We loved putting this special section together. For the reporters, it was an opportunity to write the kind of stories they don’t normally get a chance to do with their hectic slate of news stories and features. For the advertising side, it was nice for them to be able to present a specialized product to our advertisers — one that can really target the people the advertisers need to reach.

For me, it was a special opportunity to actually learn some stuff about how to improve my own home and property. You see, I didn’t grow up learning how to do things around the house. This was the byproduct of three entities at work — my own unwillingness to try to do anything around the house, a father who feels that he’s “doing my part to help the local economy” by hiring contractors to do any project of any size and, lastly, a mother who thinks I walk on water and shouldn’t be wasting my time doing stuff I didn’t feel like doing.

I do love that lady.

Regardless, it left me a little lacking in terms of being able to do, well, anything. A hammer in my hands was best used to open a stubborn jar of pickles. A screwdriver was often nothing more than a device to scrape dried cheese off my kitchen counter, and a table saw was more of an ... yeah, I’ve never owned one of those things.

But I did buy a house last summer, and immediately there were a dozen projects that I wanted to take on right out of the gate. I was married to the notion that I was going to tackle these things, learn as I go and make myself “handy” before too long. It really couldn’t be all that hard, right? I mean, people have been doing things to their homes for centuries, right?

Wrong.

In fact, I hadn’t been that wrong on any subject since I was dead certain that the little blonde girl in my math class was just sure to accept my invitation to a movie one Friday night in high school. Yeah, there’s absolutely nothing better than mustering up the courage to approach a member of the opposite sex, pour your heart out and have her return your advances with a mix of laughter and disdain that made me want to ...

But I digress.

The true reality of my ineptitude struck when I decided to start off with an overhaul of my closets. I went up to the hardware store with a basic idea in mind, got instantly blown away by all the options dotting their shelves and sprinted back to my house with the mindset that perhaps the finest closet ever assembled was going to be in my house.

That’s when I hit a bit of a roadblock. See, what I forgot to take into account was the simple fact that I had no idea what I was doing. Oh, I was rolling in the hardware store, looking at all the fancy closet options, filling my cart with all the accessories I’d need and igniting a small fire with my credit card when it went through the scanner because of the sheer cost I had accumulated. But I soon realized that I had forgotten to purchase any knowledge when I got the closet gear.

According to my directions, I had to drill a series of holes into the wall for the screws that would be holding my elaborate closet equipment in place. Excited that I actually already owned a drill, I went right to work.

And drilled approximately 750,000 holes to accomplish what 10 were supposed to do if I had done it right. They were unlevel, or too small, or too big. My closet wall soon became more covered in spackle than paint, and I began to fret over the possibilities of my entire wall coming down because there was nothing of any real substance holding it together.

But I did get up that first shelf, only to be haunted by the realization that I needed to put up about eight more shelves to accomplish my original mission. My eyes clouded by tears, I resumed my happy mission of learning to do something — anything! — by myself.

Long story short, I got up two more shelves, burned through three boxes of Band-Aids and now have a closet where I can only hang things on one side because if I put them on the other, they slide right down to shallow ground.

So, for now, I call contractors and friends for help on any project. Well, until I start building that fireplace …