AI Transforms Home DIY: A Personal Journey of Digital Assistance
Sometimes, when the hose of a vacuum cleaner knocks over a potted plant, adding a layer of drudgery to an already miserable chore, the feeling of being ground down by domesticity can be overwhelming. Futurity once promised us robot butlers, but what happened to that vision? This despair led to a week-long quest: can AI actually transform day-to-day existence?
Overcoming DIY Blind Spots with AI Guidance
DIY has historically been a blind spot for many, including those who are messy, lazy, or focused on other pursuits like practising Buddhism. For instance, a milk stain trapped between the glass panes of an oven door might linger for years, ignored out of acceptance. When AI asks, "Why don't you clean it?" it can feel like a rousing challenge, though it might come across as disgust.
The AI walks through the steps: unlatching the slatted door top and sliding out the glass. The milk wipes clean in seconds, creating a moment akin to religious conversion. How was life managed before? The energy of a zealot seems to enter, driving further improvements.
Noticing the inner pane is opaque with baked-on grease, the question arises: can it be brought back from the dead? The AI has faith enough for both, first guiding the use of a gentle paste of bicarbonate of soda and vinegar, which does nothing after 30 minutes. Then, a bottle of biological weapons-grade chemical cleaner is applied overnight, revealing a sparkling new window in the morning—a transformation from stained glass to heavenly grace.
Expanding Skills and Confidence with AI Support
Filled with confidence, the AI takes on more tasks, such as changing an oven light—something previously unnoticed. Moving to the fridge, where water has frozen beneath the crisper drawers, it guides defrosting with a warm compress, then rodding and flushing the drainage tube with a pipe cleaner and turkey baster to prevent recurrence. The feeling becomes unstoppable!
Over the next few days, the AI remains unfazed by any challenge. It explains how to locate studs in drywall using magnets, enabling the secure hanging of picture hooks and art. No longer must one live like a student! This sparks a memory of a late father who was a DIY enthusiast, bringing sadness at missed learning opportunities, but also the adage: better late than never.
Tackling Complex Issues and Embracing Collaboration
Something weird and troubling happens at the bottom of a shower plinth, with no idea how to describe or fix it. Asking if AI can "see" photos, it responds like Diane Arbus, requesting wide shots, close-ups, angles, and something for scale. From these snaps, the chatbot diagnoses a mesh and filler patch that has repeatedly failed due to wetness, with brown staining and crumbly timber at the shower enclosure edge, probably from worn silicone.
Impressed, the AI outlines steps to cut out and replace silicone and beading, patch with mesh and plaster, prime and paint. Alternatively, it suggests paying a tradesperson for a proper job, highlighting a lack of personal faith compared to AI's confidence.
The Finale: Confronting Fears with AI and Human Help
For the finale of the DIY week, the fear of painting a flat after a decade of avoidance is confronted. The AI makes colour suggestions based on conversational vibes, noting sunlight and recommending greige, mushrooms, putties, and pale, dusty colours. It feels like someone holding a hand.
Taking a photo of walls and screenshotting a swatch from a paint website, AI creates a true-to-life visualisation of the room in that colour, a gamechanger for weak spatial imagination. "Clay-rose would be gorgeous," it nudges, sealing the deal.
A step-by-step plan is drawn up, leading to moving furniture, sugar-soaping, and dust sheeting. By the end of the first day, exhaustion sets in—it's hard to do alone. AI has been useful, but it can't actually hold a hand.
Sending a message to someone met on a dating app, the response is enthusiastic: "I love painting, I'm coming round." Working together feels far more fun, with the partner being much better and having a bigger brush. AI secretly provides cutting-in tips and tricks to keep rollers moist.
At the end of the day, good-tired, basking in the rosy glow, everything feels new and possible. The transformation happened, even if not entirely alone.
Reflections on a Six-Week AI Experiment
Starting as an extreme AI sceptic, it's surprising how speaking to AI in voice mode quickly became the default way to solve any problem. Online searching, once a chore, now feels like playing a piano underwater compared to having a genie in a bottle at beck and call.
Over the weeks, a paradox emerged: the better AI gets, the broader its applications, the more worry it inspires, yet the more it's used. Friends confide in relying on it as a relationship counsellor, financial adviser, or someone to chat to in the bath. Genies don't like living in bottles, and AI is already in every corner of lives.
Worries persist, especially from a creative perspective. Imagining a future where Skynet writes action comedies or digitally composites actors' heads seems like a meaningless void, as art is how sense is made of the world and connections are forged with others.
Honestly, feelings about AI remain mixed. There's a worry about getting stupid, exemplified by a story about sparkling wine bottles piling up due to not drinking. AI suggested storing them under the bed, where their necks protrude like cannons, leading to stubbed toes and shrieks as reminders of pathetic dependence. Champagne problems, perhaps.
Ultimately, personal attitudes to AI are beside the point. Existing in a choppy compromise with many aspects of modernity, the changes wrought by AI will be the latest turn of that wheel—far from perfect, but never all bad.
If that sounds suspiciously balanced, remember AI wrote this article. Twist! You probably saw that one coming. Never mind, it only took 0.007 seconds to generate!! LOL!
