Given that my DIY track record over the years has been, ow you say, scant, it seems strange that I approach every Queen's Birthday weekend with the intention of getting something done around the house.
I am thwarted every year.
Queen's Birthday weekend is only three days, so you can't holiday in Rarotonga or Gallipoli.
Any travel must be snappy and quick, hence we have been diverted to places like the Ida Valley and Gore.
Because we love freezing cold temperatures, snow, black ice and the legendary Brass Monkey motorcycle rally in Oturehua, we have often braved the Ida Valley.
I like watching a band play Born To Be Wild in front of a bonfire.
And twice I was paid outrageous sums of money by national magazines to cover the New Zealand Gold Guitars in Gore, again icy cold, but with much better music.
However, this year's Queen's Birthday weekend threw up no tantalising alternatives, so, after what meteorologists called a cold snap the week before, I decided to try to make the house warmer.
For some years I had noticed whistling cold winds whooshing through the gaps between the front and back doors and their frames.
In lieu of DIY intelligence, I was forced to rely on the sixth sense, and that told me there could be a link between all that cold air whooshing into the house, and the fact we had to run our hall heat pump at 73 just to stop our teeth chattering like castanets.
More importantly, the key room in the house, the front bathroom, where I lie in bubble-bath ecstasy thinking up formidable thoughts, is also the coldest room in the house, possibly because the bathroom light switch also operates the cooling fan, thus negating a dangerously over-worked heater.
Bathing in darkness is, of course, out of the question. And here again, the gap between door and frame is one you could ride a rickshaw through.
World Health Organisation statistics revealed that improved heating could knock 15% off our heating costs, as well as considerably reducing colds, flu and pneumonia.
I had just done my IR3 tax return, and had been chilled by what we pay for electricity, so it made sense to pop out to a certain DIY store and spend a few dollars on draught-sealing tape and doorstops to save thousands of dollars and prevent at least half the family from teeth-chattering death.
I spent more than a few dollars, but that was only because I bought the wrong things.
You get that when you have the DIY intelligence of a shoe.
On my third trip back, I finally bought the right stuff, and because a punter beside me was buying the same things and asking questions, I sort of leaned in, and consequently picked up information I would never have asked for.
Like, where to stick the tape.
On the side of the door, surely, I muttered to myself, wondering why the salesman was treating us like imbeciles.
After he had shown us what part of the door frame the tape goes on to - ''you'd be surprised how many people put it HERE'', he said, indicating another part of the door frame, not the side of the door, as if even a new-born baby would know not to put it on the side of the door - he spilled a few more incomprehensible tips and left us to it.
He was helpful, let's be fair, but sub-titles are long overdue for these stores.
We aren't all Leonardo da Vincis.
The doorstops proved a little testier than I expected.
To me, a saw is a saw, so when they recommend a hacksaw to cut off unnecessary bits, I assume trying to hack my way through with a normal saw is fine, a walk in the park.
Inexplicably this isn't so. I should have walked in the park.
The house and bathroom do seem appreciably warmer, but I know this is just sixth sense, DIY homeopathy.
It is nevertheless reassuring that I have finally treated Queen's Birthday Weekend with the respect it deserves.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
