In an old garage once, I saw a rickety old handmade sign:
Men Buying Paint Must Have a Note From Their Wives
Doesn't that conjure up stories of mistakes you've made (or your partner) when trying to do a bit of your own repairing/remodeling?
"Honey, you got 8 gallons of IVORY paint, not WHITE!!"
The DIY Plumber
On the surface, plumbing looks fairly easy. With the first home that my husband and I bought together (a FSBO and I was not a realtor then), I learned a valuable lesson: never let him do the plumbing himself!! Not only did I not see him from the waist up for the first week, but he uttered expletives that I had never heard from him before.
The tip of the iceberg was the day we were moving in and I noticed a drippy bathtub faucet. While the movers were struggling with our master bed down a narrow hallway, I called to my hubby to come look at it. As he tightened it, it dripped more, and within about a New York second it had come off in his hands and water was gushing out at both of us! He yelled over the sound of the water to go turn the water off...WHAT??? I had no idea where the water main was. I then tried to pull the pocket door closed to contain the water and it jammed halfway at a crooked angle. I frantically ran out into the street with a frazzled look on my face. Thankfully the neighbor knew how to do it. Between the bathroom, the plumbing under the utility sink and the plumbing under the kitchen sink, he was like a homing pigeon finding his way to Home Depot daily and if I ever needed to find the bottom half of him, I could just look under a sink. I also learned colorful some new words to add to my vocabulary should I ever have the need to swear.
Remodeling the Bedroom....er Bed
AKA
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The movers had left the master bedframe leaning up against the end of the hall, just outside the master bedroom because they couldn't make the turn. I hated that bedframe (picture 70's waterbed style) and was delighted that maybe we could ditch it. No such luck, as my husband decided to take his power saw and saw through it, dragging the upper half through the doorway, then the lower half. Two L-brackets later, it was back in order. Damn!
That same saw came in handy when the refrigerator somehow had expanded from the time we measured to the time we jostled it into place. My husband looked like that Chainsaw Massacre guy as he shaved off one side of the wood to squeeze our Plus Size girl into a size 8 space.
Truer Than Fiction
"Have you ever seen the movie The Money Pit, honey?" he asked me3/4 of the way through our move-in day. I said, no and he said, "Well, we're watching it tonight!"
The Wall
Have you ever watched those shows where couples buy a real fixer and try to do all of the remodeling themselves? How about the wall they decide to take down to "open up the room" only to find that there are major plumbing lines that lead to the upstairs master bath? OOps!! And once a wall is knocked down, it is not something you can simply glue back together. You don't get a do-over, like a mulligan in golf. Thankfully, this was NOT one of those move-in memories that I shared with my new husband, but I'm certain that there are those of you out there who could describe your own version of this unfortunate decision process.
DIY or NOT to DIY? Ask an expert!
I don't recall getting a home inspection on our first home purchase together; it was many years ago and before I knew all about the NEED for one, no matter WHAT. Two lessons here: (at least)
1)get a home inspection and
2) have a remodeling expert as your mentor (and onsite advisor) when you decide to take on those DIY projects!
And as great as my hubby is now with DIY projects he STILL hates plumbing.
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