Things to do before you DIY

From the day he gets his first carpentry set for Christmas, the male of the species is conditioned to thinking he can make the world a better place with the aid of a hammer and a few rusty nails. Women, on the other hand, are far more sensible and know that, just as it takes more than a vacuum cleaner and dishcloth to beautify our surroundings, having the right tools does not necessarily mean you can create masterful bookshelves out of a few scraps of lumber.

It’s all very well if you happen to have the hands of a maestro and know instinctively how to transform a couple of 4x2s into a French-polished dressing table but, beware: doing it yourself can be a nightmare.

I once had the temerity to join the brotherhood of Do-It-Yourselfers, imagining marbleised paintwork in the hall, eat-your-heart-out parquet flooring in the living room and wall-to-wall plaster cornicing in the bathroom.

I had all the tools a handyman could wish for: the drill, the electric jigsaw, four foot level, belt sander, copper pipe cutters, soldering iron, even a plug-in glue gun which looked like Captain Kirk’s phaser in Star Trek.

The first onslaught occurred in the vicinity of the bathroom which was no bigger than a bar of soap and had one of those colored plastic tubs that squeak and shift position like a diva on a water bed, only not half as much fun. It was a narrow room and I figured what a pity it was that the bath wasn’t half a foot shorter and could be put along the short wall under the window rather than taking up all that room.

Brainwave: plug in electric jigsaw and amputate the top of the bath. As brainwaves go, it was in the Neanderthal class. To make matters even better than worse, after an hour of hauling and huffing, I made the mistake of proclaiming the deed to be yet another triumph of human endeavor.

A voice came from the landing:

“What about the faucets?”

The enquiry seemed strangely out of kilter with my feelings of pride, elation and general well-being.

“What faucets?”

“The (expletive deleted) faucets that were on the (expletive deleted) bath before you decided to neuter it with that (expletive deleted) electric (expletive deleted) jigsaw.”

Oops! The faucets were cut off in their prime along with the six inches of bathtub. The conversation that followed was less Mills and Boon, more Stephen King. Imagine a very angry partner in Night of the Living Dead mode.

Undaunted, I attempted a pincer movement along the hallway, putting down a cork floor that had more craters than the dark side of the moon and installing an electric, pumped power-shower the wrong way round so that it sucked water out instead of delivering it.

The solution was simple. “For sale: sturdy family home in need of a little repair. Enormous potential. Reasonable reserve.”

For all his bull about the need to make a full inspection of the premises and “not expecting too much”, the real estate agent failed to notice the absence of protuberances from the vicinity of the bath and we were far too shy to mention it.

I have since learned the error of my ways and nowadays my garage serves as a sort of old folks’ home for a dusty collection of whatsits and thingys I know will never come in useful but I haven’t the heart to throw out.

Among those demons lie an electric jigsaw and a huge collection of multi-coloured concrete wall plugs. These items, along with electric saws, tile cutters and battery-driven screwdrivers are the marks of male enslavement, the products of a worldwide conspiracy to entrap men into thinking they can make the world safe for democracy with a double-sided, two-speed drill with orbital sander and spare chuck.

Which is why anyone who dares ask me to lift so much as a screwdriver in future will be told to DIY.

Instead, I am happy to greet the man in the boiler suit like a long-lost brother and watch the proceedings from the comfort of my store-bought armchair.

I must confess to smirking knowingly at the misfortune of others, like the friend who drilled through the wall of his semi-detached home right into the neighbor’s front room. The neighbor, a 6’4” policeman, had interesting suggestions of where to shove his drill.

In the meantime, the rain gutter at the side of the house has just collapsed in a tangled heap in the garden and has all the rustic appearance of a roadside sculpture. I have somehow managed to break, yet again, the door of the washing machine and the kitchen sink is blocked with what looks like chewing gum. Not to worry: there is bound to be an expert out there.

It still shocks me, though, to see a really handy handyman at work and I find the exclusive language they employ to be quite poetic in its cadences. Electricians are particularly inscrutable: “I can see the trouble now. You have a problem with your LCB” or “a three-quarter inch motorised valve should do the trick, but it’ll cost ya.”

I can only pray that his brother is a heart surgeon if ever I happen to be in the need of a quick bypass which, judging from the bill, I will probably need all too soon.

Still, it could be worse. The house remains standing and Superman arrived in double-quick time with his box of tricks to make everything shipshape again. He was nothing if not a gentleman. No smart remarks, no mutterings of discontent with the malefactor who mucked things up.

In fact, he was kind enough to observe that if it weren't for people like me, guys like him would be out of a job.