Why Jane should not do DIY….

I believe I am a capable woman, resourceful, strong, not easily fazed. It takes a lot to scare me and these shoulders can carry a lot.

But one thing causes me to crumble, sends my knees a knocking and my lower lip quivering.

Flat pack.

Or actually anything that requires a screwdriver, or an Allen key.

Because technically, when it comes to DIY, I am stupid. I can read Tolstoy but I can’t read instructions. I can build stories out of sentences but I cannot fasten anything together with screws.

It’s my nemesis… And when I was part of a two, one job I was always happy to pass to the other half.

However…

Now I am a single, independent, woman (no singing please) it falls upon me to build anything that goes in my home.

And that thought is terrifying…

Last night, my nightmare became a reality.

The beautiful home and garden website, Wayfair, had sent my daughter, Molly a new bed to replace the one that she has had for years. Molly was so excited she could barely sleep – which wouldn’t surprise anyone based on the poor excuse for a mattress she was used to falling asleep upon.

This weekend Molly was away, and the bed arrived in four separate boxes and even though the instructions looked simple enough, my mind merely saw gobbly goop.  All I had to do, was get what was in the box, to look like this…

However, this terrified me – so instead – I just carried it outside and put it in my secure Apex Shed.

Until I had time to become a DIY pro….

Then I did what any self-respecting independent woman would do in this situation. I went to my local Facebook group for the area and asked who knew a handyman.

Then before the usual swarm of help flooded in, in the form of comments, a friend caught the post and publicly shamed me.

The general gist of what she said was,

“Woman up and do it yourself…”

And do you know what she was right. For too many years this inability to fasten screw to metal and build something stable has plagued me. It was time to sort it out…

So I poured the wine, grabbed the boxes from the shed and started to work….

Image courtsey of Shutterstock.

I began with determination and put the old bed against the wall and took all the new bits of the new bed out and laid them on the floor.

Then I hit a teeny, tiny,  hurdle.

I couldn’t find the allen key to take the old bed down….

The old Jane would have given up, but the new Jane persevered.  I wandered out to the garage on the hunt for the keys.

It was then I got a tiny bit distracted.

The garage looked like the Tasmanian Devil had thrown a party for his friends, it was the last place that needed sorting since our move last month.  Feeling inspired, I had the wise idea that I could have a quick garage clean up, find the keys, crack on with the bed….

This my friends, was the beginning of the end.

I have a lot of paint pots in the garage and in my wooden garden shed, that have been moved from house to house, so I worked quickly moving them from one corner to the other in an orderly fashion.

Until….

The floor attacked me, I tripped over nothing with my arms full of paint and fell slowly to the floor, my arms spread out in front of me and the paint flew through the air.  I watched with a whimper as a full can of Scarlett red paint careened to the ground, splitting open and covering the concrete until my garage resembled a murder scene.

I swore in exasperation, and began grabbing towels, old curtains and papers to soak up the oozing red liquid.  I whipped around trying to stop the flow and caught my foot against something hard.  I felt it tip and them watched, gobsmacked as a tub of brown paint wobbled and then crashed to the floor; it snuggled into the red and began seducing the floor.

I could have cried.

The paint flowed like a river, finding cracks in the floor and sneaking into gaps between shelving units.

I didn’t have enough towels.

Shrieking, I ran back into the house, grabbed more towels, and ran out of the house.  I cursed as I saw my own red footprints laughing at me from the kitchen floor.

My DIY hell was simply hell, and I had not even started.

Three hours later, 7 towels, 2 sets of old curtains, three bed sheets and an old rug, plus three bottles of bleach and the floor was back to concrete colour.  I was knackered, I looked like an extra from a horror show and the fecking allen key was still nowhere to be found.

I returned to my Facebook group and booked a handyman for the morning…

He brought his own allen keys….

He dismantled the old bed and assembled the new in less than 30 minutes…

It cost me next to nothing, and no time at all…

Molly’s new bed is beautiful, it suits her room perfectly, is fantastic quality and hopefully will never have to be dismantled.  You can check out all the fabulous items for the home at Wayfair by clicking this link.

I am never being seduced into thinking I can build flat pack again!