This summer, Britons will be saving on package tours, seaside trips and festivals; instead, they will be splashing out in DIY superstores. According to a survey carried out by Alliance & Leicester, record numbers of householders will spend the summer doing up their homes.
Research carried out for the bank has revealed that Britons intend to spend 17bn pounds on home improvements in the coming months.
While some will be commissioning builders to take on major projects, increasing numbers will spend their cash on the sort of extravaganzas that have made TV presenters such as Home Front's Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen a household name.
The average person intends to spend 981pounds on home improvement over the coming months - this is nearly a 25% rise since the spring, which is the start of the DIY season. Throughout the past nine months expenditure on plasterboard, paint, filler and other DIY essentials has continued to rise.
Almost 20% of us plan to spend more than 1,000 pounds on home improvements over the next three months - a rise in the group of big spenders of 15% from nine months ago.
A common complaint among thirtysomething women is that, despite the best efforts of the likes of Llewelyn-Bowen, today's men can't be relied on to put up shelves and tile a bathroom - unlike their fathers' generation, which watched Barry Bucknell, television's first DIY expert.
However, the survey suggests that women aren't wasting time waiting for their man and are getting on with the job anyway. Single women, in particular, are leading the way, says the research.
Thirtysomething women are spending more than any other age group on DIY - they expect to shell out 1,433 pounds, compared with men of all age groups who'll spend 1,286 pounds.
The English are splashing out more on their homes than householders in other parts of the UK. In England they'll be spending (1,043 pounds), 42% more on home improvements than the Scottish (607 pounds) and the Welsh (628 pounds).
In Scotland, home makeovers appear to get short shrift: 41% said they were planning to spend nothing at all.
In keeping with their affluent image, householders in London are spending the most on home improvements: an average of 1,381 pounds per person, more than double the amount spent by their counterparts in the East Midlands (542 pounds).
But not everyone thinks the DIY boom is good news. The Department of Trade and Industry's safety experts, who scrutinise the annual home accident figures, are decidedly uncomfortable.
There are 99,000 DIY-related accidents in the home each year, and 40,000 of them involve ladders; following closely behind are skirmishes with power tools.
Lack of knowledge is blamed for many accidents. A Mori poll carried out for the DTI last year found that many men over-estimate their ability to do a job and forge ahead without the proper tools.
The DTI also echoes Harry Enfield's Mr Cholmley-Warner when he urges women to "know your limits". The DTI research found that women generally knew less about DIY than men and were more at risk of injury. The example offered is that few knew exactly what a residual current device is (a protective switch that will cut off the power in an emergency) and 72% had never heard of it.
The Alliance & Leicester survey revealed an increase in the number of people funding makeovers from cash or savings, a route chosen by four out of five respondents.
Only 14% of people will borrow money to fund their home improvements, a figure that is down by nearly a third on the previous quarter. Half of those borrowing money are paying for home improvements with a credit card, while just over a fifth will take out a personal loan.
Home improvements on a larger scale do not come cheap; householders usually need to fund their aspirations with a loan or by extending their mortgage. In the survey, 14% of borrowers said they intended to remortgage.
Like many families, the Murrills from East Barnet, Hertfordshire, decided they were outgrowing their current home and needed more space.
"However, the difference between the cost of a three-bedroom house and a four-bedroom house was too big a jump to make around here," says Wayne Murrill.
Instead of moving outside Barnet the couple opted to extend their home, funding the project with extra borrowing on their mortgage. When the building work is finished, they'll have a four-bedroom home with a much larger kitchen.
Wayne and his wife Mary designed their extension themselves and expect it to cost between 50,000 pounds and 55,000 pounds.
"While this is a large amount of money it means that we are able to design the rooms as we want them. Also, if we wanted to buy a house in the area with four bedrooms, we would have to have added far more than the cost of the extension to our mortgage," explains Mr Murrill.
The Murrills join thousands of people in tapping into the fact that their home has increased in value to improve it further.
A joint Council of Mortgage Lenders and Bank of England survey carried out in May found that more than three-quarters of people who took a loan out on their house - known as equity release - spent at least some of the proceeds on home improvements.
And the craze for home makeovers shows no sign of abating. If the weekend queues in the DIY sheds are any indicator, the nation's thirst for paint, plaster and MDF is unquenchable.
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