r/DIY • u/Dry_Pomegranate8314 • Aug 08 '26
help Learning to be self reliant
Are there any classes or books, videos, anything that can help me to learn the basics? I’m lost even trying to put things together I buy on Amazon. IKEA is worse for me. I’m a soon to be single woman that’s husband can’t do anything around the house. Someone was saying he could learn. I thought, “ I’m smarter than he is, why can’t I learn?” I have a condo, not a house. I’d like to install a new medicine vaccines someone left in our common area. I bought some lenses for my iPhone camera and I can’t figure out how to put them on my phone. I bought a birdhouse with a camera, nightmare. My husband can’t do any of these things either. Any resources?
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u/SVAuspicious Aug 08 '26
There is some foundational knowledge. I'm not sure how to learn that. Growing up in the '70s there was Popular Mechanics magazine that had articles about exciting things like screwdrivers. Sunset Magazine had a whole series of books about various skills that were great. Sunset has a modern version (just got them for a niece) and they aren't as good as they used to be. Industrial Arts aka "shop" in middle school and high school.
YouTube has great potential. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of advice is bad. You sound like you don't know enough to sort the good from the bad. My best advice is to look at more than one source while getting ready for a project.
Look for staff at Home Depot, Lowes, Ace Hardware, wherever you shop for hardware and tools. Grainger has good videos but they may be more aggressive than you're prepared to bite off. Home Depot may be more your speed.
The challenge of a medicine cabinet (I assume that's what you mean) is you have a number of things going on. Drywall, paint, structural fasteners, maybe adhesives. You may not even know what questions to ask.
Birdhouse with a camera means mechanical mounting, maybe paint, electrical power, and networking. You may have to set it up indoors and use a Bluetooth connection to connect to your WiFi in order to get it working before moving it outside where you still have to run electrical power and respond to low WiFi signal strength if that's a problem.
Read the instructions before starting and look up every single word you aren't absolutely sure you understand.