Home Repairs Anyone?

Apparently, my real life’s task is to fix things. In the past eight months or so, any number of dated appliances and creature home comforts have hit the big snafu in my house and died.

First it was the garage door. Not the opener, that thing you pop off to Sears and buy another one of. Oh no, it was the actual springs that lift the door. When the springs break (that door you could raise) suddenly weighs its full gargantuan weight and guess what? YOU CAN’T lift it anymore. We called out the repair guy then promptly sent him away. That’s one of those let-me-give-you-one-quote-over-the-phone-then-a-different- and-dramatically-higher-one-when-I-show-up-on-your-doorstep experiences. Picture an unhappy gal, here. I was fuming. My husband, brilliant man that he is, comes up with this great idea; he’ll Google for Internet help. Low and behold, you really can find anything on Google. My door works now. I will say, replacing the springs on a garage door is not for the faint of heart or the weak of upper body strength. Good thing I married the broad-shouldered man I did, and raised the broad-shouldered son I have.

Now the garage door works, so we tackled the dish washer, the dryer, the vent-a-hood, the riding lawnmower, and we, foolish people we are, were feeling fairly confident. What is that saying? ‘Pride cometh before a fall?’

This weekend, naturally because I had planned to attend my friend, Candy Havens’ book-signing something disastrous needed to strike my house. We had this tiny task of replacing the faucet handles in the kids’ shower. Important tip time . . . if you need to replace the handles in the shower, turn off the outside water connection FIRST! Oh, and once the handles have been removed . . . DO NOT TURN back on the outside water connection.

If you want to know exactly how much water you can run down a drain, in a hurry, take off your shower handles without turning off the outside water connection. It looks like a proverbially fountain.

Okay, my hubby did know to turn off the water. So we only had a small fountain.

The problem showed up when he dared the House Repair gods by saying, ‘Don’t worry honey, it’s only a ten-minute job.’ Uh-oh, I heard the thunder crash the minute he issued the curse. In our house, anything that can go wrong . . . DOES. And anything we can make harder, more complicated, more unfixable . . . WE DO. Okay, so we’re consistent with making it tougher.

Nine hours later, the water had finally been restored to my house. Gleaming new faucet handles, an elaborate 3-cycle massage shower head (I’ll never get them out of the shower now), and a sparkling bathtub nozzle had all been installed.

Sure . . . honey, that was really an easy ten-minute job. I’m just not sure whose watch we were using to tell time.

What was the last thing you repaired in your house?