Jay Blades - "You can never be overconfident with DIY"

Virgin Radio

27 Sep 2022, 06:56

'The Repair Shop' presenter is here to help.

British furniture restorer and television presenter Jay Blades popped into The Graham Norton Radio Show this weekend to tell us all about his new book, DIY with Jay by Jay Blades.

"Some people are better at DIY than others," says The Repair Shop presenter, "but one of the good things about my book is that it takes you through how to simplify the project you're working on. It really breaks it down to the ABCs, so anybody can pick up this book up and start to do a bit of DIY. What happens is your confidence will grow as you start to do more projects."

Graham, with a bit of trepidation, asked Jay if there's a danger people might take on projects too big for their skill set, and they'd be better off calling in the experts.

"You can never be overconfident with DIY," he says. "You're not going to be able to build a house reading this book, it's not going to happen. This is really the entry level. But for those people who don't have the confidence it says, "Look, you can give it a go". I'm gonna take you through the project step by step, and then you'll be able to achieve something where you feel good every time you walk past it."

Graham asked Jay if he could share any tips from the book, and received a great one that we're going to share with you now (disclaimer: don't blame us if everything goes wrong).

"This is a really simple one, but a great one" he says. "When you're dismantling a piece of furniture, take a picture. Don't take a memory picture, take a physical picture, so you can see it either on your phone or on your camera. When I first started, I used to take a picture when I was unfolding fabric. That way I could figure out how they folded it and do it that way as well."

He continued; "So it's really simple. Anything that has been built that you can buy has been built by someone else. Which proves that you can do anything you put your mind to!"

Listen to The Graham Norton Radio Show every Saturday AND Sunday from 9:30 am on Virgin Radio or catch up on-demand here.