DIY or GSETDI

I've been painting the house over the last few days and decided that it really is better to not Do It Yourself but Get Someone else To Do It. I don't mean to imply that I am bad at DIY, or even that I am too lazy to do it myself, it's more about standards. I am pretty fussy about detail and finish on things and when you have a tradesman painting or building then you can say to them if it's not up to scratch. However when you do it yourself, and it looks a bit shit, then you only have yourself to blame.

For example I had some new doors put on. I did try to do this myself, but after three hours of trimming the width and height, measuring and rebating the hinges and rebating the latch I managed to cut the hole for the handle in the wrong place and thereby ruin the whole bloody thing. That was the end of that: the door and my enthusiasm for doing it again. So I got a chippy in to put on some doors, which was expensive but worth it as at least they fit and all the holes are in the right place.

Anyway all I had to do was paint these doors. Now this is not particularly hard you'd think, just slap on a bit of gloss. But no matter how I do it, with a foam roller, with a mohair roller, with a brush, it just looks bloody awful. All streaky and drippy. Just not up to my standards, but I have no-one to blame sadly. So I've decided to just give up and try not to look at them. Hopefully I'll be motivated to have another go at some point in the future. Or better still get my dad to do them when he visits next. It's the same with the walls, getting the edges right is a nightmare. To be honest I am a bit better at this, but trying to cut in the walls at the top of the stairwell was just impossible, I've had to do it with a paint pad on a really long pole as I have no scaffolding. Again it just looks terrible and I can only blame myself. Or possibly the architect in this situation.

Hey ho. All part of the fun of being a home owner I suppose. At the moment I'm having a break from paint and brushes. This is to give me time to find all the splatters and wipe them up/sand them off the floors and walls. What fun.