How to Get Started in DIY Without Any Experience
When I was in kindergarten I distinctly remember being dissuaded from a life of DIY. Mrs R, a beloved teacher in a small town of about 250 in rural Australia who went by that name because nobody could pronounce Rohrschneider, had told a 5-year-old Emma that her ability to cut out shapes with cardboard was horrendous. “I don’t think you’ll grow up to be a carpenter,” she had said.
Not to worry, Mrs. R, I thought, I don’t want to make carpets anyway.
I went through the rest of my life with shoddy math skills and I never liked calculating my measurements the proper way, but I did always love making things. My corners never quite aligned and about a quarter of the nails in my projects would be bent at the ends and hammered down flat with a swear word attached, but that’s okay because I grew up to marry Alex.
He started college as a math major before switching to sports journalism in the hope of going to Oregon Ducks football games for free, and briefly considered engineering as a career. He couldn’t paint a straight line even if it meant he’d get a lifetime supply of Abita Amber beer and he once marked up a photo on his phone with what was supposed to be a set of three bar stools but looked exactly like the poster for The Human Centipede, but damn can he wield a circular saw and calculate our math quickly.
I bet he even cut out his shapes properly in kindergarten.
Our pre-married life together was spent moving to four different cities in four different states in five years, so we always rented houses or apartments and never really had enough space or energy to lug around power tools, scrap wood or gallons of leftover paint. But when we bought our home, we leaned in hard.
Developing our toolbox
Our little tub of tools like a screwdriver, hammer and drill quickly evolved into a storage shed full of house project overflow and we spent our weekends dropping money at Home Depot to check off whatever was next on our list.
We’ve got a lot to learn but have also learned a lot already, so let’s see what we can accomplish with two full-time jobs, a baby, and a budget.
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