Looking to do some DIY this weekend? If so, you’re one of many across Oxfordshire planning to spend the Easter holiday sprucing up your home or garden.

Forget Black Friday, the next three days will see a surge of spending in DIY stores, as we all rush to take advantage of a bit of sun and the illusion that spring might be on its way.

If you want to see how it’s done, head up to London for the Ideal Home Show www.idealhomeshow.co.uk, on at Olympia this weekend, with everything from bi-folding doors and wood-burning stoves to ideas to revamp your kitchen or bathroom.

But whether you own or rent your home, or your only private space is one room in someone else’s house, you can still get it looking good on a budget.

That’s the message from a Which? survey which shows that if you’re prepared to get out the drill yourself, you can save buckets of cash.

If you can’t face DIY, the other way of keeping costs down is to haggle with tradesmen. Like being in a market in Marrakesh, but instead of a handbag, it’s someone’s time to put up the shelves.

Which’s 1,500-strong sample were newbies at the home improvement lark but took on jobs ranging from repainting window frames to gutting and refurbishing houses and – this is the best bit – their average saving was a whacking £469 each.

Tips from Which? include:

* If you’re not in a hurry, wait for a sale –people saved £140 on average, just by snapping up discounted stuff they didn’t need at the time but which they thought might come in handy in the future.

* Over-60s can get 10 per cent off with B&Q’s Diamond club which runs every Wednesday. To find out more, go to www.diy.com

By shopping around and getting lots of quotes when a job needed doing around the house or garden, the average saving was £646.

One person saved £14,000 on roof repairs through taking the time to get several estimates from roofers. They were quoted £25,000 by one supplier but just £11,000 by another to tackle exactly the same job.

Other tips are that local traders tend to be cheaper than the big national chains when it comes to jobs like putting in double glazing or central heating and if you have a cheaper quote from one supplier but prefer another, use that lower estimate to bargain down the price with the one you want. Although bear in mind that cheapest sometimes equals cowboy, so go carefully and ask for references.

If you are going to pick up the drill or paint brush yourself, take five minutes to check out tutorials on YouTube which will give you pro tips.

Then there’s the question of where do you go to get the paint, wallpaper, tiles and other materials you need?

Earlier this week we heard that Kingfisher which owns the B&Q chain is closing 60 stores all over the country.

Unlike Kingfisher’s other brand Screwfix (www.screwfix.com), which is doing so well, it will open more of those.

Screwfix (there are stores in Cowley’s Horspath Industrial estate, Abingdon, Witney and Bicester) offers a click-and-collect service plus free next-day delivery on orders over £50.

It’s a no-frills place and works a bit like Argos, in that you choose what you want from a catalogue before queueing at a booth to pay for it but it’s got everything you need for decorating, gardening and DIY.

Better still, it’s cheap so should help with the nuts and bolts of saving cash.