Owning the house is turning out to be a LOT of work. My excitement to build my own furniture has been put on hold while necessary repairs and renovations get done. On my “to do list” are a number of items which take priority.
Among them are:
• Installing a new pedestal sink
• Covering up a hole in the roof where birds are trying to nest
• Sealing a small leak above the bay window
• Patching and leveling the floors enough to lay laminate wood flooring above them
• Replacing tiles in the 1st floor bathroom
• Fixing the light above the shower on the 3rd floor
• Installing a new kitchen sink
• Getting the plumbing in the bonus apartment fixed
• Re-repairing the front porch railing
• Putting the doors back in a room we’ve painted
• Moving furniture out of the way to allow painters access to our walls
• Fixing the lawn in both the front and back yards
All that is extra work on top of the full time job and raising a child (both of which are at the top of my priorities list). I don’t mind the work. I even enjoy things like driving screws into floors or walls, trimming grass with a weed whacker or shaping wood with various power tools.
There are however, a number of things that I don’t like. The uncertainty of inexperience is a major one. I worry that what I’m about to do in my home will turn out badly, wasting time and money and generally mucking up the biggest purchase of my life. I don’t like the feeling of potential failure on such a large scale. It makes me gun-shy when starting some of the larger projects. The thought of disappointing my family by doing something wrong weighs pretty heavily on my mind.
Another thing that I don’t like is the whole “typical guy” stereotype. Going to a home improvement center to purchase tools and materials is a necessity of doing repairs and improvements on your home. It isn’t some secret club where guys get to live out their wildest manly fantasies. For me, the closest Home Depot or Lowes is a significant drive away. I don’t like being treated like I’m going for a pleasure cruise when I need to drive to one of these places, find the proper tools and materials, and then lug them all home. This is not my idea of “fun” and it would be really nice if my friends and family stopped acting like I was sneaking off for “me” time when I’m doing all this stuff to make our home better.
My final gripe about “do-it-yourself” projects is the abundance of surprises. The plans I posted here in my last blog for a bed and desk are a great example. When I hit the local Home Depot to pick up the standard lumber pieces I needed, I discovered with great surprise that a board known as a 2×4 or a 1×6 don’t actually measure 2 inches by 4 inches or 1 inch by 6 inches respectively. They are named this way prior to being planed smooth at a lumber mill. After excess wood is shaved off, their dimensions are not only different, but also not guaranteed to be the same from board to board. So my fall back plan is to purchase furniture initially from a “Ikea” type shop then work up to building my own over time from raw lumber which I would plane myself to the right dimensions. This is just one example of surprises though.
After purchasing a ton of laminate planks to redo our floors, I was surprised to discover a very uneven floor which first needed to be repaired. When assembling the pedestal sink for our bathroom, I discovered that the waste pipe was just a bit too short to work. These surprises, both big and small, bring work to a stop, delaying my plans for moving in. Sometimes I’m lacking the right tool to deal with an issue, other times I don’t have the proper materials. My choice then becomes to pay much more for the items at a local hardware shop or drive 15 miles to a home improvement center.
At this point, our new home is in complete disarray, but it continues to improve every few days as I find the time to spend on it. Last week I ripped out carpeting. This week, I’ll be patching floors and hopefully starting the laminate installs. Some pictures of the work in progress can be found below as well as a video tour:
The house came with a decent carpetting, but of course we wanted to get rid of it and make the place our own.
So I ripped up the carpet and found this nightmare below it. Not only are the boards full of cracks and gaps, but the floor is completely uneven, by over an inch and a half.
There was the 50 gallon water heater that was illegally ducted through the side of the house when we bought the place. It was taking up half a closet in the kitchen, next to the back door.
We removed it and replaced it with a wall-mounted tankless water heater which is properly vented through the roof. More of the closet can now be used for pantry storage. While the other half of it, has been converted into a proper entry way to the first floor bathroom. Now our dining room is no longer connected to a toilet.
This is a tour of the place by my son. Enjoy.
This is my second, in a series of blogs I intend to post on the subject of home improvement and “Do-It-Yourself Home Improvements” Please let me know your thoughts and how you’re doing on those DIY project you’ve undertaken, in the comments section below.
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