Home repairs
Posts like this one, at Corporate Mommy, intimidate the heck out of me. Geez, they did that all themselves? I can paint a room and replace the flappy part of a toilet, and that’s about the limit of my home improvement skills. Come on, I grew up in an NYC apartment — when something broke, you called the super. So I liked the article in this Sunday’s Washington Post magazine about a woman who bit the bullet and learned to do some electrical work around her house.
T’s a bit more skilled than I am, but not as much as I sometimes think he should be. Not because he has a Y chromosome, but because his father is pretty handy. But he had bad experiences "helping" his father as a teenager. That said, he’s become a fair hand with a solder iron since we bought the house. His father showed him how to do one and the first one he did took him about 3 hours, but since the house had essentially no grounded plugs or GFCIs when we got it, there were lots of opportunities to practice.
Fundamentally, those are the two elements that you need to learn most hands-on skills — someone to show you how to do it, and the opportunity to practice. In general, we don’t have either for home improvements, which is why we’ve spent the last two months sending emails back and forth with the guy we’re trying to get to do our bathroom. (One of the lighting fixtures fell out of the ceiling tonight, so I’m hoping that we can expedite this process a bit.) I didn’t learn how to do crafts as a child, either, and have mostly
self-taught those, but the difference is that I don’t really mind having a
sloppy quilt where none of the corners quite line up stuffed into a closet. I don’t want to live with a kitchen where the cabinets don’t line up for the next 20 years.
See also: The Simple Dollar on The Do It Yourself Dilemna
September 24th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
I was just talking with my kids this weekend about some of my favorite junior high courses (it’s a long story how that came up) and I was reminded that I went to a public school where all seventh graders had to take both shop and home ec. I loved both so much that I carved out space to take both as 8th-grade electives, and won myself a blue ribbon at the county fair for my iron work. I suspect I would have figured out most of the home ec skills regardless of the course (I’m pretty fearless around a craft pattern myself) but the shop courses opened up whole new vistas of potential for me. I lust after a well-furnished shed, replete with power tools.
Calder grew up in a home where specialists did all the repair work, so he doesn’t share my casual willingness to give some project a try. I did a few substantial jobs in our CT house — the scariest of which was replacing a window. But that was an old house, and I figured the worst I could do would still be fixable by a professional, should it come to that. Here in our new house, I’m quicker to call for help. It seems as if more is at stake.
Also, honestly, it’s hard to justify even something as basic as painting, when the damn dissertation keeps calling my name. Better, and easier, to pay someone else, and move on.
September 24th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Uh, since it might not be clear in context, the blue ribbon was for work in WROUGHT IRON.
God willing, 4H doesn’t give out ribbons for ironing. The comparative-shopping displays at the MN State Fair in 1997 [in which 4H members won ribbons for pricing out the cost to make their own outfits, and then went shopping to see how much cheaper it would be to buy the pieces themselves] were bad enough.
September 25th, 2007 at 11:56 am
My husband is very handy, even working as a contractor during his college years. He learned most of these skills from his dad, but I think it’s actually a combination of opportunity and interest that really results in these skills. Much like T, my husband has a brother who grew up with the same dad, taking part in the same projects. And Blaine’s brother can’t even follow written instructions Blaine has left him. I think he’s not interested enough in the process; he only wants it to be fixed and then to forget about it. Which is not typically enough.
To me, the most important aspect of handy-ness is the bullsh!t detector you gain from it. The contractors can’t fool you (as much), and you won’t get stuck with crappy work product (as much). It’s just heart-stopping to see people with minimal knowledge devoting their entire life savings to houses when they have no idea if they’re well-built or not. A friend of mine once toured a home for sale and turned it down, saying the outlet covers were not put on straight — and if those weren’t straight, what else was wrong with it? I almost choked on my egg sandwich, the very idea of judging an entire house based upon such criteria. Those friends ended up with a place that looked beautiful but had horrible water leakage problems. Soggy plaster falling from the ceiling, anyone? Poof — there goes your life savings.
September 27th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Jen, I totally agree with what you say, especially about the bullshit detector aspect of being handy. I am not handy. I wish I was, but not enough to learn to become handy, because I find that kind of thing intensely boring. However, my husband is very handy, another example of someone who picked it up from his father. He also is very confident: he’s the type of person who’ll say, “Tile the bathroom floor? Never done that, but I’ll just get a book from the library.” And then goes right ahead and tiles the floor. (Personally, I find this approach terrifying). After ten years, I’ve picked up enough so that I’ve got a BS detector of my own.
One of the things I’m most happy about in terms of having a handy partner is that he is teaching our kids these skills. They love helping him and I’m glad to know that they’ll grow up confident that they can build a shed, stain a window, rebuild the front stairs, case windows and hang doors.