I thought buying my first flat would be so much fun; poring over colour charts in coffee shops, mooching around Habitat and throwing parties on a whim without having to confer with flatmates.

And it probably would have been if I was a more practical sort of person who wanted to spend time picking out curtain material and then spend the next two weeks making them.

But, as it is, I am not good with my hands and my hovel of a new home has sparked an unwanted DIY obsession. I have reluctantly had to embrace the grown-up world of plumbers, carpenters, electricians and their extortionate rates.

Decisions such as "do I want to knock down that storage cupboard in the hallway or turn it into a shelf-feature" and "should I block off the existing doorway into my kitchen via my sitting room and create an entry arch somewhere else?" are all consuming and I find my thoughts drifting into domestic fantasy in the middle of a perfectly interesting conversation with a friend.

My lazy Saturday afternoons are now spent travelling between Homebase and B&Q, walking around the bathroom section in a DIY trance. And when I'm not choosing what style of basin to have - do I want a vanity cabinet, a basin with or without a pedestal, mixer taps, splash-back tiles? - these images infiltrate my subconscious and I find myself dreaming about them.

The financial side of it is just as personality-altering and I deliberately spark up conversations about fixed interest rate deals and the pros and cons of repayment mortgages for a first time buyer with friends, whose eyes now automatically glaze over in the first few minutes. Even my brother has started to walk away when I switch to talking about grouting or how to remove persistent stains from the toilet bowl.

It is very easy to feel sorry for yourself if, like me, you're a DIY-phobic single woman who has bought a flat on the cheap and needs to make it liveable without getting your hands dirty. I am slightly resentful of couples moving in together because it's so much easier to assemble an Ikea wardrobe when you've got a partner there (just slope out of the room and leave him to it), whereas I have to phone my super-tattooed carpenter with his expensive call-out rate just to take a curtain pole down because I can't figure out how to use my expensive new electric drill.

People keep telling me how much satisfaction I'll feel when the flat is complete because it will perfectly reflect the look that I'm after. But there're wrong because life's too short and my weekends are too precious to spend them shopping for shower-heads, so I've told the builder to go out and choose my kitchen, bathroom and shower-head for me. Let's hope he's got good taste.