I hope no one has concluded I’m in favour of - or any good at - DIY. As Hilaire Belloc recommends, my job is to give “give employment to the artisan”. I do this willingly, enjoying the further benefit of watching an expert at work. Grist for the post.My main failing, discussed before, is impatience. Once the tools are out of the toolbox I can’t wait for them to return. An unfinished project is a Damoclean sword; it’s ironic that, in a casual moment, I chose as blogonym the name of someone supremely efficient at DIY and everything else. But impatient DIY has other aspects.
You’re screwing in a wood screw that is getting tighter because you pre-drilled the hole with an impatiently selected and slightly-too-small drill bit. Sooner rather than later you will have to unscrew and re-drill the hole. But you fatally delay this decision for a further two turns; the effort is enormous and, in applying it, the screwdriver blade gouges the screw-head slot so that the blade no longer fits securely. Getting the damaged screw out takes an afternoon.
A piece of wood is oversize by a tiny amount. The obvious answer is to plane it. But a plane can be fiddly so you use a coarse file “because it’s quicker”. This creates a rounded edge instead of a flat rectangular one. Thus there are gaps at the junction when you mate this piece with another.
DIY, like genius, is an infinite capacity for taking pains. That I can recognise this defect in myself doesn’t mean I am any closer to resolving it.
