Why DIY is still for the boys

There is a new force sweeping across Britain. Armed with a lump hammer, she is determined, destructive and leaves scenes of devastation in her wake. Who is she? She is the female DIYer and her handiwork makes even the most ineptly bodged wallpapered spare room look like the Sistine Chapel. DIY used to be man's work, like lighting the barbecue or checking for burglars if there was a bump in the night. But that was before the evil genius behind Changing Rooms inflicted MDF on the nation. Even four years ago, when I started filming the BBC's DIY SOS, female addicts were a rare species. The people we met, whose home-improvement attempts had resulted in catastrophe, were almost invariably chaps. I'd find myself looking at yet another pile of rubble that used to be a kitchen and wondering if demolition was another side-effect of testosterone, like wanting to catalogue your record collection.

How wrong I was. I now know that oestrogen is an equally destructive force, and it is laying waste to great swathes of the UK's housing stock as overeager women attempt to do a Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.

There are fundamental differences between bad male and female DIY. The worst masculine offenders are those who put jobs off. Women, on the other hand, tend to launch ourselves on something with no planning and regardless of whether we have the required skills and equipment.

I once interviewed a woman who had phoned her husband while he was working to tell him she was doing a spot of decorating. When he returned, she had stripped all the paint, paper and even plaster off the walls and ceiling of their lounge. It looked as if it had been gutted in a fire.

Then there was the optimistic female who had wrenched a tiled fireplace off a wall in the hope of uncovering a gorgeous Victorian original underneath. All she revealed was a large hole. Or there was the Scottish woman who decided to remove the breakfast bar, not noticing its power points.

She was left with a spaghetti tangle of wires dangling from the ceiling, many of them live. She was stumped, and so just abandoned them - which, no doubt, made for a bit of excitement at meal times.

Women can be fatally selfdeluding. Men who have no idea about DIY know they're rubbish and try to conceal it from others by avoiding it. The kamikaze female home improver, however, has no sense of her limitations. She will tackle anything and girlpower has only compounded this. Inside every female there is now a Lara Croft fighting to get out. "I don't need a man to remove that Artex," we declare.

One of the scariest women I ever met was a first-time buyer who, in an effort to transform a 1920s semi into an example of loft-living, demolished a wall. When the man from the council arrived, we were advised to vacate the building immediately as it was in danger of collapse.

But, to an extent, our hand is forced when it comes to DIY. We're suspicious that every tradesman out there wants to rip us off, and a recent study by The Consumers' Association suggests we're right - we are routinely charged more than men.

But, truly the most terrifying manifestation of female home improvement is the Revenge DIYer. This is where the lump hammer comes in. Men go to DIY stores for a bag of nails and come back with 22-piece screwdriver sets. The Revenge DIYer buys lump hammers, and the bigger the better.

This is the alternative to therapy. With every swing of that hammer we are bashing some bloke who never called us or that cheating ex or that perverted boss.

When I asked a woman who had demolished her understairs cupboard and most of her hall along with it if she had enjoyed using her hammer, she got a distinctly demonic look in her eye. "Oooooh yes," she drooled.

I considered removing the hammer from her grasp but decided that, on balance, she was probably more dangerous without it.

Lowri Turner's first novel, Stripped Bare (Headline, £12), is on sale now.