In 2018, Alex Doman, an ambulance worker from Essex, moved into a rundown home with his partner Sarah and their two young children Allie and Eddie.
The house was a fixer upper and Dodman, now 38, was inspired by social media to tear apart the family home so he could build a dream home for his family.
The renos started with a YouTube video that showed a tradesperson putting up a wall stud.
Over the next while, Dodman, who works for National Health Service, added a gym in the back garden, a family-sized cinema space, and a fold-down bed in his sleek home office.
And then he learned the home, purchased for £250,000 (about $322,000 US), had more than doubled in value to £525,000 ($675,000 US).
“We had the house valued and were told it was now worth £525,000, which I put down to the work I’ve done,” Doman tells The Sun in February 2022.
Realizing he had a natural talent for DIY, the father was ready for his next project.
Diving in
While taking a lunch break, Dodman explains that he “watched a YouTube video of a woman in Holland who built her own pool in her garden.”
Expressing that he’s “dreamt of having a pool” and “even earmarked a little patch to hopefully build it on one day,” Dodman dove right into his new DIY project.
“As soon as I’d watched [YouTube video] I rang up and hired a digger. I’d never driven a digger before, so I’d dug this massive hole and then there was no going back.”
‘A blessing’
Though there was no going back he did hit a huge obstacle.
Dodman started building the pool in January 2020 “but then Covid hit, and [he] couldn’t get any materials for ages.”
Stuck with a giant hole in his yard, Dodman explains he had to get creative.
Describing the pandemic closures as “a bit of a blessing,” the DIY dad “started buying the things [he] needed from Facebook Marketplace which was a lot cheaper.”
‘Zero experience’
Dodman shows his 247,000 TikTok followers the 12 stages he followed to build “a fully functioning swimming pool in [his] backyard with zero experience.”
Each clip details various steps of the project, like learning to operate the digger, plumbing, laying bricks to tiling and lastly diving into his new blue pool.
And he did it for less than £10,000 ($12,871 US).
Speaking of his dream build, Dodman says, “In general, the hardest thing to learn from a DIY perspective was plumbing – that’s quite annoying. If you do it wrong, you get drips and stuff.” He continues, “But it’s not as hard as I thought it was going to be, it really is kind of like water LEGO.”
Since the pool was completed, Dodman added a garden cabin, a pergola with a large projection screen to watch games while soaking in the hot tub, a barbeque house and a playhouse for his two children.
Explaining he wasn’t “confident in DIY,” the renovations hobbyist says he learned by “just by giving it a go.”
“I’ve made mistakes and stuff doesn’t always turn out how you think but giving it a go is the best way.” Crediting YouTube for his successes, Dodman adds, “I learned almost everything from YouTube, and there are a lot of builders’ forums online where you can find help on loads of projects, any problem you come across, it’s likely someone else has in the past and has written about it online.”
