It’s 8.01am on a Saturday morning and I’m standing in a workshop in Croydon, surrounded by paint-splattered benches and boxes of tools. It is not my natural environment. For the first time in my life, I’ve swapped my ballet flats for steel toe-capped boots, and my flat white for a cup of tea bought for £1 at reception in The Builder Training Centre (thebtc.co.uk).
I’m here to complete the two-day Home Maintenance Course (£250), and my teacher for the weekend is Pete Dancy, a South Londoner and builder of 53 years. There are six of us in the class, including a policeman, a doctor and several newbie homeowners, and the one thing that unites is that we’re all completely useless at DIY.
When I was 18 and at university, I turned up at the porter’s lodge with a desk lamp that had stopped working. The porter handed me a light bulb and said I needed to change it; I stared at him as if he’d asked me to crack the Enigma code.
Five years later I was living with two girlfriends in Clapham. There wasn’t an ounce of DIY capability between us. I once built an Ikea desk for my flatmate so badly that the drawer wouldn’t fit in; she simply turned it round to face the wall so no one would notice it was missing. Our fire alarm beeped every 20 seconds for a year – we had no idea how to fix it. When the fuse switch needed flicking, I did it with the handle of a badminton racket, because I was so terrified of electrocution through sheer cluelessness.
Luckily, I found a boyfriend (now husband), who is slightly more practical than me and has done everything around the house for the past 12 years. But recently my Instagram feed has become full of drill-toting women doing renovations, and I wanted to be more like them. Plus, I’ve often found myself nagging my husband for months to do DIY jobs. It all fed into a growing sense of frustration. Why couldn’t I just do this stuff myself?
So here I am, learning a myriad of skills, from how to use a rip saw (hold your index finger along the side like you’re about to pull a trigger, and tilt the saw to 45 degrees so it doesn’t get caught) to drilling into stone walls (I’m amazed at the amount of weight you have to throw behind the drill for this). When I’m not learning to ‘cut in’ paint like a professional decorator or wielding a spirit level, I’m furiously making notes: about Pete’s preferred brand of filler (Toupret) or the tool I need to buy to ensure I do not electrocute myself (a voltage tester pen, the anxious DIY-er’s best friend).
In class we try our hand at plumbing, where I learn about the little handle on pipes that lets you shut off water, and that changing a tap washer yourself will save you a fortune. There’s tiling, too; removing tiles is a hellish job, confirms Pete, but I quite enjoy replacing them, spacing out each tile carefully before I stick them on.
One of the most useful things we learn is how to replace mouldy silicon sealant around the bath or shower – a problem most of us will have faced. The DIY fix is very doable, you need little more than a pen knife and a tube of sealant. Pete’s top tips? Give the area an extremely thorough clean before applying the silicon, as it’s like a magnet for dust, and lick your finger before using the sealant to smooth it out once it’s on for a perfect finish every time.
While that’s a job I’m definitely up for trying at home, other lessons leave me cold. Namely electronics, where my creative brain short-circuits every time I try to understand the rules of wiring a plug. I’d be far too terrified to mess around with anything electrical at home, just as I think it’s unlikely I’d ever attempt to tackle repairing a burst water pipe, even though this is included in the course.
However, overall I feel empowered by the new skills I’ve gained. Partly, it’s the ability to spot a problem at home and deal with it, without having to whinge at my poor husband for eternity. I am overjoyed when I manage to fix our leaky kitchen tap; the dripping has been driving me crazy for weeks. More generally, I enjoy having a greater understanding of how my house is put together; it makes me feel more in control and less freaked out when things do go wrong.
Pete suggests we put our certificate for completing the course up on the wall, so if a tradesperson ever comes round they don’t try to fleece us. I’m pleased to say that whereas previously hanging a frame on a wall would’ve felt as viable to me as landing on the moon, now I might actually be able to manage it.
