[bertr4nd]

So I’m one of those people who doesn’t know how to fix anything; I wish I did! I’ll tell you what holds me back: I didn’t grow up around anyone particularly handy, so I don’t know what I don’t know.

Simple example: I was trying to hang some shades in my kid’s room. First set went in fine, second set, my drill hit something too hard for it (brick? Metal?). At this point I’m kind of stuck. I can search Google for this scenario but it’s hard to know conclusively which situation I’m in, and I don’t know how dangerous or destructive what I’m doing could be.

This is probably laughable to lots of you who know, intuitively from experience, what’s happening and what to do, but for someone who had no idea like me, it’s pretty intimidating.

(Coda: we bought stick-on shades and they were trivially easy to install and worked great)

[doodlebugging]

I understand the predicament where you have a project that needs to be completed but you don't have the background skills to understand how to do it efficiently or at all.

I would like to point you to a subreddit [0] where you can get answers to questions like the one you described. There are lots of people like myself who hang out looking for inexperienced people who just need guidance since they already have the motivation.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/DIY

People post everything from complex projects that took them multiple months to complete to ordinary maintenance tasks like replacing light fixtures or door knobs.

I hang out there a lot. I'm a guy who grew up fixing things and just never stopped even when I had the money to pay someone else. I (we) don't mind passing on useful skills to inexperienced people. It's very satisfying to know that someone tackled a problem that they thought was difficult and solved it using something you recommended.

Good luck!

[bombcar]

You probably hit a "nail plate" or just happened to hit a drywall screw directly.

It can be really hard to start off without someone to at least bounce ideas off of over a beer; one of the nice things about knowing handy people, for sure.

[mindentropy]

>I didn’t grow up around anyone particularly handy

I grew up in a similar household. Fortunately I was the handyman for my family. I never had tools but I used to improvise. I also used to fix some of my hot wheel toy cars and I longed for a soldering iron and pliers.

Now I really wished I could learn in a more formal way on how to repair and maintain things. I have severe anxiety dealing with people and the attitude and workmanship of some of the repairmen makes my anxiety worse.

[JamesAdir]

Kudos for you on starting a new life long addicting hobby. One of the things in repairs is that sometime you encounter problems that force you to learn new things. Why is there a metal or brick in your wall? What can you do next time to know if a particular wall has a metal or brick? Learning how to solve these kind of problems is what makes them so fun. I've ruined countless things over the years but managed to fixed much much more.