A Beginner’s Guide to DIY

Editorial

The first item in your arsenal of tools is confidence. Not the blind, foolhardy confidence that permits you to believe that you are capable of rewiring your apartment. For goodness sake, the only electrical task you should attempt beyond using the TV remote is changing a light bulb. Of course, if you have, as I did, an old-fashioned ceramic fuse box in your home, you may wish to graduate to changing a fuse. I can only do this only because my uncle is a sparky. If you do not have a professional to demonstrate this task, you may wish to call your energy provider for endorsed advice and/or call someone to replace the old ceramics with switches. These have the added bonus of helping you not to die in a blaze of electrical hellfire. Anyhow. We want reasonable confidence.

This confidence will build as each successful task is done. As I once had little confidence and was terribly excited by the roulette of Will He Be a Hot Tradie, I have often called handymen to my home. When I was preparing to sell a house, though, I became very thrifty and determined to learn a thing or two. I now fulfil my Tradie fantasies by hanging around the carpentry section at Bunning’s (for some reason, carpenters are far more edible than their plumbing mates) and I continue to fill my toolbox. With TOOLS, damn you. Not with tradesmen.

You can build the DIY you by design or by natural evolution. That is, you could go out and buy a basic toolkit of, say, claw hammer, electrical screwdriver and ladder and prepare for an efficient future. Or, you can, as I did, acquire the items as needs arise.

A ladder is an item I continue to find indispensible. I first acquired it, and a few good quality paint brushes, to touch up the cornices. Mr Ladder made it possible for me to spring clean to Realty standards, change those bastard little halogen lamps and even add a few shelves to my kitchen cupboards to maximise storage. With some L-brackets and a few shelves cut to size at the superstore (clearly, I also bought a tape measure) I just needed a cordless electrical screwdriver to get these babies in.

Of course, there are those more experienced handy types who sniff at my screwdriver and flourish their all-purpose, hammer-action drills. Built, seriously, I ain’t ever going to build an ark in the backyard and I’d rather bear the horror of IKEA than make my own shelves. The humble screwdriver has helped me install a coat rail for my front cupboard (I used a discounted towel rail and mounted it on the ceiling; it’s a dodgy solution but it’s going strong after three years), innumerable pictures and handy hooks.

Your toolkit is best built of necessity. Frequent trips to the DIY store not only guarantee eye-candy (there’s hot lady tradies stalking the aisles as well!) but alert you to other home-improvement possibilities, like grout paints and stainless steel polish, and, very often, they offer DIY clinics. Even if you really don’t care about the correct cleaning of concrete, you can approach the event as another way to unlock your DIY logic. Or, if you prefer, as a singles bar.

Now. If you’ll excuse me. I’m off to hire a vibrating plate to compact my granitic sand pathway.

Helen Razer, Citysearch