My misadventures in DIY

Anyone can put an IKEA bookcase together, right? Wrong! I am what you might call Jonny the destroyer when it comes to the ancient art of DIY.

Shop attendants tremble when I enter Bunnings (or Bunnies as my mom used to like to call it) for they, like my family, friends and wife know how much I hate anything to do with screwdrivers, nuts, bolts, wood, paint, plaster etc.

So upset do I become in these vomit-inducing, nail-biting and vertigo-causing emporiums that once, after jumping up and down and ranting and raving, a young, frightened staff member, turned to my wife and said I think it would be best if your husband left the store, now!

If you want to torture me, don’t whip me or set me on fire; just tell me that we have to go to IKEA or Bunnings and that will be punishment enough.

Surely IKEA, a model of Swedish efficiency gone mad, was invented by some sick sadist – or the devil himself – judging by how hard it is to get out once you are in.

Oh yes, they are signs that say exit this way but, like a bad movie, the end never comes!

It is just miles and miles of DIY torture – a testimony to everything I dread and fear.

It once took me an entire day to put together an outdoor table and chairs, that’s right a day! I thought it was quite an achievement but, in someone else’s skilful hands, it probably would have taken an hour tops.

If I look around our house I see tables, chairs, a TV stand, a bookstand, a CD/DVD stand, a swing set etc.  put together – over the past 10 years - by our friends with such skill and dexterity you would think they were hammering out Beethoven’s  Theme from Symphony No.7.

When I start trying to put things together, there is generally a lot of cursing, gnashing of teeth and crying – and that’s just trying to get the box open!

Why is everything DIY these days? Is it just to tease and irritate me? I mean my poor daughter’s third birthday present – a trampoline – sat in our garage, unopened, for months, mocking and taunting me with its nuts, bolts, netting and springs!*

It got so bad that a good friend’s wife berated me, in front of others I might add, for not putting it together.

I am surprised that you don’t have to put together your own meals at the IKEA deli!

There are some things I can do well or am good at – read, listen to music, exercise, sarcasm and general knowledge are some examples – but DIY is definitely not one of them.

In fact I would like to propose the renaming of DIY forever – instead of calling do it yourself (DIY) I am going to call it DIFM (do it for me)!

 Any takers?

*By the way the trampoline was finally put together – thanks to the help of a good friend. I am proud to say I helped (primarily in a supervisory capacity).