For me, DIY is always a brush with calamity
SEEMS it could be the e-n-d for DIY and that’s A-OK by me. Home improvement planning applications have tumbled as families tighten belts and, with apologies to purveyors of anaglypta and fiddly pipe fittings, I’m delighted.
An utter lack of facility with paintbrush, hammer and screwdriver means I cannot abide DIY.
It’s never like it is on the adverts, where smiling couples glide through major facelifts then sit smug, feet up, for a movie and a glass of wine.
We mortals end up tetchy, crunching plaster dust for days, and the first thing you spot when you flop exhausted is a bit you’ve missed or a thing that doesn’t close, or the bodge you hoped would be invisible is as obvious as a cowpat on a billiard table.
A relative is a first-class builder, a man who in six months extended his home by a third.
Me? We’ve been in our modest redoubt on the Ayrshire Riviera for more than 20 years and the front doorbell is still just a push-button not attached to any mechanism.
I will get round to it One Day, but I know the ‘Wireless! No drilling!’ bells for sale in the vast, soulless cathedrals of DIY will fail to operate as advertised after my cack-handed installation.
And don’t get me started on selfassembly. A swing bought for my daughter’s third birthday was hurled into the woods when I discovered two hours spent fitting the seat were wasted as the legs had to be attached first.
One of the most miserable nights of my life was when I returned from a difficult day at work to find my darling wife halfway up a ladder, paint scraper in hand, declaring: ‘You’re just in time to help!’ when all I wanted was the solace of a barmaid and ice-cold lager.
(My wife was removing cork tiles fitted to an entire wall – someone else’s bodged DIY. They seemed welded on and had the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards applied them to their armoured vehicles, they would have been impervious to anti-tank artillery.)
Am I ashamed of my inability to plumb the bathroom, paper the lobby or spruce up the soffit?
Not a bit – and I suspect many share my DIY aversion. We chaps are expected to be good at it, though why escapes me.
NO ONE sees someone with heart problems and says: ‘I’m not a surgeon, but IKEA do that Slaktare cardio-thoracic set – I’ll give that triple bypass malarkey a go this weekend…’ The tradesman is worth his hire and I have no regrets about getting in the experts.
A man who had been Scottish Painter & Decorator of the Year (yes, there’s such a thing) single-handedly hung a wall’s worth of paper and covered a radiator with specialist paint in the time it took me to brew him a cuppa.
I am comfortable with my peculiar skill set. I know fegatini is Italian for liver and so will never accidentally order it in a restaurant.
And you might struggle to get in my house as I have no doorbell but once there, never face me alone at Trivial Pursuit.