Unqualified Handyman

Since reaching my sixties, I’m enjoying the extra time to dedicate to my interests, particularly hands-on repair and home improvement projects. Let me start with a full disclosure: I am an unqualified, self-educated handyman. I have no certifications, and no official proof that I know what I’m doing. What I do have is an unhealthy interest in keeping things that are still technically alive from being thrown out.

If something breaks, squeaks, leaks, or simply “doesn’t feel right,” I will take it apart. Whether or not I can put it back together correctly is a separate conversation.
I service, repair, build, or bravely attempt to fix just about anything that crosses my path. This includes building sheds, fixing broken concrete, repairing small equipment, and occasionally staring at something for a long time hoping it will explain itself. There are jobs I do but don’t enjoy – plastering, painting, cleaning drainpipes, digging holes in the ground. These tasks exist solely to remind me that not all handyman work is character-building fun.
What I truly enjoy is figuring out what went wrong, especially when the problem is small, hidden, awkward, or located in a place clearly designed to frustrate humans. I can happily spend hours fixing a tiny part that no one will ever notice – except me. And yes, all of this is done without charge, reimbursement, or even common sense. I do it purely for the satisfaction, which is apparently my currency of choice.
Before touching anything, I read. Then I read some more. Then I watch videos. Lots of videos. Thanks to the many generous tradesmen online who are willing to share their knowledge. The solution is out there. Sometimes it’s easy to find. Sometimes it’s buried under seventeen conflicting opinions and a comment section war. Often, the real solution is a creative blend of three videos, two forum posts, and one bad idea I decide to try anyway.
Naturally, mistakes happen. Screws strip. Cuts go wrong. Things don’t line up. When that happens, I learn from my screw-ups and misalignments, and improvise. Improvisation, I’ve learned, is just problem-solving with less dignity.
A recent project illustrates this perfectly. I built a small room and decided to cover the walls and ceiling with Trusscore instead of traditional drywall. Trusscore panels are advertised as faster, cleaner, and easier—no plastering, no taping, no painting. The videos make it look like you could install them while smiling, well-rested, and wearing clean clothes.
And to be fair, Trusscore is a great product. I would absolutely use it again. But there were a couple of surprises.
First: the mess. Yes, there’s no drywall dust, but cutting the panels produces a shocking amount of shredded plastic. Calling it “sawdust” feels dishonest. This stuff is static-charged and sticks to everything – tools, walls, clothes, hair, and probably pets if you’re not careful. Cleanup was not quick, not easy, and not mentioned in the videos.
Second: the mystery of the last panel.
Every single installation video I watched covered everything – except how to install the very last panel. Apparently, that knowledge is either forbidden, assumed, or lost to time. In real life, every time I reached the last panel, I had to improvise. If I could squeeze it in or hide it with a piece of trim, great. If not—which was most of the time – I simply just screwed it in place and painted the screw heads to match the panel. Problem solved. Mostly.
To this day, I have no idea how the professionals do it. Maybe there’s a magic wand. Maybe they just stop filming at that point. Or maybe they improvise too and don’t like to admit it.
And that, in the end, is a glimpse into the life of an unqualified handyman. You plan, you learn, you try, you mess up, and you figure it out anyway. It’s rarely perfect, often messy, and occasionally questionable – but something broken gets fixed, something useful gets built, and you walk away feeling oddly proud.
Even if no one else ever knows how close it came to disaster.
Are there more of you out there who are just like me?