To look at me, you wouldn’t know I’m handy around the house.

My father wasn’t handy.

His tool kit consisted of a list of telephone numbers.

I honestly can’t recall ever seeing him with a hammer or paintbrush in his hand.

He had many fine qualities, but home improvement wasn’t among them.

Fortunately, both of my grandfathers were extremely handy, although in different ways.

My mother’s father was handy in a joyful amateurish way. He would try to fix, paint or repair anything with the tools at hand.

He was the master of “good enough.”

Because he never strived for perfection or sweated little things like whether something was level or straight, or even the right colour, he got a lot done with time left over for a cold beer and a snooze in the hammock.

He enjoyed tinkering and had a shed full of an odd assortment of tools, screws and half cans of paint bought at garage sales.

He figured he could make a bird feeder out of anything, so as a result we had about 20 of them around the cottage, some looking like Frank Lloyd Wright had designed them in partnership with Salvador Dali.

My other grandfather was the opposite kind of handyman.

He worked with precision machines all day, and was meticulous in his work.

He famously was known for painting the entire house wearing a white shirt, tie and cufflinks, and not getting a drop of paint on anything.

You could tell when he was doing dirty manual labour — he tucked his tie into his shirt.

Fortunately, it seems being handy skipped a generation, bypassing my father and landing squarely on me, which is a good thing considering how expensive it is to get a handyman — or handywoman — to actually show up.

I seem to have inherited the best of both worlds.

Like one grandfather I’m willing to tackle almost any job with blissful ignorance of my own many limitations.

I’ll try to fix or install anything, and have a surprising success rate.

Like the other grandfather, I also like to make sure things are level, straight and are built to last a thousand years (must be my German heritage).

It all came in handy a week or so ago when I finally decided I had had enough of the neighbour.

You have to understand the house next door has been in a state of perpetual renovation for the past four years.

They must have a printing press for money in the basement or a G20 grant from Tony Clement.

They have redone the house and yard at least three times I know of.

That doesn’t include the landscaping, the deck, the driveway, the porch and anything else that can be torn down and rebuilt at great expense, noise and dust.

All of which is fine, except I live next door and get to enjoy the view, not to mention the piles of gravel, blowing construction waste and trucks parked across my driveway.

So the other week I sketched a plan on a scrap of paper, went down to the lumber yard and brought home an assorted pile of wood.

A day of sawing and hammering later I had a new fence both grandfathers would be proud of, and frankly would have amazed my father.

Good fences may make good neighbours, but tall ones make them disappear altogether.