How to be a Husband (9 page)

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.

*   *   *

O
bviously, 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. Alternatively, 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.

3.
Broken toilet handle.
The mechanics inside the average toilet tank are agreeably primitive: flicking the handle yanks up a plunger, releasing the stored water into the bowl. The plunger then falls back into place, and the tank refills until a floating ball on a stick rises high enough to shut off the valve.

The most common problem you'll face is the handle becoming detached from the plunger. They may have been connected by a length of wire which has rusted through, or by a chain that has decoupled. Anything of adjustable length and sufficient sturdiness (a cable tie, for example) will serve as a replacement.
Mine is presently hooked together with an E string from a guitar.

From this point, with these meager skills, you can take DIY as far as you please. You can start building Shaker furniture, or, like me, you can remain the sort of barely skilled person who is not afraid to pull apart a malfunctioning Xbox controller, on the grounds that the problem might just be a loose spring, and you will be a complete hero if you can get it working again. If you can't, it was always going to end up in the bin anyway.

And you know what? Eventually, through experience and practice, you get better at DIY. As long as the trial and error doesn't kill you (Have you turned off the electricity?), some of these jobs can even begin to seem like routine maintenance, i.e., boring. But there is no satisfaction quite like standing under a formerly malfunctioning light fitting while switching it on and off and explaining in some detail to your wife what exactly was wrong and how you—in the face of considerable adversity, and using a butter knife for a screwdriver because you couldn't find one thin enough—managed to put it right.

Each DIY project successfully completed constitutes a small personal triumph that sits in your house like a trophy in a case. I could take you on a tour of mine. Look at this skylight shade—I had to replace the old broken one, which was not, I can tell you, a simple matter. Now this one is now broken too, but that's because people are always pulling on it too hard. See the new tiles around the edge of the shower? I did those—straight or what? In the right light you can't even tell they don't match the old ones. Who knew there was more than one kind of white?

Come downstairs. Notice how the phone extension wire
hugs the skirting board? Not as easy as it looks. Check out the way this sink drains—quite slowly, I'll admit, but you should have seen it before. And look up, up to the ceiling, to the brown, Australia-shaped stain caused by a leaking toilet tank; a stain which, thanks to my timely intervention and a huge blob of sealant, hasn't got any bigger since 2006. I'm the one who drew the pencil outline round it to prove
it.

Extended Family

I
am sitting in a restaurant with my wife and my mother-in-law. They are busy making calculations on some paper napkins—calculations having to do with money—and I am keeping very quiet. Without warning, they both turn and look at me. It must have something to do with the expression on my face.

“Don't worry,” says my wife. “We're only going to do this if it's what you want to do.”

“I'm cool,” I say, refilling my wineglass.

I have already decided that it would not do for me to have strong views on the matter. For a start, none of the money being transferred from napkin A to napkin B is mine. I would incur no financial risk as a result of what's being proposed.

Here is what's being proposed: my wife sells her one-bedroom flat, my mother-in-law sells her home in Wiltshire, and we use the money to buy a house in London, a house
substantial enough that we can all live in it together comfortably.

There are several reasons why this is a good idea. My mother-in-law has medical reasons for wishing to be in the capital. My wife and I, meanwhile, are looking for more living space, but are reluctant to move toward the fringes of London in order to get it. The One Big House plan provides an efficient solution to several problems, a solution so blatantly traditional that it seems almost modern. My wife and her mother are acting as if they invented it.

There are also some reasons why it is a bad idea. My wife and her mother have a close but slightly intense relationship. Much of the time they get along famously, but I have seen them shriek at each other for entire weekends, and I find it awkward being in the middle. I accept that I am part of the family now, but maybe not this much.

Secretly, I harbor only the strongest of reservations. I believe that a good working relationship with one's mother-in-law requires a certain distance, and I can't imagine her opinion of me will be improved by proximity. Even at thirty I feel a bit young to enter into an arrangement that strikes me as being both emotionally and financially irreversible—if we all move in together, it will be permanent.

It's not exactly a dilemma I'm facing. I can sense that my marriage depends on my responding to the plan in the right way, and I am prepared to endorse the proposal wholeheartedly, which is why offering an actual opinion at this point would be a waste of everybody's time. In any case I'm fairly certain the scheme will never get off the ground. For the kind of money
they're spending, in the kind of neighborhoods they're looking, I'm betting there is no such house.

I'm wrong. Not only is there such a house, there is one less than a mile from the flat. And not only is it on the market, it is languishing on the market. The price has just been dropped because the owners are desperate to return to Australia. Before I really know what's happening I find myself standing in its cavernous sitting room, surrounded by boxes.

Not all our friends think this is such a great idea. To some it sounds a retrograde step, or a forward leap toward social ossification. Maybe they think there's something a bit Edwardian about it, or that they'll have to keep their voices down when they come over. I find myself in the odd position of having to defend the project.

“Look,” I tell them. “It's really two entirely separate dwellings. We just happen to share a front door.”

But there is work to be done on that front: before our flat can be self-contained and self-sustaining, we need to convert the attic into a bedroom, and one of the bedrooms into a small kitchen. Work progresses slowly, but by winter we're all moved in, and there seems to be plenty of space. If my wife and her mother choose to argue, I can simply remain upstairs, out of sight and out of earshot.

In February my wife goes away for work for three days. It is the first time my mother-in-law and I have been alone in the house together, and I am unsure of the etiquette. When I get home that evening I slip quietly up the stairs to our dusty, half-built kitchen. I have a vague plan for a mean little meal and an early night, but there is no food, so I will have to slip quietly
back down the stairs to go to the shops, and quietly back up them again. I sit in the gathering gloom for a while, preparing to make my move.

The phone rings. It is my mother-in-law, calling from downstairs.

“What are your plans for supper?” she says.

“I don't really, I hadn't . . .”

“I have lamb,” she says.

The Winter Olympics has just started, so we sit in her kitchen eating lamb, drinking a bottle and a half of wine, and watching the figure skating on a portable telly. It's the pairs compulsory.

“It's rather amazing, isn't it?” she says.

“Absolutely,” I say.

On the second night my mother-in-law rings again.

“I bought a chicken from the butcher,” she says. We watch the individual routines.

On the third night I feel as if I ought to give my mother-in-law a break from cooking for me—not least because my wife is due home and I don't want to get caught sponging—but she rings again, right on time.

“It's only spaghetti, I'm afraid,” she says. “But it's also the pairs long routine.”

My wife arrives home in the middle of supper; she's had a difficult few days filming on location, and she's in a corresponding mood. She drops her bag and sits down between us.

“Why are you watching this?” she says.

“It's the pairs final,” her mother says.

“I hate fucking figure skating,” says my wife, “and so do you.”

“Actually,” says my mother-in-law, looking at me, “we find it rather fascinating.” My wife turns to look at me.

“No, you don't,” she says.

“He loves it,” says my mother-in-law. I find myself on weird and dangerous ground. I've never had to commit to an opinion about figure skating before. On the one hand, I agree: it's preposterous. If I were alone in my own kitchen, I'd be watching something else. But I've built up an unprecedented three-day rapport with my mother-in-law based entirely on its intricacies. To disavow figure skating now would be both disloyal and disastrous. Also, I've invested a lot of emotion in this pairs final.

“No comment,” I say. “Would you excuse me?” I go to the loo and sit there quietly for a bit, in the hope that my absence will draw some of the heat from the situation. At this point I realize my new living situation will oblige me to draw on reserves of a quality I happen to possess in abundance: spinelessness.

When I return to the table three minutes later, I find the pair of them holding handfuls of spaghetti over each other's heads.

“Well, this has escalated,” I say.

“If you don't accept that figure skating is interesting,” my mother-in-law says, “I'm going to put this spaghetti on your head.”

“If you don't say figure skating is stupid,” says my wife, “I'm going to put this spaghetti on your head.”

“Did you take that from my plate?” I say. “I wasn't finished.”

The standoff continues. I decide not to intervene, curious to see how this sort of thing resolves itself. Eventually my wife reaches up and pokes her mother's spaghetti hand with the tines of her fork. My mother-in-law drops the spaghetti. She squeezes the back of her hand until four little red dots appear.

“I'm going to show this to your sister,” she says.