Nothing like a nice bit of tiling. Empty the Woodie's bag. Get the tools out. Destroy a good saucepan by mixing the adhesive in it (none of your premixed tubs for me). Trowel it on. Fix the tiles. Ah, sure nobody will notice that dodgy bit when the grout goes on. Mortar them in. Wipe them down. Wonder if this stuff will wash off my new jeans, which, for some stupid reason, I have worn, writes Conor Goodman
One fireplace clad in sea-green slate later, I show the gleaming handiwork to wife, with a shadow of hope that this display of manliness might lead her to view her soft-handed husband in a new light. "What? What's wrong with it? It's supposed to look like that. It's, um, the distressed look."
Remove the tiles. Bloody well start all over again - and this time try to get them straight. Have an accident while trying to balance trowel, tile and the Collins DIY Manual simultaneously. Flagging now. Aaargh! Retreat to computer and start tapping on the keyboard. Oh God! I know I'm truly sick of tiling when I choose to write an article instead. Was it really a good idea to undertake this myself? Maybe Tom Sawyer had the right idea about DIY: get someone else to do it.
It seems not to be in the spirit of our modern economy to carry out your own home improvements. Economists say (or rather, I read one who said) that an economy thrives on specialisation. Hence, a typical Irishman 200 years ago had an impressive suite of skills - crop-growing, animal husbandry, building, thatching, and so on - but was probably on the breadline. Today, we have few general builders any more, but lots of companies with names such as The Attic Man, Holemasters or We Fit Prefinished Bevelled Pine Skirting Boards and Absolutely Nothing Else, and Ireland is a prosperous country. Thus, the subdivision of tasks keeps quality and productivity high and lots of money sloshing around.
Applying this theory to the home front, I should not be tiling or painting. I should be a journalist and nothing else, a jack of one trade and master of it alone. But my relationship with my toolbox is not so simple. DIY-ers are driven by many motives: childish curiosity about how things work, the desire to improve our own homes with our own hands, and the sense of achievement on seeing our work complete. But mostly we're just scabby gits. There is no workmanship so beautiful as that which costs nothing. The words "I'm not paying some numbskull to come down here and make a total hames of something I could do myself for nothing" could be the DIY-er's motto.
There are other attractions - for example, while a domestic improvement project is under way, we're tacitly excused from normal tasks such as parenting, vacuuming and washing ourselves. The more I think about it, the more I think it's a dream job. As our own clients and vendors, we're unsackable. And as volunteer workers, we're above criticism. Any negative comments can be shaken off with a little low-grade martyrdom. Drench yourself in sweat, cake yourself in plaster, let minor cuts bleed freely into your clothing, and you'll get away with almost anything (certainly minor misdemeanours such as wrecking a saucepan).
There's plenty of downtime, too. More often than not, "Do It Yourself" equates to months/years of good intentions but utter inaction, followed by a flurry of activity when some deadline looms: the imminent arrival of visitors, the birth of a child, or the sale of your house because you can't bear to live in a broken-down fleapit anymore.
Of course, everyone in Ireland is "time-poor" nowadays, and DIY Man is no exception. It's hard to find even a few hours to assemble a flat-pack, never mind do a large-scale plumbing job. How many paint pots have I bought but never opened, how many holes in the wall have I grown blind to and never filled? Just by walking away to write this article, I could have condemned our fireplace to a year or more of non-completion. Which reminds me . . .
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Since finishing the last paragraph and beginning this one, I have glued three rows of tiles to the wall. I have held a spirit level to their tops and sides and noted the bubble sitting nicely between the two lines - most of the time. They have not fallen down. Yet. The job's not quite finished, but there's no rush. There is dinner on. I didn't cook it. There is a child crying. But not to me. All is well with the world. And I'll eat my grout-spattered trousers before I pay some numbskull to take all that away from me.