Home Improvement

Leatherman™ multi-tool pocket-knives currently have a magazine ad running which always makes me feel a little…inadequate. The photo is of a handyman, tool kit in hand, ringing a doorbell while the caption reads something like “Take back your life”. The message being that you aren’t really a man if you need someone else to come and fix things for you and if you simply had a Leatherman™, you’d be able to fend for yourself. I don’t have one although Dear Wife has. (A pink one). However being realistic, it wouldn’t make the slightest difference if I had. When it comes to those little jobs around the home, I’m what might charitably be called “useless”.

It’s not that I haven’t tried. It’s just that through no fault of my own simplest tasks turn into disasters of biblical proportions whenever I try to tackle them. I’m well aware of the adage, “Measure twice, cut once”. But for me it’s more a case of “Measure 16 times, cut it too short anyway, spend the rest of the afternoon trying to find another piece”.

Take the time my sister misguidedly decided that as I was living rent-free at her place, I could build a box enclosing the bathroom pipes prior to her hanging new wallpaper. Her fiancé-to-be outlined that plans and they seemed straightforward enough. Four long pieces of wood running from floor to ceiling, with cross struts every foot or so for support.

Putting the uprights in place took less than a day, although the cross-struts proved to be a little trickier. Three of the first four I cut turned out to be about 1/8 of an inch too short, and I was in danger of running out of wood. When I came to drill screw holes, I found the electric cable of the drill didn’t reach and it took me almost a full day’s walk to obtain another. On day three I dropped the chuck key through a hole in the floorboards, spent the rest of the day finding a replacement and had to put the job on hold while I went to visit friends over the weekend. Fiancé-to-be took advantage of my absence to finish the job in about 90 minutes.

In Arizona we decided the outside of our house could do with a fresh coat of paint. This hadn’t been done since it was built, and the yellowish walls with brown trim must have been ugly even then. The first day I learned that not all paint rollers are created equal. A rough surface, such as the stucco plaster of our walls, requires a much courser roller that the (indoor specific) one I was using. Not only that, but after eighteen years of Phoenix sun, the stucco had the characteristics of a bath sponge. It was sucking the paint off the roller by the gallon, without the color changing in any noticeable fashion. After 8 hours of solid slog, I’d barely covered 2 walls.

The trim was just as bad, with the added bonus of yards of intricate work under the eaves, requiring hours of neck wrenching toil. My week’s vacation came and went with the job barely started. I kept doggedly at it although I suspect most people could probably have completed the task in less than the 2 ½ years it took me. (Although technically I never did get finished as the front door was still an attractive shade of gray undercoat with masking tape when we sold the house some four years later.)

One task which almost went well before fate stepped in once more was when I replaced a bathroom faucet. This is a comparatively straightforward task, even for me, in that all you have to do is loosen a couple of bolts, lift out the old unit, drop the new one into place and tighten the new bolts. The old metal pipes were to be replaced with modern, flexible plastic ones, but even that was simply a case of unscrewing the nuts at either end. It’s true; I did need to make two more trips to Home Depot in the course of discovering that the pipes were of different lengths, and the one I should have returned was, somewhat predictably, the other one. Even so, in less than a morning, we had a shiny new faucet, installed and functioning and all without a suggestion of bloodshed. It was perhaps the ease of this project that led me to get a little giddy.

The package came with a new plug attachment, and looking at the old, stained one, I decided it would be the work of moments to replace this too. Quick explanation for British readers (or Americans who’ve never had occasion to look): Here plugs are usually a chrome disc which fits in the hole. A metal bar runs vertically down from it into the drain and by means of a wee arm, attaches to another metal bar which in turn, runs vertically up through the middle of the tap unit. Lifting or lowering a button on the top allows you to open and close the plug. In order to attach the arm of the new plug to the bar of the new faucet unit, it’s easiest to simply unscrew the top section of the plastic drain, so you can see what you’re doing. No real problem until I came to re-attach it and discovered that rather than unscrewing, our old, decrepit drain had simply snapped off at the thread. Right on a bend, right by the wall. Several panic-stricken conversations with people who know about these things established that the broken joint couldn’t be mended and the only way to replace it was to dig it out of the wall. As the lowest professional estimate we received was $600, we knocked something off the price of the house when we sold it.

We had a handyman in the house this week, as it happens, who for $40, fixed our sliding glass door (without using a Leatherman™) so it opens smoothly once more. We’re thrilled to have it working properly even though it was a short-term fix and he tells us we’ll need to replace the door eventually. Following this, he endeared himself to me for ever when, without even knowing my track record, he advised we have it professionally installed as “old houses like these can often cause unexpected problems”. Yep, I like the way that man thinks.

As further proof that he and I are kindred spirits; he left his crowbar behind when he went. Now, I wonder what needs doing around the house that I could use that for.