team of ‘Purple Shirts’ are coming to Telford in Shropshire from February 28th – 9th March 2017 to help a local family rebuild their home and their lives.

 The family; Matthew was a typical active boy with a love of Doctor Who and sport. He has three best friends at school (Emily, Luke & Gabriel) and is loved beyond all else by his parents Leigh and Sue. At age 10 Matthew started to develop episodes of headaches and nausea – it was being monitored by doctors but they didn’t have big concerns.

During a family holiday in Devon, Matthew suddenly struggled to walk – within 48 hours he was rushed into hospital for scans and emergency surgery to treat a brain tumour. After an operation to remove 90% of Matthew’s cancerous tumour; the family were given a positive prognosis by consultants. What then should have been the road to recovery soon became a relentless living nightmare!

When Matthew was transferred from intensive care back to the ward, his blood pressure became unstable resulting in two massive strokes and paralysis. Parents Leigh and Sue said “it felt like a lottery win when Matt could open one eye.” Fourteen months later Matthew was due his final chemo round and was finally given the greenlight to get home – but Sue and Leigh couldn’t make it happen. The community have come together to do their own DIS SOS inspired mission but it’s exhausted the communities resource’s.

Work needed; the house needs a downstairs extension with space for a carer to stay and all the bespoke care provision Matthew will need; physio space, wet room, social space and the ability to access the entire ground floor. If the Coopers don’t get this work done, they will have to stay at the hospital until alternative accommodation can be found for Matthew. This could mean the couple would have to return home without him – something they swore they would never do to him.

Wrockwardine Wood Junior School and the wider community managed to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds towards renovating the Cooper’s home for when Matthew is well enough to be discharged from hospital – and Matthew’s headteacher Julie Henry was the person in charge of leading the major fundraising campaign and applied for DIY SOS to come to transform their home.

As a business, we strive to help people in need – and we always look forward to helping DIY SOS and the families they work with. We are donating tiles to the Cooper’s, of which will be used to create the much needed brand new wet-room in the above mentioned downstairs extension. The completed project will be revealed on Thursday 9th March and we are really looking forward to welcoming the family back into their much loved home.


2015 - The Big Build Rednall Birmingham (The Bull Family)

DIY SOS TeamTile Choice were honoured to again be part of the Big Build with DIY SOS: The project which was in Rednal Birmingham was to help the Bull Family have their house adapted to meet the needs of twins Alex and Dylan who are only toddlers and young Jack who was a bit older. Alex and Dylan were born prematurely and have experienced a myriad of health in their first few years of life. The twins need constant supervision and are unlikely to ever have total independence thats why it is important that we all got together and help the Bull Family.

We were contact by the designers of the DIY SOS programme as it wasn't far from our Bromsgrove branch to see if we could have supplied wall tiles and floor tiles for the Wetroom which the twins would be using. We recommended that they use the Mantle Dark Grey Relief because of its textured surface especially as the twins are not too good on their feet. For the walls we used a simple approach with the 20x10cm New Biselado Olive and 20x10cm New Biselado Ivory. For the family bathroom they used the 60x25cm Buckingham Bone wall tiles which was applied as a brick effect pattern half way around the bathroom, but fully in the bath area. To complement the wall tiles, the DIY SOS team chose the vintage style tiles called 20x20cm York Black Pattern Floor Tile, which has a black triangle form to each tile. For both the walls and floors Granfix adhesive, grout, spacers and tile trim were supplied for the project.

Tile Choice are extremely proud to be involved in such a life changing project, we were at the unveiling the Bull Family were really grateful not just to companies who supplied goods, but for the 250+ trades men and women who gave up their own personal time to make this happen. It brought tears of joy from the Mother and Father, and a smile to the children.

Below we have supplied 5 images of the tiles that we have supplied for DIY SOS, if you are interested in any of them and would like to look at them in more in-depth then you will see the tiles around our website with the "AS SEEN ON DIY SOS" label on them, from there you can buy sample tiles or even place an order. 

 

2012 - The Big Build Dudley (The Whitehouse Family)

DIY SOS DudeyIn January 2012 the Whitehouse family who live in lower Gornal Dudley, invited DIY SOS team to help them in their hour of need. They contacted the television programme after struggling to finish a much-needed extension to their cramped house.

Parents Joanne and Wayne want to create new bedrooms for their children who suffer from Fragile X Syndrome. After remortgaging their home and spending £27,000 on starting the extension they ran into money troubles and were left at their wits end and still craving more space.

When we heard that the popular BBC T.V series DIY SOS with Nick Knowles and the team were in our local area Dudley. We immediately approached there researcher to see if there was anything Tile Choice could do to help them in completing the project.

DIY SOS were really pleased that we were offering our help and support, and came to visit our Tile Choice Bilston store to see what tiles they would like. After a brief look around the store we were delighted to be supplying them with bathroom wall tiles, floor tiles, and also the materials to complete the job.

When we delivered the tiles to the house everyone who was working on the house was really upbeat and really pleased to have been helping this family rebuild their home. Tile Choice was at the house when the family came back for the first time in 10 days to see their newly reconstructed home.

There was a lot of joy from the whole family not just because they now have a new home, but also because of the help and generosity that was given to them by local businesses to make it happen.