With whole subdivisions of Whitehorse filled with homes built in the bush with amateur hands, Yukoners are known for their do-it-yourself attitude.
But we’re not all capable of gutting a house and rebuilding it complete with wiring and plumbing.
Many of us don’t know the difference between a Phillips and Robertson screwdriver.
Canada’s Worst Handyman is looking for the nation’s most unskilled labourers and the Discovery Channel series is coming north for its search.
The show has not featured anyone from the Yukon and has never searched for contestants north of 60.
As a Canadian show, taking it to the territory will make it more of a national program, said Meredith Veats, associate producer with Proper Television, the series’ producer.
“It’s fresh territory for us,” she said.
“We’ve never searched there before so there should be plenty of people lacking the handyman skills to chose from.”
Planning for the community tour is at an early stage and the producers don’t have a set date for when they’ll visit the Yukon, but it will be in late November.
This season, contestants will be working on an entire house in Ontario with the goal of flipping it after an intense two-week crash course in renovations.
The house will be professionally assessed before and after the renovations.
In past seasons, the unskilled had to renovate an apartment and build an eco-shed.
This year the stakes are higher and more of a chance to learn, said Veats.
“Our training ground is an actual house so there’s a lot of room to work and improve,” she said.
Friends, relatives and lovers will nominate someone they think is the worse handyman they’ve every seen and if that unskilled labourer makes it the show — five people make the final cut — the nominator serves as that person partner on the show.
Past duos have been a mother-daughter team, spouses, and a young man whose mother-in-law believed he lacked the handy instincts.
Contestants have different reasons for being on the show, said Veats.
There are people who have the necessary skills for the job but are always taking short cuts and others have a lot of ambition but lack the skill to match it.
“There are these people who never finish anything no matter how much time they have — they’ll never go away,” said Veats.
Nominating someone is simple: phone or email the producers with a little information about the inept renovator.
If deemed interesting, producers will visit the person’s house when in the Yukon to check out samples of the offending work.
“We’ll probably ask the handyman to do a little project for us, too,” said Veats.
The best candidates are people looking to actually improve how they handle a drill or swing a hammer, she added.
“The ideal person is someone who has tried to do this in the past, but was unsuccessful,” said Veats. “They need the ambition.”
Filming for the show, now in its third season, starts in January and will air later in the spring.
A sample of past contestants include a suburban dad who never learned how to fix things around the house (he used CDs to patch holes in his drywall) and a woman who thought her knowledge of sewing translated into building a deck.
It was off-level by about 45 degrees.
Another man found the all-purpose duct tape a little too handy.
“This guy’s whole house was covered in duct tape — he used it instead of nails or screws,” said Veats.
All contestants came away from the show with new skills to use for their next do-it-yourself project, said Veats.
Proper Television also produces Canada’s Worst Driver series and The Real Superhumans, a show about people with seemingly fantastic abilities.
You can nominate people for the show by calling 1-866-598-2591 or send an e-mail to handyman@propertelevision.com.