DIY? Not a clue, but I’ll gIve It a DI-trY!

There are lots of jobs to do at home — if only we knew how to do them, says Mark Palmer

the good news is that we have plenty of time to embark on much-needed DIY. The bad news is that many of us don’t know the difference between a hacksaw and a wrench, never mind changing a plug or fixing wonky bookshelves. A wood chisel? Not a clue.

At least, that seems to be the case among millennials as they come face to face with their sheer incompetence on the DIY front.

According to a survey of more than 1,000 British millennials, the tools they struggle to identify are, from the top: bench vice, calliper, bar clamp, jigsaw and industrial shears. In fact, the only tools they can identify are chainsaws, hammers and screwdrivers.

Mildly depressing, you might think. But, then there’s a strong generational element to all this. After all, how many pensioners are up to speed with computer-speak and know the difference between a ram on their hardware and a ram munching on the spring grasses of Wales?

Never mind the battle between the young and old, what they share at this tricky time is a desire to do odd jobs around the home. It appears, as revealed by MyjobQuote ( myjobquote.co.uk), that more than 70 per cent of us are planning to complete DIY projects during the lockdown, with 32 per cent already having started.

Judgment day is upon us. Of course, there’s still some confusion about whether DIY shops are open or should be open, or what exactly constitutes a DIY business — and this gives us a readymade excuse for opting out.

But in my household that hasn’t cut much ice. I am not a millennial, but I’m certainly no handyman.

‘One of the doors has come off its hinges in the kitchen, can you fix it?’ said my wife Joanna at the weekend.

‘With what shall I fix it?’ I replied, apeing that familiar line from There’s A hole In My Bucket, Dear Liza Dear Liza.

‘ Well, you’ve got two toolboxes,’ she said, frostily.

And I do. I like having toolboxes, even though I seldom examine their contents.

Toolboxes are manly, macho, even. So I got out the toolboxes and, to my surprise, found everything I needed: a hand drill, screwdriver and screws longer than the measly ones that had failed dismally to do their job on the kitchen cupboard.

Off to work I went, but it quickly became apparent that I could not put the hinges back in the same place. I would have to make new holes for the screws, but as soon as I did that, the MDF (mediumdensity fibreboard, I’ll have you know) seemed to give way.

There was nothing much for the screws to latch on to. Then, when I thought the screws were performing at last, the whole hinge came away. I gave up.

Later in the day, I did some picture- hanging. This also required a drill because the walls I was attempting to hang pictures on were brick, not plasterboard.

agAIN,my drill was a hand one, not electric. This meant that the penetration was the very opposite of fast and sharp, with the result that large chunks of the wall broke away. It looked as if it was damage caused by a bullet.

So, before a bullet of a different kind came my way from Joanna, I banged in a picture hook as best I could and put up the painting so it covered the disaster area. She hasn’t investigated as yet.

For my next job, I opted for something easy-peasy and one that might not even come under the DIY umbrella. But I can’t recommend it more highly: jet-wash spraying.

We had bought a Karcher K2 pressure washer for about £60 a couple of years ago and this would be its first outing.

Plug it in, attach a hose, squeeze the trigger and you’re off. It took me a couple of hours to jet wash our postage stamp of a paved garden but there was something wonderfully therapeutic about it, the dirt and grime surrendering easily to the power of the water. I felt I was expunging far more than mere physical stains.

And it got me out of the house. Since then, I’ve been brushing up on my DIY with the help of the internet. There’s a vast range of support out there. Just remember to start with the basics.