Someone save these soft hands from another DIY disaster

In the first of a new series, Will Gore sees his home improvement hopes turn to dust and despair

It may be time to close the toolbox for good (Getty)

“Do it yourself” is a phrase I use much too often. It is the answering refrain to any number of irksome requests from lazy children.

“Dad, can you clean my teeth for me?”

“No, you can do it yourself.”

“Dad, can you fill my water bottle?”

“Well, yes, but I think really you can do it yourself.”

“Daddy, can you turn the telly on?”

“Argh! Do it yourself, you little blighter!”

But sometimes the boot is on the other foot, and in response to my own silent questions the answering voice is the ghost of Barry Bucknell, the original DIY guru of the 1950s.

“Probably ought to get the oil in the car checked.”

“Come on fella, you can do that yourself in two shakes of a dog’s tail.”

“I wonder if we need to call someone out to look at that smelly drain.”

“A blocked drain? We used to run up one of them like a, well, you know. Do it yourself.”

“Do we still have the number of that carpenter? We need those shelves sorting.”

“For heaven’s sake, man! This isn’t what got us through the Blitz. Do it yourself and have some self-respect.”

And the thing is, I know Barry’s right. If I had a bit of nous and a tenon saw, I could do anything. But I don’t; and I can’t. The only spirit level I use regularly and effectively is a shot measuring cup.

Fifteen years ago, my wife-to-be and I bought our first flat – a damp, one-bedroom basement in south London. Talented tradesmen came and went, making it first habitable, then lovely. My feelings of inadequacy grew until I could bear it no longer and I hurried off to B&Q to buy a toolbox.

But when I got it back home, I realised there was no realistic place to store it. “Don’t worry”, I said brightly, “I’ll make a box to keep it in.” The eye roll which quite reasonably greeted that brainwave is still coming back down.

As I type this, with my soft hands, unsecured planks litter my daughter’s bedroom 

I actually made a half-hearted attempt to build my box for a box. It didn’t work. My wife remembers the episode fondly – and often.

Still, during the coronavirus lockdown, I was buoyed by some practical successes. In the garden I attached some trellis to a fence and created a wildlife pond; in the house, my wife and I decorated a couple of rooms and remained on good terms throughout. I even constructed some tricky flatpack furniture without at any stage claiming that a vital piece was missing.

Lulled into a false sense of my own handiness, when my daughter asked if she could have some new shelves and a desk, I felt ready to answer the call. This would be the final touch to her newly painted room, and I sketched out a plan to show what I had in mind. On paper, it all looked easy enough.

Planning, I knew, would be the key. I went to the nearest homeware store feeling confident, grabbing a slab of MDF, a long bit of timber for the desk legs, some fixings and some screws. What could possibly go wrong?

Things started to unravel when I realised the alcove I was building the shelves into wasn’t quite square itself, so a measurement which was right for one cross-section wasn’t right for another. Then, becoming overly cautious, I cut various pieces of wood a couple of millimetres too wide and had to borrow my neighbour’s electric sander to make them fit.

Having next sanded my own thumb, I subsequently realised I didn’t have enough screws of the size I required. And in frustration I stabbed at my botched creation and broke the point of my bradawl. For a few moments, I wished I was running the test and trace system, which must surely be an easier gig.

As I type this, with my soft hands, unsecured planks litter my daughter’s bedroom and her books – waiting patiently for a home – gather the dust that is the despairing evidence of my effort and my deficiency.

It is highly conceivable that I may be forced at some stage to concede defeat, just as has happened on previous occasions when DIY over-confidence has got the better me. I might call Billy, the master carpenter who constructed beautiful wardrobes for us in rooms that I evidently didn’t regard as suitable places for my experimentation.

“Christ alive, mate!” he may well exclaim. “Which cowboy did this?”

And I will sigh sadly, close my toolbox for the last time; and then take it on my weak, middle-class chin: “I did it myself.”