I’m not a DIY enthusiast. In fact, it’s fair to say that I have absolutely no interest in it. My late father was in the building game and he was always there if I needed something fixed. There are others now who fix things for me and it’s a very simple arrangement. I give them money and they fix stuff.
Some people are good with tools and some can’t drive a nail, so I think it’s reasonable to let those who know what they’re doing to get on with it. It’s horses for courses.
The other thing about DIY is that you’re wasting your time if you haven’t got the proper equipment. If you try to change a tap in the kitchen and the only tool you have in the shed is a shovel, then you’re off to a bad start. You can be pretty certain in that case that you are going to run into problems. By the same token, if you want to fix the roof then you will need something other than your garden hose.
The other thing to keep in mind is that there is no such thing as a simple job. Neither is there any job that will only take five miniutes. So, when someone tells you; “Ah, sure you’ll have it done five miniutes”, that’s the time to cut and run because it’s not going to end well.
If I hammer a nail into the wall to hang a picture, there is a good chance that I’ll hit an electric cable and half the wall will have to come down to fix it. If I dig a hole in the floor, then I’m guaranteed to hit a water pipe, flood the house and upset the foundations. At that stage, I have to call in someone to fix the chaos.
Even painting can be problematic. When your wife says that she wants the hall touched up, that’s really code for “I’m going to completely redecorate the entire house.” Then she’ll decide that the colour needs to be changed so everything will have to get at least two coats. Anyway, there is no such thing as a touch up because once you start, everything else looks shabby. The best thing to do is just leave it alone.
When the weather starts to improve, my queen turns her attention to the outdoors. I have no interest in the garden or anything that grows in it. One of the reasons that I was happy to leave my last home in the country was because of the large amount of grass, hedging, trees and shrubs that needed my attention.
When I started out in that house, the garden was very manageable. The hedge was low. So low in fact that in the early days we thought that it was deceased but we eventually encouraged it back to life. It repaid us over the years by growing to enormous proportions and nearly swallowing up the house in the process.
When we planted the trees, they were about a foot high and there were lots of them. They looked lovely at first and again they were minded, watered and spoken to until they took on a life of their own. Years later, cutting them became a major operation.
The shrubs, like everything else, became fully grown adult bushes that housed many dark secrets like bugs, thorns and other stuff that attacked human flesh. Every time I went out to cut the grass I was going to war with nature. That garden, that was supposed to be a piece of Heaven, became a living, killing, evil, spiteful piece of demonic jungle. I had to escape from it.
Now, in my current home, I have very little greenery but still no peace.
Recently, I decided that as the weather was starting to improve, I would cut the grass. The garden shed has a pvc door but it was locked of course and the key was missing. So, I went on YouTube to find out how to get through a locked pvc door without a key. No problem they said, it’s just a five miniute job. That worried me straight away.
So, the guy on YouTube did his thing and hey presto, in about thirteen seconds, the lock was in bits on the floor and the door was open. It was my turn next. I gathered the necessary equipment and prepared for an assault on the lock. I did what I was told on the video but it didn’t look as if I was going to break the thirteen second mark. In fact, it was beginning to look as if the entire shed might be demolished with the door still locked.
I grabbed the lock with the vice grips but instead of snapping off as it did in the video, it hung on for dear life. It was working against me. But I got into the zone and stuck with it and eventually it popped off. Half an hour later and the rest of the lock was in pieces and I was in.
Replacing it was supposed to be another five miniute job but that involved several trips to the hardware store, some huffing and puffing, some choice language and some skinned knuckles. By the time I was ready to cut the grass it started raining so I had to abandon it.
The moral of this story is that sometimes when you need something done, it’s better to call people who know what they’re doing. No matter what anyone tells you, there is no such thing as a quick fix. So, the next time someone suggests doing a little spring cleaning, painting, grass cutting or any other job that will only take five miniutes, tell them to get lost.