About DIY Outdoor Builds

DIY Outdoor Builds is a place to learn how to build things for your home and garden, and to share what you have built.

Most building plans online are either sales pages or lists of other people's photos. DIY Outdoor Builds has two clearly separated kinds of content:

Step-by-step guides written by the DIY Outdoor Builds editors. Each one lists materials and tools, every step, common mistakes and safety notes. They are written from established building and gardening practice, illustrated with our own drawings, and marked as guides. We do not copy plans, photos or instructions from other sites or books, and we do not invent prices: costs are given as levels because they vary so much by country.
Community projects published by the people who built them, with their own photos, the materials they actually used, what it cost, how long it took and what they would do differently.

How it works

Builders publish projects. Each project gets its own page with photos, a description, materials, tools, dimensions, costs, steps and optional plan files.
Projects are organised. Categories, search and related projects help people planning the same kind of build compare real examples.
Others build their own version. “Create your own version” lets anyone publish a variation (larger, cheaper, a different roof) that links back to the original, so ideas improve over time.

Community projects come only from the people who built them. Guides are always marked as written by our editors. No copied plans, no fake users, no fake reviews.
When we get something wrong, we correct it. Tell us if you spot a mistake in a guide.
Builders keep the rights to their work and choose the license for it.
No tracking profiles. Our own statistics are anonymous daily totals.

DIY Outdoor Builds is free to use. In the future it may be funded by clearly labelled advertising, kept away from buttons and forms.