DIY Disaster! More Than Half of British Men Have Made a Mess of Home DIY

Our aim here at The DIY Helpers (which is up there for you to see) is to try and provide you with the answer to pretty much any general DIY question you might have for us. Of course, we provide a healthy dose of fascinating and odd DIY projects for you to take a gander at to. However, we - and DIY blogs/websites in general – may not be widely read by the male population of Britain, or at least if we are we’re ignored, as a survey has come out with more than half of the respondents admitting to a DIY disaster.

To be fair we all make mistakes and the fun in DIY (although it’s probably more like ‘tear your hair out frustration’) is finding out what we've done wrong and fixing it. Even those who consider themselves experts at DIY will have screwed up a project somewhere along the line, even if it’s as simple as putting up a shelf – because we’re all aware that simple things don’t always go to plan! Out of 1,000 men, 58% of them say that they have made a mess of an attempt at DIY, and have attempted to cover up their mistakes afterwards.

I can safely say I have never covered up a DIY mistake…
…

Erm, excuse me a second while I go and adjust the vase I currently have covering up a tear in the wallpaper that I accidentally caused whilst trying to tackle some damp!

All this can be put down to men not wanting to admit to their mistake, and are far too proud to ask for any help. As a man myself I can testify to this, I honestly think it’s something in our genes!

Even more hilariously, a tenth of men admitted to eventually giving in and calling in repairmen to fix mistakes, only to then claim the work of the repairmen as their own. Others call in their fathers, perhaps signifying that the older generation is far better at doing DIY than those brought up in the more laid-back modern world. Thankfully a fifth can carry out the work fine, while the same number admit that they can’t and get someone in to do it instead.

It’s worth mentioning that the survey was carried about by Disney to promote the Blu-ray release of Wreck-It Ralph, and while it’s a brilliant film you probably shouldn't be using it as a guide for carrying out DIY given that, erm, he wrecks things. Although he’s actually a quite lovable character!

At the end of the day making a mess of it and then fixing it is better than never finishing the project at all. Over half of men never finish a DIY project either, so if you made a mess of it you'd at least have had a stab at it.

Have you any stories about DIY mistakes that you’d like to share with us? We’ll do so anonymously of course, but we’d love to hear them for future posts!