Exercise 13
Do it yourself.
Tara's been very busy
and there are some jobs around the house that she hasn't done
Look at this cupboard door
it's broken
and these floorboards need to be changed as well
Now Tara could ask a workman to come and do these jobs,
but they are quite simple
so Tara is going to do
some D.I.Y.
What's that?
D.I.Y is when
you do not ask a workman to do things around the house
but instead you Do It Yourself
you need to be careful when you do
DIY
because tools are not toys and you can hurt yourself
If you're going to do DIY
you need the right tools
So let's look at the cupboard door.
the hinges are broken
A hinge is the part that a door turns on when it opens
So Tara needs to put in a new
hinge. First she drills
some holes
the machine that makes the holes is also called
a drill
Then she takes some screws
these are screws
and something to drive the screws
into the wood
What do you call something that drives in screws?
That's right
A screwdriver
It's an easy job
and look
Tara has almost finished
She unscrewed the old hinge
and has screwed a new one in
It looks really good now
Now the floorboards
Tara needs to take away the old floorboards
And put in these new ones
Their shops where you can buy tools and things like floorboards
they are of course
called DIY shops
Tara
Tara measured the size of the floorboards using a tape measure
and then went to the DIY shop to get boards of the right size
For this job Tara also purchased a claw hammer.
It's called a claw hammer because of this claw at the back
Do you see it?
Now she's using the claw hammer
to pry loose the old boards
to lift them up from the floor
She's doing this carefully
because she does not want to damage the other floorboards
There she's done it
To make the wood smooth
on the new boards Tara sands it down
You use a special kind of paper for this
called
sandpaper
Here's a sheet of the sandpaper Tara is using.
now she has put in the new floorboards
and now she is hammering down the nails
these are nails
don't confuse them with these
even though fingernails are sometimes called nails!
All done?
Let's make really sure
by checking that the floorboards are straight and level
So get the spirit level Tara and let's check.
mmm Yes that looks good
well done Tara
Now have a good cup of coffee and watch some TV
Oh dear
you can't can you?
The leg of the sofa is broken
another DIY job
Good luck
If you want to do some exercises on the vocabulary you have just learned you can find it on
the English for Everybody website along with this
and other videos at this address