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'I got a chisel stuck in my arm last month," announces Julian Boffin, matter-of-factly.

"I was hanging a door and the chisel lodged in the lock. When I pulled it out it flew straight into my left arm.

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"There was no-one home and it looked like it was going to rain so I had to drag the door inside before driving myself off to hospital.
"There was quite a bit of blood about so I thought it best to leave a note to the customer explaining what had happened."

It would be fair to say that Julian has had his fair share of mishaps since leaving the world of journalism for a new career as a joiner.
Occupational hazards ranging from chisel-related injuries to burst water pipes and non-paying customers have all been encountered along the way.

"You definitely have to be a glass-half-full in this line of work," he admits.

"No job is ever the same and something invariably goes wrong. You have to be able to cope with that, because otherwise you simply don't get paid."

The 38-year-old was an online journalist at Yorkshire Television but left when he was told he would have to relocate to London. He promptly wangled his way on to a Government scheme set up in a bid to plug gaps in an industry desperately short of skilled workers.

But it was only after completing the six-month course that he really started learning how to be a tradesman.

"You've got to get five years in before you know what you're doing," he says.

"When you're looking for work you find that a lot of jobs demand at least that amount of experience.

"Everyone makes mistakes when they start out. Me and my mate once fitted a window the wrong way round. But you learn as you go along and now that I've been doing it for five years I'm always confident that I'll do a good job."

Growing up, Julian dreamt of working for Yorkshire Television but when that turned sour he fell back on a childhood hobby.

His dad used to mess around at weekends doing a bit of DIY and Julian used to help him. Then, when he was at university, he made a table out of an old shed door.

So when push came to shove it seemed like a good line of work to go into. "I would definitely recommend it to people who are thinking of doing something different," says Julian.

He estimates that a full-time joiner would expect to earn around £18,000 a year and cites the flexible working hours as one of the biggest perks.

"I worked in an office and you see a lot of blokes who are quite apathetic and are wasting their time, really. If you walked into a call centre and put the blokes in there on a six-month joinery course you would have much better people in the construction industry."

In his time in the industry, Julian, a dad-of-one who lives in Calverley, has picked up some handy tips, and he is now in the process of chronicling his entry into the world of tradesmen in a soon-to-be-published book Milk, No Sugar.

He always meets potential customers face-to-face so he can spot those who could present a problem when it comes time to pay. And if he's called to a household where the owners are rowing he will avoid it like the plague.

"Usually the husband has been trying to do the job himself but the wife has got fed up and given me a call. When I turn up he'll be there sulking round because he sees it as an insult to his masculinity.

"At some point he's going to say, 'I could do a better job than that' and will find an excuse to get out of paying. You just have to walk away.

"You also realise that the more wealthy someone looks, the harder it's usually going to be to get money out of them.

"A lot of it tends to be on credit so they will try to avoid paying you. The best customers are the ones who have the money on the table from the word go. That way you can do the job without thinking you might be doing all this work for nothing."

When it comes to giving advice to those looking for a tradesman,

Julian, who advertises his services on Facebook, is in no doubt what people should watch out for.

"If someone turns up in a dirty, clapped-out van it's never a good start," he says. "It's the same if a workman is rude and scruffy. That's a sure sign you're going to have problems.

"And don't think that just because someone's advert is in the paper 10 weeks on the trot that it must mean they're reliable and trustworthy.

"You usually have to buy them in blocks of 10 so that's pretty irrelevant and doesn't mean they haven't had a shed-load of complaints."