Tuesday 19th Mar

Well today was certainly one of note for the budding DIYer. I had as part of the living room redecoration to drill two holes through the wall at either side of the French windows at the bottom of the room, in an effort to reduce the amount of condensation we currently get, due to a lack of ventilation. Well I’d borrowed a large drill as I was drilling through the external wall, and having thought about it I’d decided to drill from outside to in. The idea being that I’d avoid knocking render off the outside of the house as I came through, if I’d started from the inside.

Well I don’t think the drill was in full working order as I had quite a sweat on by the time I’d drilled through two bricks, and couldn’t quite break through the last piece. After another couple of minutes of pushing I broke through only to see a large chunk of render, plus some brick, had come out of my newly painted wall. Never one to be put off by the obvious I commenced drilling a second hole, next to the first and after a similarly tortuous saga I broke through removing even more render from the inside wall!

At this point rather than stopping and thinking, or giving up, I moved straight over to the other side of the room and started drilling there. Though this time I went from inside to outside, to avoid a repetition. The drilling was once again tortuous though when I broke through on the outside only a small amount of render came off, plus a small piece on the inside. Well small when compared to what had fallen off on the other side of the room! So a good result I felt.

When Mrs P arrived home I had to explain that the decorating might now take a little longer as I was going to have to learn a new skill that of plastering/patching walls. She shook her head in a resigned way, compared me to Kenny Everett’s disaster prone handy man, and banned me from any job requiring any form of basic DIY competence in the future. Some might see that as a good result.

Yours in the proverbial doghouse

Jay