| Season Number: | 1 |
| Starring: | Andrew Younghusband |
| Network: | Discovery Channel Canada |
| Num Episodes: | 7 |
| Next Season: | Canada's Worst Handyman 2 |
Canada's Worst Handyman 1 was the first-ever season of the Canadian reality TV show Canada's Worst Handyman, which aired on the Discovery Channel, based on the UK Channel 4 Television Corporation's Britain's Worst Driver. The show is considered to be a sister show of Canada's Worst Driver (itself an adaptation of Britain's Worst Driver), as Canada's Worst Handyman shares much of its production crew with Canada's Worst Driver. As with subsequent years, five people, nominated by their family or friends, enter the Handyman Rehabilitation Centre to improve their handyman skills, in an effort to not be named Canada's Worst Handyman. This year, the Handyman Rehabilitation Centre is located in a public housing complex building in the Regent Park neighborhood of Toronto that has since been demolished to make way for a FreshCo supermarket and new apartments.[1] [2] [3]
Unlike Canada's Worst Driver, none of the contestants are eliminated; instead, at the end of each episode, one will be named the most improved, while another will be named the worst. Also, the time frame for Canada's Worst Handyman is much shorter, lasting only two weeks, as opposed to the eight weeks for Canada's Worst Driver, with each episode being chronicled one or two days, as opposed to a week for Canada's Worst Driver. On the sixth episode, the five contestants will work together to refurbish an apartment in ten hours, with the nominee with the worst individual performance being named Canada's Worst Handyman. Like Canada's Worst Driver, the contestants are accompanied by their nominators, who are allowed to assist them in their various tasks. Each episode (except the finale, in which the nominees participate in the final exam) also features a "group challenge," which is done by the five nominees as a group. Except for the Shingling Yardwork Challenge, in which the experts saw how badly the nominees performed without an assigned leader, each subsequent group challenge has a nominee named as the project's foreman, a designation given to the most improved nominee from the previous episode; this particular twist was permanently added to the series. The nominee named the worst in each episode is obligated to "hang their head in shame" and nail a picture of themselves along a "wall of shame" to the outside of the tool shed and be personally tutored on an aspect related to the reason why they were named the worst.
The five contestants for the first season are as follows:
| Contestant | Nominator | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barry | Scot | WORST | IN | IN | IN | IN | IN | |
| Darryl | Sara | IMP | IN | IN | IN | IN | IN | |
| Jeannie | Laurence | IN | IN | WORST | IN | IN | IN | |
| Keith | David | IN | WORST | IMP | WORST | IN | CWH | |
| Merle | Shelly | IN | IMP | IN | IN | WORST | IN |
CWH – The contestant is Canada's Worst Handyman.
WORST – The contestant is the worst of the episode.
IN – The contestant was considered for the worst for this episode.
WORST - The contestant was the worst while their nominator was the most improved.
IMP – The contestant is the most improved of the episode.
Each of the first five episodes contains four or five individual challenges taken from two days of shooting, where a nominee and their nominator work together to complete a task in a given amount of time. There is also a yardwork challenge in each episode, where the nominees have to work together (but without their nominators) to decorate a shed at the front of the Handyman Rehabilitation Centre. At the end of each episode, one nominee is named the most improved (represented by a toolbelt), which allows them to be in charge of the next yardwork challenge, while another is named the worst. For the nominee named the worst, said nominee must hang their head in shame and nail their portrait to the side of the shed, then subsequently given a private lesson by Andrew relating to the reason why they were named the worst.
Original Airdate: March 13, 2006The first episode introduces the nominees and nominators as they first enter the Handyman Rehabilitation Centre. After the nominees are greeted outside by series host Andrew Younghusband, each is given a dilapidated one-bedroom apartment at the Handyman Rehabilitation Centre, where their 19 individual challenges will take place. The apartments are color-coded: Darryl in purple, Merle in green, Keith in blue, Jeannie in yellow and Barry in pink. Before entering their apartments, the nominees must break down a wall blocking the entrance as symbolism for the beginning of the rehabilitation process. Keith was picked to do the honours due to his lack of experience, but it was ultimately an impatient Merle who knocks the wall down. At the start of the first day, they are introduced to the experts-- general contractor Greg House and interior designer Robin Lockhart, who will teach the contestants the skills needed to tackle the challenges. Darryl was named the episode's most improved handyman due to his overall attitude and first impressions, while Barry was named the worst due to not listening to the instructions given by the experts—a fact that Barry in fact admitted to and, in retrospect, was deserving of. His extra lesson: a lesson in listening skills, where Andrew asked Barry to follow one simple instruction until he got it right—cutting a board 21 and 7/8" long.
The nominees must patch a hole in their ceiling.
The nominees must work together to shingle the roof of the shed right outside the Handyman Rehabilitation Centre in 90 minutes. Shingles and roofing nails are provided, and instructions are provided on the shingle packages themselves. For safety reasons, the crew insists that only two people are to be on the roof at any given time. The roof has already been tar-papered prior to the challenge. The team begins by not nominating someone to be in charge. Merle begins right away on the roof with the nails while Darryl and Barry deliver the shingles to the roof. While Merle and Barry argue on which way the shingles should be facing, Jeannie offers to read the instructions aloud to the rest, but the instructions she reads are for a flat roof and the shed is a peaked roof and the others ignore her. Merle convinces Barry that his way of aligning and nailing the shingles (in blocks rather than in rows) is correct (which it is not), but Barry continues to attach the shingles upside-down. Eventually the upside-down shingles were removed and replaced. Soon, work begins on both sides of the roof—Merle and Jeannie together on one side (with Darryl on the roof), while Barry, Keith and Merle work on the other (with Merle on the roof). On Jeannie's end, the shingles are laid out in courses, but the shingles themselves do not overlap, prompting Merle to make a quick patchwork fix. The effect of the block-by-block shingling on the other side leads to a very bumpy roof, which, as Greg notices, would easily fall apart if a strong enough gust of wind hit the roof. The rule that two people were to be on the roof at any time was quickly broken when Barry decides to go on the roof himself ("we didn't build it so it's gotta be safe" is his rationale), leading to Keith also joining Darryl and Merle on the roof. Keith mainly went up to the roof to tell the others how to shingle a roof with a valley, which the roof of the shed has none, but which Keith insists that it had in its peak. In the end, though, the contestants together manage to completely shingle the roof, albeit poorly with low quality.
Prior to entering the Handyman Rehabilitation Centre, each nominee was asked to build a toolbox based on a very simple diagram to replace their existing tool storage. Jeannie had used plastic filing cabinets, Merle a cardboard box and Keith a suitcase from an old Fisher-Price record player.
The nominees must paint a mural on the living room wall. The nominees may choose seven items of their choosing, but must commit to their choices before this challenge begins, as there was a strict "no return" policy. After the painting, their challenges are inspected by Greg and Robin, as well as (for this episode only) psychologist Dr. Julie V. Hill.
Original Airdate: March 20, 2006This episode focuses on various bathroom-related renovations. Merle was named the episode's most improved handyman, largely as he was one of two nominees to have a working toilet (Darryl being the other), while Keith was named the worst mainly due to his hostile attitude towards the experts, particularly Robin. His extra lesson was one where Andrew convinces him to stop making fun of the experts—Robin in particular, who he called a witch and something that rhymed with a witch—and voice his concerns with them personally. In the end, Keith decides to apologize.
The nominees are tasked with removing the existing toilet and replacing it with a new one.
The nominees are asked to use vinyl flooring to cover their tiled bathroom floor. Keith asks why this was not done before the toilet was replaced, as it is how it is done in new construction, to which Greg replies that the task is there to improve their overall renovating skills.
After Darryl reluctantly invites the others to see his botched vinyl floor, he wants to be left alone, yet he is the foreman of the yardwork challenge, which makes his task as foreman all the more difficult. This is compounded by the fact that Barry resolves to be a pain in Darryl's face, while Merle and Jeannie resolve to blindly follow Darryl's decisions. In this challenge, the nominees must lay down a path with interlocking brick. Darryl's plan is to lay a path out from the shed door, with a flower bed and fire pit on the side. Keith gets going on the fire pit, while the rest dig a path for the brick that is mere inches deep. Because of Darryl's dislike of Jeannie, Jeannie is sent to help Keith with the fire pit. Merle is put to laying down the bricks after very little limestone pad is spread out. The bricks are put down in rows and are not interlocked (defeating the purpose of interlocking brick and create lumps in the ground because a level was not used. Worse yet, to create the impression of level, dirt is being backfilled to make the bricks level, a fact that Barry points out (by asking him what the level was for), but Darryl quickly dismisses, saying "it's too late for that." Merle eventually finishes the fire pit, which is far too shallow and surrounded by one layer of loose brick and the flower bed is quickly finished. The nominees celebrate with a fire.
The nominees must tile the backsplash above their bathroom sink in 30 minutes. They will then have another 90 minutes to grout and paint their bathrooms, as well as finish any remaining incomplete tasks.
Original Airdate: March 27, 2006This episode focuses on installations in the bedroom. Although everyone made noticeable progress in rehabilitation, Keith was named the episode's most improved handyman due to finally admitting he needed help, while Jeannie was named the worst because of her lack of skills and refusal to ask for help. It takes Jeannie 46 tries just to put a single nail to the side of the shed and her extra lesson was more practice in the use of a power drill.
The nominees are given pine boards, glue and screws to build and mount three shelves onto a concrete wall in one hour. As a final test, all of the shelves are tested to see if they hold a certain amount of weight.
After being given a brief lesson on using a drill by Greg after seeing abysmal drilling techniques in the morning challenge, the nominees are given another lesson on using a jigsaw for their next challenge—to lay down tongue-and-groove laminate flooring in their bedroom... or rather, the nominees will direct their nominators on how to lay down laminate flooring. This is a test of whether contestants can understand the instructions (given with the flooring) and give them out correctly, as well as their planning skills. At the end of the challenge, none of the contestants manage to finish the flooring, even with helping their nominators.
As the most improved handyman in the previous episode, Merle is tasked to lead the nominees into painting the shed with a design of his own choosing. Although Merle is up to the challenge of leadership, Darryl had plans to sabotage it to knock him down a notch. To do so, he tries to sabotage the work that Merle allotted to Jeannie (who Darryl greatly dislikes), while Merle himself was addressing the queries by the others. Merle still had other issues to deal with, as both Keith and Darryl refused to work and Merle himself was not painting as he was trying to help Jeannie. When time runs out, Merle admits that the challenge itself was a failure, with many spots left unpainted, but through no fault of his own.
Robin teaches the nominees on building a straight-back chair, centering about three points: "Form, Function and Construction."
The nominees were to assemble a pre-fabricated bed and end table combination from IKEA, after which a quick evaluation of each contestant's bedroom was performed.
Original Airdate: April 3, 2006This episode focuses on kitchen renovations. For each individual challenge in this episode, the nominees were paired with other nominators. In an interesting twist, Andrew named David the episode's most improved for assisting Darryl, Barry and Merle in completing their respective tasks, while Keith himself was named the worst, largely due to his lack of leadership in the Fencing Challenge and the fact that he had completed only one of the 19 challenges so far, building the presbyterian chair in the previous episode that led to him being named the most improved. His extra work consists of building a smaller-scale fence from popsicle sticks.
The nominees must remove the existing sink and countertop and replace it with a new sink and countertop, including disconnecting and reconnecting the plumbing, all in two hours. This is indeed the hardest challenge to date, involving many skills from previous episodes.
The nominees have to tile their kitchen floor with stick-on vinyl tiles in a diagonal checkerboard pattern. The main skill is to determine a center point in the room and working their way out. Because of inconsistent joins and rough edgework across the board, all of the contestants fail in this challenge.
The nominees have to apply wallpaper to a wall in their apartment. Four of the five nominees will be given regular wallpaper, but the fifth will have custom-made wallpaper with a pattern consisting of Andrew's facial expressions.
Keith leads the team into building a picket fence and planting a small flower bed. He does so by first using interpretive dance, but has no plan of attack. When Jeannie offers her thoughts, Keith sends her to do the most backbreaking task: mixing the concrete for the fenceposts, while everyone else digs holes for the fenceposts at random spots without measurements and not very deep at that. This stresses Barry, Darryl and Merle, who all notice that the fence is neither straight nor level. For his part, Keith does not budge and everyone quickly becomes frustrated by Keith's lack of leadership, believing that it stifles whatever opportunity they have to improve. Keith himself is doing none of the hard work himself, despite his drive to learn. While the rest quickly get the idea of how to do it correctly (for example, putting the pickets up from one end to the other), Keith continues to get everyone to do things in his artistic manner incorrectly (his rationale for not putting the pickets up correctly: a "quantum physics" phoenomena where the pickets themselves would "establish their own order" if they were to be placed randomly). Due to the lack of leadership, Barry has taken a seat, while Merle has disappeared, taking a nap in the shed and when Andrew notices this, Merle begs him to mercifully end the challenge.
The nominees are to hang a door that leads into their kitchen. Merle is especially motivated in this challenge, having wanted to hang nine new doors in his house but having never gotten around to it in nine years.
Original Airdate: April 10, 2006Despite his significant improvements in rehab, Merle, who only avoided being named the worst in the previous episode due to Keith's poor track record in rehab, was named the worst for his ignorance of safety after accidentally cutting himself with a utility knife. As he hangs his head in shame, another duct tape joke (which had been persistent throughout the episode) is cracked at his expense, this time by Jeannie. As Merle attaches his picture on the wall of shame, his prompted to add a dab of paint to his picture to denote where he had cut himself. His extra lesson is a long lecture about what is safe and what isn't when it comes to cutting, of all else, duct tape. The episode begins with Merle showing up early and completely disassembling his duct tape-patched drywall from the first episode, due to his inability to sand and apply a second coat of plaster (which was done during the events of an earlier episode). At first, he opted to chisel off the plaster (instead of sanding) and sealing off the second coat with newspaper, but the ceiling had apparently haunted him enough to do the drywall path over again. This time around, Merle does the drywall patching correctly, complete with a shim for support, all without duct tape, which he vowed to avoid for the remainder of the day. As the rest of the contestants file in, they are told to do a final coat of plaster on their drywall patches.
The first challenge of the episode has the contestants upholstering a chair, either the chair they had built in the third episode or a bar stool provided from the supplies. As an effort suggested by Dr. Hill to test Merle's will to keep his word and avoid duct tape, Robin (teaching the contestants the skills needed) specifically allows the nominees to use duct tape to upholster their chairs and provides a large number of rolls. Merle quickly caves (while the others, especially Keith, aware that the stipulation was a joke at Merle's expense, refuse) and begins the challenge with duct tape.
In this episode's yardwork challenge, led by David, the remaining nominees build an arbour for the shed, as well as assemble a barbecue. David begins the challenge on the right foot, consulting the rest of his team on what an arbour is (explained to him by Jeannie) and how to build it. To dig the holes for the footings, an auger is used, which Barry and Darryl (the prime candidates, according to David) operate. Jeannie is put to mixing concrete, Keith assembling the barbecue, while David himself cuts the cross beams. Things go along swimmingly until Barry and Darryl are both sent flying from operating the auger too fast. Eventually, the holes are dug and everyone (except Keith) works together into installing and levelling the posts and crossbeams. The yardwork challenge (save Keith's barbecue) is somehow a resounding success, although the nominees are somewhat disappointed that Merle (still at St. Michael's Hospital) did not participate. The only resounding failure in this project is how bad all the other yardwork challenges look in comparison.
The four remaining nominees are tasked to apply stipple onto their ceiling.
The nominees are to install a ceiling fan in two hours, which disturbs Barry, having been involved in a near-fatal electrical accident back at home while fixing his dryer. The nominees are also told that the circuit breakers controlling the fluorescent tube lighting that they will be replacing with the fan has been turned off, unaware that Andrew lied to them. No one catches this and the challenge begins on a bad note as both Greg and Andrew are forced to lecture the contestants about safety.
The nominees are to install four IKEA KRABB mirrors on a wall, in any configuration they choose.
The final challenge for the nominees is to hang a hook from their patched ceiling so that a plant can be supported on it, then spend the rest of the afternoon redoing and/or completing whatever previous tasks were unfinished (including decorating their apartment) for their final apartment inspections.
In the end, of the 19 individual challenges, Jeannie finishes the fewest with only three completed, while Keith and Barry complete four. Darryl has finished five challenges, while Merle has the most with eight.
Original Airdate: April 17, 2006In the final episode, the nominees gear up for their final exam, where they have to work together to renovate a one-bedroom apartment (not unlike their own apartments) within ten hours. The tasks that must be done include the following:
The nominees may also choose to ask for assistance from Greg or Robin only once each during this challenge, for which the experts will spend an hour assisting them in whatever tasks are necessary. However, the nominators will not be helping their nominees, instead, they enjoy the action from a separate room, where their only task was to "assemble two futons." Jeannie begins the challenge by suggesting that a foreman be nominated (akin to how a foreman was nominated in all but the Shingling yardwork challenge), a motion supported by Keith, but immediately shot down by Merle as Jeannie is about to ask Andrew to be the foreman. The nominees begin on their separate tasks: Merle going to do the bathroom sink, Darryl to the kitchen cabinets, Barry and Jeannie to the hardwood flooring and Keith to the TV unit—a disastrous start, as Andrew notes, as all of them had failed challenges relating to the tasks they would have to do (Merle with the kitchen sink, Darryl with his bed assembly and hanging doors, Barry and Jeannie with three floors and Keith with the shelves and his initial failure with his chair). Greg also believes it's a bad start, as the nominees are starting from the floor and working their way up ("Things fall down," as Robin notes, to explain Greg's rationale that the drywall should be first). Robin later on also voices her opinion on Keith's choice of doing the furniture first ("You don't put the furniture in the room before you build the room"). In the bathroom, Merle begins by ripping out the sink, exposing a hole in the drywall and attempts to mount the new pedestal sink into the old sink bracket. It works, but the pedestal is too short. Reading the mounting instructions only confused him further. After cutting one board, Keith takes a break and tries to use that break to assist Merle, but quits after reading the instructions. Needing help in trying to get the pedestal to meet the sink, Merle solicits Jeannie's help. Jeannie's advice to lower the sink elicits a round of applause from the nominators' room ("the voice of reason," as David notes). Merle would eventually manage to remove the old bracket, put the pedestal in place and balance the new sink on top of it, before measuring and installing the new brackets into place. However, Merle later found out he had measured incorrectly and the pedestal remains 2 1/2" too short. Merle then attempts to secure the pedestal in place but realizes that he does not have the drill bit needed to drill into the concrete floor. Keith's assistance proves to be useless, as his belief that it is a problem with the drill settings and not the drill bit causes the existing drill bit to break. Completely frustrated with the sink, Merle decides to solicit advice from Barry on whether to just simply take the sink down and tile the bathroom first (which is the correct procedure), to which Barry replies in the affirmative. Barry begins his flooring by applying adhesive on the floor using a small putty knife instead of a large notched trowel, which, as Scot mentions, would take him too much time to complete. Furthermore, Barry decides to kick the first course of flooring into place. As Barry and Jeannie lay their tongue-in-groove floor down in courses (which is correct), they are still using very little glue, which Jeannie thinks (despite the massive supply) that they are being liberal with. As they move along, they use even less glue. In the next room, Darryl has managed to successfully take down the existing cabinets and is trying to assemble new ones. Meanwhile, all Keith has done in his first 90 minutes with the furniture is to make two cuts on a pine board and take three breaks. At the lunchtime mark (two hours into the challenge), not a single task is completed, nor has any sort of rhythm been worked out. Barry suggests that the calls to Greg and Robin not be made until the final hours when more manpower is needed instead of earlier when a plan on completion can be devised. Keith also expresses his intention to work with Darryl on the cabinets, which, as Andrew notes, is news to Darryl, who took an early lunch so that he could work alone in silence, believing that the others were holding him back. 15 minutes later, Darryl sends Keith on a wild goose chase trying to look for screws. As the rest return to work, Barry has taken on the role of leader, laying out their plan to call Robin and Greg in with very little time remaining. Barry and Jeannie continue to work on the floor slowly—at their pace, as Andrew notes, the floor itself would be a 15-hour job. Keith continues to assist Darryl in mounting the assembled cabinets to the walls (although one fails to mount due to mismeasurement), while Merle is tiling the bathroom wall, correctly this time around (compared to his bathroom challenge in Episode 2). For a brief moment, everyone seemed to be working at the same time... that is, until Keith uses his eighth break of the day to explain Merle's progress to the others and Jeannie manages to get a splinter in her finger while installing the floor (somewhat vindicating Merle as the deep gash he suffered when he cut himself during the previous episode's Upholstery Challenge, which led to Shelly taking him to St. Michael's Hospital to get five stitches and him being named the worst, no longer constituted the rehab centre's only injury). At the 3 1/2 hour mark, the crew has moved the shed from the front yard to the roof in preparation for the finale. At that point, still no tasks have been completed. Keith and Darryl have mounted the last of the three cabinets and are preparing to hang the six cabinet doors. However, faced with the difficulty of hanging the doors, Keith walks off. Darryl also gives up on the cabinet doors to tackle the glass blocks (it is revealed here that the contestants had also attempted a glass block challenge earlier, although no mention of the challenge itself had aired in previous episodes and that Darryl had performed poorly). Unable to form a plan on the glass block, Darryl returns to the cabinet doors. He manages to hang two, but they do not close together. At the same time, Merle, still in the bathroom, decides to go back to the plumbing as the tiling lay there incomplete, yet the pedestal has not been secured in place, forcing Merle to believe that the sink is drooping is because of an improper bracket installation. He screws a pine board into the wall in an attempt to fix this and gets the help of Keith to handle securing the pedestal and hooking up the pipes while Merle gets the sink in position. Meanwhile, Barry and Jeannie continue their work on the floor, still using very little glue and still taking three times longer than it should. After five hours of work (the halfway mark), no tasks have been completed and Jeannie is believing that everyone's on the right track (even though none of the bedroom tasks have started; as Barry notes, Jeannie's claim that everyone was halfway through was "irrelevant"). Keith and Darryl, still not having adjusted the doors, have moved on to Keith's original task of building the furniture. However, Keith's TV stand (consisting of three boards screwed to each other at this point) had the same structural integrity as the Presbyterian Chair Keith made in Episode 3 that led to him being named the most improved. Keith and Darryl expand upon that structure, although they do little to improve the piece's structural integrity. However, they can now claim that one task is complete. Merle contributes his share of the work when his plumbing is complete and his sink is tested and shown not to leak. The simple parts of his tiling is also complete, although he refuses to attempt the difficult areas (where cut tiles are necessary). This means that with 4 1/2 hours to go (just over the halfway mark), only three tasks are completed. As Keith takes his 15th break of the day, Merle begins to work on the glass block by first constructing a window frame for the port, while Barry and Jeannie continue to lay down hardwood with slothlike intensity. Darryl, in the meantime, has gotten all six doors mounted but is making a fourth attempt at making them all balanced and close together. When Keith wants to partner with Darryl again, Darryl advises him to start the wallpaper, a bad decision considering that the drywall must be done first and that Keith had failed miserably in his drywall challenge in Episode 4. Keith starts incorrectly again as he chooses to start wallpapering next to the door frame in the middle of the wall. Andrew convinces Keith that the wallpapering is incorrect, which only makes him take his 17th break of the day. As Andrew is trying to press Keith back to work, he learns that Keith has made a wager with Rob MacDonald, the show's own lighting technician, with McDonald betting ten dollars that the wallpapering would not be finished before time ran out. Andrew also accepts the bet (surprising Merle, who had also taken a break and was in on the conversation), believing that he's in for an easy $10 (he's later proven right when Keith ultimately gives up with a half-hour remaining). When Keith returns, he begins in the corner without taking down his first piece. His next piece isn't lined up at the seam, nor is his piece cut to get around the door frame. Because the wallpaper was started before the drywall, the strapping for the drywall is in the way and Keith is attempting to address this by removing the strapping, which he gives up after about a minute. His alternative method of working around the strapping is far worse, as it leaves a gap between the strips of wallpaper. Andrew convinces him that the wallpaper should be taken down and the drywall be attempted first. Meanwhile, Merle has completed the frame for the glass block window. Without the frame, the port is designed to hold five blocks per row with a reasonable gap. However, with the frame in place, only four blocks can be accommodated per row, resulting in leftover blocks. To address this, Merle accepts Barry's suggestion of making the space between the blocks wider, claiming that the frame space at the Grand Hotel, where the nominees are staying during rehab, is wide. Merle, Darryl and Keith mix the adhesive (or rather, Darryl and Keith watch as Merle does the mixing). Merle makes the perfect mix, but Darryl's laying of the adhesive between the blocks pushes the mortar underneath each block out of line. Merle is also assisting Darryl by using his finger as both a spacer and a trowel. Barry also notices that the blocks are being installed on a slight slant instead of being level. Realizing that the project has become a disaster, he relinquishes all responsibility to Darryl and goes to work on the drywall with Keith, who, at this point, has taken his 21st break of the day. Barry and Jeannie have finally finished their hardwood floor after seven hours of work, although their floor is still several centimetres away from the wall. With only three hours remaining and seven tasks still not completed, the nominees finally cash in on their opportunity to seek expert help, as Robin is given the call by Jeannie. When Robin enters, she immediately suggests taking down the wallpaper and doing the drywall, which Keith is tasked to do. Robin also suggests that the kitchen floor should also get started, as the adhesive requires an hour to get sufficiently sticky so that the tiles can adhere onto the floor. Barry begins applying the adhesive (which also forces Darryl to finish the glass block from the living room side). With two hours to go, Greg is given the call by Barry. When Greg enters, he shows Merle and Keith how to use a "deadman" to prop the drywall up so that it can be screwed into place and helps them complete the drywall. Merle then gets moving on the drywalling, while Keith takes his 24th break of the day. Merle quickly reins Keith in and manages to finish their drywalling with only 40 minutes to go. Although there is a suitable time to do some plastering, Merle declares himself finished for the day. Andrew is forced to coax Merle (and Keith, who had taken yet another break) back into work after telling him that quitting early may make them earn the title of Canada's Worst Handyman. While Merle, fearing he may be named the worst two episodes in a row (which would be another kick in the butt if that happened, considering all the work he did) after having managed to avoid the title in the four episodes that preceded it (including barely avoiding the title in Episode 4), gets back to work, Keith attempts the wallpapering one more time (this time with the drywall installed), but quickly takes yet another break and gives up. At this point, Andrew is convinced that both he and Rob have each won their $10 and Keith concedes defeat in their bet. Meanwhile, Barry and Jeannie continue with their adhesive, while Darryl, having finished the glass block, goes to work on getting the cabinet doors perfect. However, Barry's strategy of adhesive laying soon gets all three into trouble, as the three are now boxed in by the adhesive, painting themselves into a corner (for which Scot and David both make mock celebratory gestures). Undeterred by this, however, Barry begins laying down the tiles even though the adhesive has not been fully laid out or anywhere near suitably sticky enough for the tiles to adhere to the floor. In fact, his application of the adhesive concurrently with the tile gets the adhesive over his new tiles not to mention the new hardwood floor and the new cupboards. In the haste to get everything finished, Darryl channels his inner Merle and quickly puts handles on the cabinet doors without checking to see if the handles were level or aligned parallel to each other. With the final exam finally finished, Greg and Robin believe that everyone is still in the running for Canada's Worst Handyman for different reasons: Darryl for the lack of planning skills, Jeannie for doing too little overall, Barry for not following directions or listening, Keith for taking far too many breaks and not doing enough work and Merle for continuously doing things too quickly. When the final exam is evaluated, of the 11 tasks assigned, the nominees completed eight of them, but only Merle's bathroom sink installation is given a passing grade. In their final deliberations, the experts agree that, although his two floors were both awful, Barry is not Canada's Worst Handyman, as he has admitted to learning by failure. Jeannie is also free to go as well because, despite injuring herself by getting a piece of wood in her finger "the size of a piece of lumber" as Andrew states, she quickly got right back into the game. Darryl's poor carpentry skills and Keith's wallpapering meant that they could still be Canada's Worst Handyman. As for Merle, knowing how to do things right and getting the skills needed to kick his duct tape addiction, his aversion to measuring and, above all else, get his daughter Cassie's bedroom finished after nine wasted years definitely makes him not Canada's Worst Handyman. As he leaves, he gives a celebratory dance. As for Darryl and Keith, they meet Andrew on the roof, where Andrew explains that neither Keith nor Darryl were handy for different reasons: Keith never bothered to play with tools and Darryl was never allowed to. Keith made the biggest mess in the final exam, while Darryl made the single biggest blunder by installing cabinet handles without checking to see if the handles were level. In the end, though, Keith is named Canada's Worst Handyman for his overall lack of focus, having taken 34 breaks during the final exam and switching projects 14 times, with none of them earning a passing grade. With Darryl managing to avoid being named Canada's Worst Handyman, he becomes the only nominee to not be named as such in a single episode.
Original Airdate: April 24, 2006This is a recap episode, detailing the adventures of each nominee through the rehabilitation process. The Handyman Rehabilitation Centre was demolished at the end of the episode.