Increased handiness

One of the unintended side effects of having my own place is that I’ve suddenly become a lot more handy around the home. It wasn’t really brought to my attention up until I was at my parents’ place fixing little things around the house. I suppose I can rest easy feeling like I’ve accomplished something. First of all I changed the toilet flapper in one of their bathrooms. A chlorine tablet warped the existing flapper causing water leakage and a result they got a particularly high water bill. Second, I changed the lever on one of those sink stopper things. The original one broke causing the stopper to not rise when you pushed than lever behind the faucet. Hope y’all know what I’m talking about. Before I had no idea how that thing worked, and thought that it was part of some intricate sink system. Hah! When I looked it up, it turns out it’s much simpler than I thought. I was actually impressed at the elegance of it all.

That’s not all, really. Remember how my refrigerator water line went awry a few weeks back? Well, it’s only now that I’ve gotten around to calling a plumber to check it out. When he came in and saw the connection that I had made he actually complimented me for doing it myself. He said I was right on the money. I wondered why the heck there was a leak then. I thought it was with the connection to the fridge, but he said the more likely culprit was kinked copper tubing. Actually, when I pulled back the fridge earlier this morning, I was shocked to discover the copper tubing had actually come apart at a bend. Well, no wonder there was a probable leak. The plumber ended up giving me new copper tubing and reconnected everything nicely. At the very least he made me feel better knowing that I didn’t do a bad job after all.

Remember a few days ago, when I was complaining about not using anchors and screwing something heavy into the wall? Prior to that I was contemplating calling someone in to install the blinds. I mentioned my plans to a friend, and he really made an effort to convince me that it was totally something that I could do on my own. At the time my confidence was already kind of low due to the fridge thing, which is why I was hesitant. After watching a few videos online, I got the courage to do it all myself. Despite the fact that I kind of messed up, the mistake was easily remedied. Now I have privacy in my living room.

Anyway, all of these examples point out the fact that I’m a heck of a lot more useful around the house. It’s not that I was inept before, but just that there was no need for me to know any of those skills. All I needed was to get my feet wet, so to speak. With each mini project, my confidence is growing. More and more I’m recognizing that with the right parts I can often do things on my own, within reason. I’m surprised that my engineering background didn’t plant that seed long ago, but I guess computer engineering doesn’t lend itself well to this sort of thing. Still, all of this now seems highly appropriate, don’t you think?

No related posts.