As a handyman, I have wallpapered, I have painted and I have installed lights. I've built a deck in the backyard, and I have fixed gutters. When I bought my first house, I didn't have a clue as to what part of my tool belt held the hammer, but I eventually grew into a real handyman, ready for any task thrown at me.
Looking back, I really did a poor job fixing the problems in my home, and it's been a secret until now. It began right after we moved into our first house. My wife felt the urge to hang every picture she could find. There I was leveling our pictures on a wall that wasn't level to begin with. After trying to group several of these pictures in a small space, I began to hammer the nails on the wall, only to move some pictures into better positions and to cover up some of those nail holes that didn't work. It was a picture-hanging nightmare.
I gave up on hanging pictures and moved to hanging ceiling fans. No one told me to hang these suckers without the paddles placed on the fan; however, I found out much later that they do come off. It didn't take a genius to see that hanging ceiling fans wasn't my forte either, but when it came to putting up new lighting fixtures, I was up for the task. First, you need to buy a fixture that covers the wall opening of the fixture you are replacing. Once you do that, you need to remember to turn off the electricity. Did you know that if both wires touch each other, your voice will change? Falsetto is not my true vocal range, but it always reappears whenever I play with electricity.
Older homes feel the need to settle, and there are nails that pop out. I spent an entire weekend tapping nails back into their respective spaces. No one told me that I needed to use a nail-punch so that the hammer never touches the wood. You could always tell what nails I reset, because all of them had a perfect hammer mark on the wood. I began to use the excuse that I could always repaint the wood, and … I repainted all the wood in my home.
I lived in that house for 23 years. It had new ceiling fans, new light fixtures and several coats of paint covering hammer marks. The house needed my attention, and I took care of it. I knew that the ceiling fans weren't level and that the pictures weren't centered.
And if I had to do it all over, I would just phone a pro like Bob Vila. At least he would be smart enough to call someone like himself.
