I’m a hopeless DIY-er: What mishaps will befall me this weekend?

I had great plans for a last-minute Easter getaway with my children – a barn in an enchanted wood in Sussex, say, or a beachfront cottage in Cornwall. But since all the best places are long booked up and UK roads are predicted to be the busiest in four years, with an expected 21 million journeys, I’ve settled on a visit to Homebase instead.

The Easter bank holiday is one of the biggest DIY weekends of the year, with one in five people in the UK looking forward to revamping their garden fences, fixing leaks and decorating over the four-day break. It’s even seen as a relaxing thing to do.

And that is exactly where I’m at. I want to fix the bubbling bathroom ceiling, superglue a leg back on to an antique chair, and uncover the fireplace that’s currently hidden by a thin wall of MDF.

Yes, it could be disastrous: clueless me, troubleshooting with TikTok and YouTube videos. My general DIY hopelessness has become a running joke in my local hardware store. What mishaps will befall me this weekend?

Around 4.8 million of us are expected to mess up a DIY job on a bank holiday, according to 2025 research by Ding, a home repairs service from Homeserve – botched fixings of leaking taps, putting up curtains and shelves, or bleeding radiators are among the tasks listed in the top ten disasters. And the average mistake costs £106 to fix, with a national repair bill totalling over £512m.

Even a small job for me, resealing a bath with silicone, took 22 phone calls to Lords Builders Merchants. They kept explaining that the sealant was coming out too thick because I had cut the nozzle too short, and I just needed to wipe it all off and get a professional in.

When a bleak family painting (an Industrial Revolution furnace, lovely) fell off the wall, I bought stick-on hooks from Poundland, but when I hung the picture from the new hook, it didn’t hold the weight and pulled off a chunk of my children’s bedroom wall.

I replastered it with a tube of ready-mixed filler and then painted over it, but of course, I knew nothing about the “mist coat” to seal the plaster, and now have dark, discoloured patches on the wall – the painting remains unhung.

I tried to dismantle a stylish circular cot but got so frustrated that I had to call in a handyman to do it for £100, which was what I was hoping to get for it on Vinted. I spray-painted my rusting radiators rather than buy new ones, but they’ve since gone all blistery.

I had chipped wallpaper in the hallway, and after a builder removed it and painted it white, the ambience was so cold and sterile that I repainted it myself in chocolate brown. Then my golden retriever helpfully rubbed his fur all along the wall and lay down against it.

You can’t use turpentine or paint thinner on a dog, so I had to rub huge globs of olive oil into the paint on his fur, try to brush it out and use scissors to cut out the matted painted parts.

And don’t even talk to me about depressurising a boiler. Little did I know that turning a little switch for too long can trigger the pressure relief valve, which may then fail to seal properly, leading to a permanent leak – which is what I got.

The worst DIY mishap, however, was the kids’ treehouse, which took 18 hours to assemble, even with the help of a childminder. I cried into the instruction manual, and was beside myself trying to work out how to join the slide to the entrance, which, to this day, lies unattached under the treehouse unit.

That’s the issue, according to the same Ding research, roughly 15.9m adults (30 per cent) left home improvement projects unfinished in 2025, with painting and decorating projects accounting for 80 per cent of incomplete jobs.

Yes, doing DIY home improvements can make you feel like you’ve really accomplished something if you actually succeed. But isn’t it time we re-evaluated the UK’s obsession with it – and admitted it’s largely just a lovely fantasy?

Gen Z are increasingly hiring professionals for basic DIY tasks like changing light bulbs, and have become known as the "GOTDIT" (Get Others To Do It) generation due to lack of confidence, safety issues, or not knowing what’s what in a toolbox. Perhaps they have got the right idea – especially in a rental property, with a hefty deposit at risk. DIY projects often take much longer than expected, amateurs like me risk injury, and all the mistakes can lead to expensive repairs later when you have to call in the professionals.

Doing DIY is based on the idea that we will feel good because we’re fixing something and saving money, and slowing down to focus on a creative project. There are so many better ways to unwind than putting up shelves.

Perhaps it’s because, deep down, we believe that everything will be okay if we fit a new front panel to the dishwasher, or power clean the patio, but I'm having a rethink. I might brave the M40 after all.