I am really not all that handy around the house.  Don’t get me wrong, I can clean, cook and fold laundry like the best of them, but when it comes to actual home repairs or improvements, I usually run for the internet and it’s wise recommendations of service providers.

But I do realize that paying someone to do basic tasks gets expensive and makes me feel helpless. However if you looked at my track record with household duties, you could see why hiring a professional might be worth it in more than one way.  I have recently become addicted to blogging (I was trying to replace my trashy reality TV addiction). And while perusing all the sordid details of suburbia on various blogs, I came across many blogs dedicated to DIY home improvement. Considering I only owned a hammer and didn’t even own a screwdriver, DIY home improvement seems incredibly daunting. But I succumbed to the old thought: “If they can do it, so can I.” So I advise staying tuned this year to see if I burn down the house, destroy any walls, or fall through the roof. Any of these are sadly probably pretty realistic possibilities when I am left to my own DIY devices.

There are several scenarios that cause Clinton to shudder at the thought of me picking up a hammer or a paintbrush. Or god forbid a power drill.  There was time I put a plastic cutting board inside the oven and couldn’t figure out why I smelled plastic burning.  I also learned that if you wash an ink pen with a load of white dress shirts, those white dress shirts will come out of the wash sporting gorgeous new black patches.  Our walls also sport several scars for misguided attempts at the art of hanging pictures.  I can never seem to get a picture to hang with the first attempt of putting a nail through the wall.

This was the chaos of moving (never again)

Unfortunately for Clinton’s sanity I hate measuring or doing prep work. For example, if you are going to hang curtains, you should probably measure where each end of the curtain rod needs to be and mark that spot with pencil. I preferred the less meticulous and less time consuming method of simply guestimating where each end should be. The problem with this method is that sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn’t, and when it didn’t, the process became more time consuming then if I had just measured out the right distance.  But I prefer to think of my guestimating as an art, and if there is chance that it will cut down on the amount of time required to complete a task then even better.

Clinton is afraid that I will carry over my disdain for being meticulous into the painting arena and our walls will give off the impression that we turned a five year old loose in our house with a bucket of paint.  Apparently before you can paint, you have to take everything off the walls and then tape all the edges. Well at first this didn’t sound so bad. Taking everything off the walls is certainly easy enough. And how hard can it be to stuff some tape on the walls. Clearly I had no idea. You have to get the tape right up on the edge, and make sure it is in a straight line, and that is securely stuck to the wall.  This sounds exhausting. You literately have to tape every edge in the room. Talk about time consuming and tedious. It is really necessary??  According to anybody who has ever painted, yes it is. So I can see why Clinton might be a little apprehensive about my painting techniques.?

And I picked hanging blinds as a relatively easy project. However upon closer examination, blinds are deceptively tricky to manipulate. First of all the directions are written in a way only an engineer would understand. Which is the first problem. They are assuming that I can read and hang at the same time. That is a pretty big assumption. Why can’t they just draw me a picture of the steps? It doesn’t have to be a fancy picture. It can be stick people. Just draw me a stinking picture. And while you are at it, explain to me how in the world you get them into the correct position and get them to stay there.

Do they offer master’s degrees in home improvement because I might need one?