More DIY
I fitted a new toilet seat today because the old one was broken. To be pedantic, it was the lid over the seat that was actually broken. It would appear they don’t support the weight of a 56 year old man who is reaching for a rubber ducky. However, the complexities of the circumstances leading to the lid breaking are ultimately irrelevant. The problem needed to be addressed as there were dangerous sharp edges. Therefore, to make things easier, I ordered the exact same make and model of toilet seat that I had previously bought in April 2021. Upon subsequent reflection, I do wonder how often the average person changes their toilet seat? Is three years considered a high turnover by the toilet seat statistical community? Who knows? But I digress. The new seat arrived today and in a fit of hubris I thought I’d quickly install it in the morning after showering. I reckoned it would only take half an hour or so. How foolish of me.
I fitted a new toilet seat today because the old one was broken. To be pedantic, it was the lid over the seat that was actually broken. It would appear they don’t support the weight of a 56 year old man who is reaching for a rubber ducky. However, the complexities of the circumstances leading to the lid breaking are ultimately irrelevant. The problem needed to be addressed as there were dangerous sharp edges. Therefore, to make things easier, I ordered the exact same make and model of toilet seat that I had previously bought in April 2021. Upon subsequent reflection, I do wonder how often the average person changes their toilet seat? Is three years considered a high turnover by the toilet seat statistical community? Who knows? But I digress. The new seat arrived today and in a fit of hubris I thought I’d quickly install it in the morning after showering. I reckoned it would only take half an hour or so. How foolish of me.
Now the reason I wanted the same model as before is because it has a quick release mechanism for taking off the seat. Therefore I was hoping I could simply swap out the broken seat with the new one and not have to mess about installing any fittings. The new seat could just click onto the existing posts. So I unpacked the replacement seat, lined up the holes on the hinge with the posts and lowered it down expecting it to conveniently click into place. Except that it didn’t. The existing posts were too thick. Hence I had to get on my hands and knees and reach under the toilet bowl and unscrew the current fittings. Now you may or may not know this but getting on the floor and into confined spaces is a bitch when you’re 56. The problem was further compounded as the existing wingnuts were done up “finger tight” by my son, so they were disinclined to yield.
I find that most problems are easier to solve after lunch, so I took an extended break and had a midday meal along with a couple of pints of beer for medicinal reasons, at a local cafe. Feeling suitably fortified I returned to the job in hand and decided rather than try and unscrew the wingnuts, I’d rotate the posts using an adjustable spanner. This strategy worked and the fittings became loose. I was then able to unscrew the wingnuts and remove the posts. After another beer (I was thirsty by this point), I then installed the new fittings that came with the replacement toilet seat. The posts lined up with the holes in the hinge and this time round the seat clicked securely into place. I stepped back to admire my handy work and basked in the glory of my victory accordingly. I assume this is how Marcus Agrippa felt after the Battle of Actium or all those Amish people after they built that barn in the film Witness.
There was a time when working with your hands was part of most people’s daily life. Furthermore, being a skilled craftsman was venerated by one’s peers and the wider community. Sadly, the days of many of us having practical skills are long gone. We live in a world where we don’t fully understand how everything in our homes actually works and certainly don’t have the necessary skills to fix things. In fact our lifestyle has become so disposable that it often doesn’t even cross our minds whether something can be repaired. Too often we seek to replace by default. My clumsy struggle to fit a toilet seat is in some respects quite shameful. I may have technical skills but they can’t put up shelves or install a shower. My father, who was a practical man, would have rolled his eyes at my incompetence. But this is the world we live in and I am not alone in my lack of DIY skills.
DIY
During the seventies there was a boom in DIY (do it yourself) in the UK and a surge in interest in interior design. It was a decade of home extensions, loft conversions and open plan living. Social attitudes were changing and the formal layout of the family home that had prevailed since Edwardian times was giving way to ideas of a far more informal living space. I experienced this cultural change first hand between 1975 and 1985, as my Father spent a decade renovating the family home, room by room. The time and pace of this decade of DIY were dictated purely by the costs. My Father was working as a teacher and so the school holidays afforded him the time and opportunity. The practical benefits of DIY made the cost far more affordable. Plus, my Father was a mechanical engineer by trade and therefore could competently undertake woodwork, building and basic plumbing.
During the seventies there was a boom in DIY (do it yourself) in the UK and a surge in interest in interior design. It was a decade of home extensions, loft conversions and open plan living. Social attitudes were changing and the formal layout of the family home that had prevailed since Edwardian times was giving way to ideas of a far more informal living space. I experienced this cultural change first hand between 1975 and 1985, as my Father spent a decade renovating the family home, room by room. The time and pace of this decade of DIY were dictated purely by the costs. My Father was working as a teacher and so the school holidays afforded him the time and opportunity. The practical benefits of DIY made the cost far more affordable. Plus, my Father was a mechanical engineer by trade and therefore could competently undertake woodwork, building and basic plumbing.
Sadly, through a caprice of genetics, all such skills have totally bypassed me. I am not happy doing any sort of DIY around the house, apart from the most basic of tasks. I’ll replace light bulbs, not that such a task is a regularity with the new LED bulbs. I replaced the front doorbell in 2020 which involved taking off the wireless button on the door frame outside and replacing it with another. It was no more complex than removing two screws and fixing two new ones. Beyond this I’ll defer to professionals. If any small building, plumbing or electrical work is required, I’ll have it carried out by those who do it for a living. And I am quite content with this arrangement. I am fortunate enough to be able to pay for these services and if anything goes wrong, there’s a right to recourse. I am also not the sort of person who sees not being good at DIY as a slight against his manhood.
Although I am reluctant to undertake DIY in the traditional sense, I’m quite happy to mess with most sorts of technology. Taking apart a laptop, building a PC and software troubleshooting hold no fear for me and I will happily give anything of this nature a go. I can also wire Cat 5e cabling, build a server cabinet and install trunking and tray. I suppose it comes down to training and what you’re familiar with. Plus dealing with tech is not exactly comparable to redecorating your lounge. A bad installation of an operating system can be resolved by a reinstallation. A badly wallpapered lounge is a matter of public record and harder to redress. Which makes me wonder if there is an element of risk aversion in my attitude towards DIY, as opposed to just indifference and possibly a degree of indolence.
However, I recently decided to step outside of my DIY comfort zone and fitted a new letterbox to our front door. The existing one had broken and was a potential security hazard. So I measured the various dimensions and tried to find a replacement on Amazon. Needless to say, things didn’t go as planned and I had to adapt the replacement letterbox to get it to fit. Two plastic fittings that weren’t required were fouling the hole in the uPVC door, so I had to remove them. As this letterbox was a fraction larger than the old one, the existing screw holes didn’t line up. I don’t own a drill but managed to make new ones using a bradawl attachment on a Swiss Army Penknife. It wasn’t an especially difficult job but it was a learning experience. It’s made me think about my household's lack of tools and the disposable nature of so many items these days. It also highlights our lack of traditional skills as a society and the wider question of how most of us have no idea how the things we rely upon actually work.
