Learning To Be More Handy

[John Olsen]

Hi all!  I'm a handy guy at all.  Instead of having my handy man come over for every little thing I want to learn to do things on my own.  Does anyone know of a Blog, youtube channel etc. that is good for learning to fix things?  I'm sure there is a youtube channel that is a one stop shop for learning all different types of fixes.   

[Jim K.]

@John Olsen

I have a three-part approach. The first thing you need is the book Renovation by Michael Litchfield. It's in its fifth edition right now. That book will give you a birds-eye view of all kinds of different renovation issues. From there, Taunton Press, the same people that publish Renovation, have a whole series of more specialized books on different aspects of home improvement. Black and Decker also has a series of Complete Guides (Complete Guide to Wiring) while Stanley also had a Complete (Complete Wiring) series of books that's still extremely useful. If you have access to the general and specialist books on how to do stuff and THEN you go to YouTube for video demonstrations and other internet sources for more guidance, you can't realistically be steered COMPLETELY wrong even on complicated renovation projects.

Whereas you can easily be steered wrong just by going to YouTube and checking out unvetted videos at random. You'll see people doing things on YouTube that can get you electrocuted or slinging a whole lotta blood in a hurry.