DIY manuals - are they still a thing?

stuff that you can't beat a good youtube video ..

NT

Grew up with the Readers Digest one, which we still have somewhere.

What might be more useful these days is an overview book - it might not tell you exactly how to do a specific job, but sets out the basic principles and the options - you could do A or B or C, which have the following benefits and tradeoffs. Then you can go and look up a video or products for doing C when you've decided that's what you want. It would save time googling around, finding a vendor of B that omits to mention A and C, all the sites on A are talking about the USA, etc.

The wiki is pretty good for that though :)

Theo

PS. I spotted a wiki knockoff the other day that doesn't have the right licence:

As I live in a 1960s/70s flat, the Readers Digest and similar *are* current to me :-)

Owain

With a printed DIY manual it's often like the Haynes manuals for car mechanics where you need a translation.

Is my memory playing tricks or did one vintage of this manual show you how cover a panelled interior door with plywood (or quite possibly hardboard), while a later vintage told you how to restore a door that had had such an atrocity perpetrated on it?

Pretty well all the basics of DIY ain't changed much. Sure there are more power tools around to assist with things, but that's about all.

DIY books only ever covered the basics of things like plumbing and electrics anyway - and they are still the same.

:-)

I still have my RD manual. In its time it came in very useful.

Chris

It did indeed. If nothing else, persuading you to have a go. It's how you learn, after all.

I think it was the DIY magazines that went wild with abandon telling you how to build your own bedroom furniture out of asbestos sheeting, etc.

Hardboarding interior doors probably saved thousands from the skip in the 60s and 70s

Owain

You can if you are blind.I despair on the computer sort your own computer problems one with as you can see on this screen simply click on...... Same goes for diy, but the older books tended to have descriptive words not just pictures, so you could scan them and get the basic idea, now, no way.

Brian

Makes more sense to have that online as a diy wikipedia.

Then you can go and look up a video or products for doing C

I leafed through a 1970s reader's digest diy manual late last year. It surprised me how much of it was truly out of date, and how plainly dangerous some of the advice was.

NT

DIY magazines seem to have vanished too.

Slightly before my time but I believe that was down to a DIY expert on a TV program of the time. My parents having purchased their first house covered all doors with hardboard and boxed in the stairs with the same. It was the "modern" 60s look.

Barry Bucknell

Might be I remmerb my dad doing it, he also did the same to the stairs regarding covering up the banistars.

Well he never got around to that.

was that to protect you from the hot sex session you had after installing a mirror on the ceiling ;-)

In article snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net>, David snipped-for-privacy@btinternet.com writes

Good god, yes. You've prompted me to getup and go look... and there it is up on the top shelve on the book case.