We all like to think of ourselves as a bit of a dab hand at DIY, loudly proclaiming to any group of people that will tentatively agree to listen how we bravely wrestled with that Billy bookcase before it finally conceded and stayed upright, and whilst that undeniably vast collection of tools might hang impressively from their special wall mount in the garage (or the shed, if you’re a real man) they’re not there as a display piece now are they? We hate to break the news, but putting together flatpack furniture, regrettably, doesn’t really count either, and if you’ve been putting off a big job due to not wanting to mucky the instruments, or simply not really knowing where to start (don’t worry – your secret’s safe with us) we think we might have just the remedy. Get out your phone – here’re five great apps that could save you from a DIY disaster!
Yes, in a day and age where our lives are largely spent staring doe-eyed into a £700 slab of technological astonishment, reading banal status updates from people we’ve generously decided to digitally label our ‘friends’, it seems we might as well try to make the best of such a situation. Fortunately, in spite of mowing away our time with pictures of other people’s food and their life-affirming comments about the weather, our phones also have some spectacularly useful applications. The following five examples are apps downloadable from the digital marketplace of your choice that could help kickstart your DIY project! Finally.
DIY DO IT
As this app firmly instructs in its title, DIY Do It is all about providing a definitive guide to helping you do it. Yourself. Everything you could need to fix, fiddle or flap about with in the home is catered for. Whether you’re tinkering with the toilet, repairing the refrigerator or mending the mirrors, this lovingly presented guide breaks down each section into indoor/outdoor/decor/utilities categories, before slimming them down again so you can find exactly what you’re looking for. It outlines the tools you need and provides some lovely pictures to help!
Handy Man DIY
Handy Man takes the idea one step further – instead of scribbling down all your ideas and measurements and notes for a project into an archaic old notebook, like you were from the 5th Century or something, stick it all in this app! With sections for inputting things like room height, wall length, number of windows, and more, you can accurately note down every aspect of the space in question, and refer to it as a handy reference. It even has a cheeky How-to guide built into its very pages!
iHandy Carpenter
Now we don’t call anything sexy without carefully considering the implications of such a phrase, but boy does the iHandy Carpenter look pretty. Super hi-res images and presentation back this veritable box of tricks that you can’t do without. Underneath its fancy icon you’ll find a plumb bob for checking verticality, a surface level, a bubble level bar, a protractor, a ruler and a clever little thing called an inclinometer (which we hadn’t heard of) that reads angles on the screen!
Home Improvement Calcs
If you’re into calculating things (and let’s face it, who isn’t) Home Improvement Calcs is your salvation. This astonishing little fellow packs a mesmerising 170 DIY-specific calculations and unit convertors, no matter what you need to measure, gauge or size up, HIC can help. It’s deftly presentation is augmented by the use of graphics and pictures to visualize the measurements. Nice.
Make Your Home
And lastly, this app focuses a little more on design and decor, however Make Your Home still offers some great suggestions on how to position your furniture, and what types of furniture to go for that will match and suit your space! Don’t go anywhere near IKEA without this handy helper open, and even then maybe think twice.
With all these DIY augmentations, there’s really no need not to dust off the toolbox and get putting together your big home project today!
This article was written by Rob Vicars of AMA Skip Hire; whether you’re building a new DIY extension, or are simply clearing out the back room, a skip’ll keep all your waste in order and better yet it’ll be taken care of ecologically!