How to be a Husband

by Tim Dowling

  Before we got satellite TV, one of my regular maintenance jobs involved climbing out of a second-floor window and hauling myself onto the flat roof at the back of the house in order to whack the aerial back into position with a mop handle. Looking up there now, I honestly do not know what I was thinking.

  • Is the cause of the trouble so baffling to you that you suspect poltergeists?

  This has happened to me twice: once when it started raining in the sitting room, and once when the burglar alarm started going off whenever the phone rang. In the latter case, I didn’t even know what sort of repairman to call. I thought about ringing a priest.

  I was not born to this work.

  My first adventures in DIY involved standing or lying alongside my father as he tackled small repair jobs. Although a dentist by training, he did not fear basic plumbing, routine engine maintenance, hard landscaping, or simple carpentry. He could gap a spark plug, patch a driveway, or plant a fence post—jobs I have never had occasion to attempt. He did not, in any formal sense, teach me anything about DIY, but I learned a lot about swearing. He also instilled in me the belief that in most cases it was worth having a go, and he once showed me how to mold a missing lawnmower part from the stuff they make dentures out of.

  It is a tradition I have carried on with my sons. I never undertake a big DIY job without first tracking down a child to hold my tools.

  “Why me?” the child always screams.

  “Because I found you first,” I say. “Bad luck.”

  Usually I preface the task with a short lecture—an overview of the problem, and my proposed solution, right or wrong—before moving on to step-by-step narration.

  “So by turning the valves on either side to the twelve-o’clock position,” I say, “I isolate the filter from the system, enabling me to remove the bottom portion. Or so says YouTube.”

  “And why I am here?” says the boy.

  “You are here because insurance companies like witnesses.”

  “But it’s boring,” he says.

  “Boring is good,” I say. “Trust me—we do not want this to become in any way interesting.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Hold the torch higher.”

  “I am.”

  “Christing fuck, where is all this water coming from?”

  Not many skills are passed on in these sessions—they’re mostly small lessons in coping with humiliation—but I feel the need to show my sons that sometimes a determined incompetence is all it takes to get the job done. You need no special gifts beyond a certain patience with your own uselessness.

  When I was their age I possessed as few skills as they do, although I eventually became adept at fixing the things that broke in our house most often. I could fit a new screen into a door blindfolded, because the dog burst through our screens on a weekly basis in summer and my mother took to buying replacement screening in big rolls to keep up with the damage. The job even came with its own special tool—a spline roller, it was called—which I wielded with considerable aplomb. But my knowledge remained local and specific, with large gaps in my understanding.

  Later, as a renter specializing in arrears, I never had much use for DIY. Repairs were just something various landlords refused to take care of until I paid up or moved out. My DIY career didn’t really get started until I moved to Britain.

  * * *

  During my first summer in London I have nothing to do while the world works all day. I spend the idle hours watching cricket on telly, but it would be fair to say I don’t understand the game—I can’t even tell whether they’re playing or just waiting to play. My girlfriend has recently moved into a one-bedroom flat in a newly refurbished terrace. Or mostly refurbished—the kitchen floor is still bare plywood. In a rash moment, during a touchy conversation about finances, I offer to install whatever sort of flooring she wants.

  One day she comes home with a single square ceramic tile—French, provincial, roughly cast, and about a centimeter thick. I cannot imagine how one would go about making it stick to the floor, but I am outwardly resolute.

  “I can do this,” I say. “Easy.” I’m not actually certain I can do it, but how hard can it be? They’re floor tiles, not ceiling tiles. Gravity will be on my side.

  The tiles are ordered. Only when they arrive do I realize I can’t cut them; they’re too thick. I can barely smash them with a hammer. Someone tells me I need a wet saw. I pretend to know what that is.

  A wet saw, I soon discover, is a high-speed circular saw with a water trough at the bottom to keep the diamond cutting blade from overheating. It is not the sort of thing the amateur floor tiler owns. It is the sort of thing he hires.

  I do not possess the credentials required to rent anything in the UK. I don’t have a credit card or a bank account or, strictly speaking, an address. I don’t even know the words one would use to negotiate such a transaction in Britain. My girlfriend, I decide, must hire a wet saw for me. In terms of personal emasculation, this is a memorable low point. I go with her to the hire shop but insist on lurking at the back, pretending to be another customer.

  “Hello, I would like to hire a wet saw, please,” she says to the man behind the counter. He is wearing a long brown coat, and a smirk.

  “What do you want with a wet saw?” he says, using the special patronizing tone men in brown coats reserve for women.

  “I’m not telling you,” she says.

  “If you don’t know what you want it for, how d’you know you need one?” he says.

  “It’s none of your business why I want it,” she says. “Perhaps I’ll take two.”

  This goes on for half an hour, during which period I feel the need to leave the shop and wait outside. By the time I return she has secured the wet saw, but she is refusing to let the man take her picture with a camera mounted above the till. He keeps pushing the button, and she keeps ducking.

  Eventually we get the wet saw home, but it’s not until the next morning that I have an opportunity to be alone with it. My standing in the eyes of my English girlfriend is at stake; I have made it sound as if expertise in these matters is something they hand out to everyone in America, and that I am a fairly typical representative of a highly competent super-race. Privately I’m just hoping the instructions will make everything clear, but there are no instructions apart from a sticker warning me not to cut my hand off.

  It sure slices tiles, though—quickly, easily and, once I get the hang of it, quite accurately. It’s incredibly loud and spews dust into the air, but I get all my cutting done by the afternoon, and am ready to start sticking the tiles to the floor. This is when I realize there’s a reason people are paid for this sort of work. It’s messy, awkward, and very hard on the knees. The walls aren’t straight, and the floor isn’t quite level. The next morning I discover that only about 30 percent of the tiles have stayed stuck. I chip all the old grout off the backs of the others and stick them down again. The next day 50 percent of those tiles have come up, plus 10 percent of the original 30 percent of stuck ones. When my girlfriend is home, I act as if this is to be expected, maintaining a cloudy aura of confidence in my work so far, as if belief itself might hold some more of these tiles to the fucking floor.

  It takes a week before all the tiles stay put when you walk on them. If it were my job I’d have got fired on day two, but I consider it a triumph.

  Haltingly, I begin to get to grips with being the person in our relationship who’s in charge of whatever needs doing in the DIY line. But it’s not easy—moving countries means that what little jargon I ever understood is now a foreign language. I don’t know the word English people use when they want to buy spackle. In the UK they say “paraffin” for “kerosene,” have two kinds of lightbulb fittings, and don’t always understand what the word “Phillips” means when applied to the head of a screwdriver. Everything is measured in metric; every fixing and faste
ning is a mystery. Few of my native skills prove to be of any use. In twenty years in the UK I have never come across a screen door that needs mending.

  Fortunately my arrival on these shores coincides with the rise of the DIY superstore. Within a couple of years they are everywhere. Never again do I have to endure a patronizing exchange with a man behind a counter who wants to know precisely what type of hinge I need, while I pretend to know what types of hinges there are.

  Now I can just go to the Homebase hinge aisle and buy a whole range—flush hinges, butt hinges, strap hinges, exposed, concealed, cranked, torque, levered, self-closing—without having to discuss it with anyone. One of them is bound to be right, and the others can sit in the tool cupboard awaiting future hinge challenges. It is one of the luxuries of long-term marital commitment that you can buy DIY materials without having a specific project in mind. Each purchase is a tiny act of faith that says, “I will still be here when whatever this thing is supposed to fix finally breaks.”

  But a lack of tools is one of the most difficult aspects of being new to DIY—you can’t get very far without the right gear. Trying to kit yourself out from scratch is expensive and potentially wasteful. You don’t want any tools you can’t operate, or ones designed for tasks you are unlikely to encounter in your lifetime. However much you think you want it, don’t buy a router, not even in a sale.

  You will, however, need a few key things to get started. Thankfully you won’t even have to go to a big-box superstore for most of this stuff—you should be able to pick it up in any decent corner shop.

  THE BEGINNER’S ESSENTIAL DIY TOOL CUPBOARD

  Glue. There are lots of types of glue, but you only need one kind: epoxy resin. This is the sort that comes in two tubes that you have to mix together. It takes a long time to set, but anything you stick together with this stuff stays stuck. All other glues are, frankly, a waste of time. Epoxy resin is also an essential form of replacement matter—you can build up broken edges with it, or reconstruct small parts by carving hardened globs of it. It’s a vital tool in the repair of cheap plastic toys.

  Clamps. This is to clamp things you’ve glued, so you don’t have to hold them together with your fingers for twelve hours. You’ll need several sizes.

  A random assortment of “making good” materials. There are many different plasters, putties, primers, fillers, mortars, hardeners, and sealants out there, designed to patch all manner of cracks and holes, or to render surfaces smooth, sound, and paintable. They’re not meant to be interchangeable, but they sort of are.

  A vise-grip. It’s like an adjustable, sprung grabber that locks on to things with tremendous tenacity, and replaces virtually all wrenches. Also counts as part of your clamp collection.

  Duct tape. Strong, sticky, and rippable into custom lengths, duct tape is a brilliant temporary solution—and a pretty good permanent solution—for most of life’s problems. I find it especially useful for securely affixing vacuum cleaner attachments that belong to an altogether different vacuum cleaner. Also counts as part of your clamp collection.

  An electric drill. Just as you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, you can’t DIY without putting holes in things.

  A comprehensive set of screwdrivers. There aren’t just two kinds of screwdriver. There are about forty. When manufacturers don’t want you fixing their products yourself, they often put them together using screws with peculiar heads—star-shaped, hexagonal, etc.—in the hopes that you won’t have the screwdriver to match. This effrontery is reason enough to have one of every kind there is. Anything you own, you should be able to take to bits, unless you own an X-ray machine.

  A scraper thing. Or a putty knife, if you like technical jargon. Mostly used to jam filler into cracks or to remove old paint. Also counts as part of your screwdriver collection.

  Reading glasses. If you need them, you will need them.

  A selection of sandpapers. From the sort so rough that it hurts to pick it up, to one so smooth you can’t tell which side is the back, and a few in between.

  A selection of wall plugs, with screws to match. Were it not for John Joseph Rawlings, your house would have no curtain rods, wall mirrors, or loo roll holders. All but your smallest pictures would be sitting on the floor, and your overhead lights would be hanging from their wires.

  Rawlings foresaw this nightmarish vision over a century ago, and patented the Rawlplug. Before that the method for fixing things to masonry was complicated, time-consuming, and beyond the limited skills of the average householder. His original plug was a jute fiber tube held together with glue and animal blood, but it worked on the same principles as today’s plastic equivalent: you drill a hole of appropriate size, tap in the plug, and then drive a screw into its center. As you turn the screw the plug deforms outward, expanding to fill the space and provide grip.

  A bag of plastic cable ties. First developed in the 1950s by the US electrical company Thomas & Betts, the cable tie—or zip tie—has become the great quick fix of modern times. This simple ratcheted plastic loop can be used to lash anything to anything—you just pull it tight with a pair of pliers and it stays tight until you cut it off. Very good for sticking bits of your car back on.

  IKEA tools. Hang on to those funny one-off tools that come with flat-pack purchases, in case you need to take the furniture in question apart later. When you build a child’s cot in situ, there’s never any compelling reason to check whether the completed unit will fit through the door. It won’t.

  Random broken stuff. Every blown light fitting, redundant switch plate, or bent handle you replace will contain a screw, nut, washer, or spring that might be useful for fixing something else later on. You need to store all these small parts in old jars and unlabeled envelopes. To be honest, these pieces of saved junk rarely come in handy, but the bits you throw away are always the ones you’ll wish you’d kept. A growing array of useless hardware inevitably leads to disputes about cupboard space, which is probably why my entire collection disappears every eighteen months or so.

  There. You’re ready for 75 percent of the DIY challenges you’re likely to face this year, and you haven’t even bought a saw yet.

  * * *

  Obviously, when you wish to pick up a new skill late in life in a desperate bid to shore up your self-worth, you don’t start with the basics. If you wanted to learn to play the guitar in a hurry, you wouldn’t begin with the correct posture, some fingering exercises, a lesson on musical notation, and a series of simple scales. You’d just go up to someone who can already play the guitar and say, “Show me the easiest song there is.” In that same tradition of the quick fix, we’ll jump straight into DIY at the shallow end, headfirst, without looking.

  FIVE THINGS YOU CAN ACTUALLY FIX BY HITTING THEM WITH A HAMMER

  1. Central heating pump. Sometimes gunk or scale from the system travels up to the pump and blocks it—think of it as your house experiencing a cardiac event. A judicious thump with a nicely weighted hammer can sometimes jerk the blockage free. I’ve done it myself, although not successfully. In the end I had to pay a plumber to come out and hit the pump slightly harder.

  2. Car starter. On those occasions when you turn the key in the ignition and nothing happens, it’s often worth opening the hood and giving the starter motor a considered tap, which can loosen the stuck mechanism, or allow the worn-out brushes to make contact, or something. I’ve tried this technique using a tent peg hammer from Millets, and it worked perfectly, although I should say I wasn’t entirely certain which bit was the starter motor—even after I printed out a picture of one—so I ended up hitting a lot of things for good measure.

  3. Recalcitrant flat tire. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you’ve got as far as removing the lug nuts and you’ve already jacked up the car, and yet the wheel still won’t come off—it’s jammed on there from driving. A sharp blow from the biggest hammer you own should knock it from its housing. Alte
rnatively, you could try kicking it. If the car falls off the jack, you’re doing it too hard.

  4. Unsound plaster/render analysis. How extensive is the problem? There’s one easy way to find out: just keep hitting it until it stops falling off. I should probably point out that this is just step one in a rather involved repair project.

  5. Virus-plagued computer. Admittedly drastic, and certainly a measure of last resort—but foolproof. Also very satisfying.

  THE THREE EASIEST DIY JOBS THERE ARE

  1. Replace your windscreen wipers. In terms of improving your outlook, both metaphorically and actually, you will find no better investment than new wipers. Up until quite recently, if you’d told me that windscreen wipers were expensive and difficult to fit, or were specific to your car model, or could only be removed using a special tool you needed a certificate to own, I would have believed you. It turns out wipers are universally adaptable, simple to install, and the poshest pair you can buy will only set you back about thirty quid. I don’t want to put ideas in your head, but they’re so easy to unclip that you could just steal a pair from another car. Here’s something else you may never have noticed, because you spend so much time staring through them instead of at them: the driver’s-side wiper is considerably longer.

  2. Fix inadequate rinse cycle.

  The problem: When you pull them hot from the dishwasher, some, if not all, of your dishes and glasses are encrusted with unidentifiable matter. This could be caused by some complex plumbing or software problem, but more often than not it’s because small bits of detritus are blocking the water-jet holes in the spinning spray arms, so they don’t turn, and if they don’t turn, they don’t rinse. In theory the culprit could be anything small enough to work its way into the intake, but big enough to block the holes, but in practice it’s almost always either pine nuts or Puy lentils. It is, truly, a middle-class curse.

  The solution: The spray arms—there are two, upper and lower—detach easily. Just run water through them under the tap and shake them out over the sink until whatever is caught in there falls out, and replace. I once wrote a book where the main character performed this simple act of maintenance, and I got an e-mail from a reader who said I’d saved him £250. It’s still the best review I’ve ever had.