I was taking K-daughter along with me to repair a light fixture, and I heard myself repeating my father's words:
But Dad's example taught me that expecting a bit of frustration is normal, and that patience wins out. Start a project when the hardware store is going to be open for a while, he says, and expect to hop back in the car, and eventually it'll come out okay. It's the closest to zen my dad ever got.
K-d and I were fixing an incandescent light that had been acting unruly for a month or so. She has a friend who is an electrician who offered to come by and check it out sometime, but when "sometime" took a long time, I got up on a chair, moved aside the ceiling panels, and figured out how to unhook the fixture. Then I tucked it under my arm and hauled it and my daughter/apprentice off to the hardware store.
I might have mentioned once or twice that I hate going to stores. The hardware store is my one glorious exception: man, I love that place! We have one of those locally owned, family hardware stores about 3 miles from our house (a long distance by my standards), valiantly holding its own against the big box stores.
I almost never know how to fix what I want to fix when I come in, but I bring the broken piece and the guys there come over, take a gander at the problem, and lead me to the thingamajiggy that will make everything better. I brought K-daughter along to demonstrate to her how the process works. In this case, I suggested to my guy Joe we might need a new ballast. My guy Joe looked over the fixture, showed me a $50 ballast, and then showed me a $12 new fixture that would work even better than the ballast.
K-daughter and I tooled on home, hooked up the fixture, and sure enough, good-as-new. (In fact, it was new). But then the fixture next to it started acting up, probably out of jealousy. Back in the car we go, back to my guy Joe.
Fixture number 2 was an even quicker fix. And all was good.
Only two trips to the hardware store. I called Dad to tell him about this. "Yeah . . . " he said. And then after another pause he added, "Sometimes you get lucky."
Every plumbing repair means three trips to the hardware store.We weren't fixing plumbing this time around, but the sentence still made some kind of sense in the situation. For a lot of people, the going-back-and-forth-ness of home repair, the not-getting-it-right-the first-time-ery of DIY projects, that imperfection is what frustrates them and turns them off from trying to fix things themselves.
But Dad's example taught me that expecting a bit of frustration is normal, and that patience wins out. Start a project when the hardware store is going to be open for a while, he says, and expect to hop back in the car, and eventually it'll come out okay. It's the closest to zen my dad ever got.
K-d and I were fixing an incandescent light that had been acting unruly for a month or so. She has a friend who is an electrician who offered to come by and check it out sometime, but when "sometime" took a long time, I got up on a chair, moved aside the ceiling panels, and figured out how to unhook the fixture. Then I tucked it under my arm and hauled it and my daughter/apprentice off to the hardware store.
I might have mentioned once or twice that I hate going to stores. The hardware store is my one glorious exception: man, I love that place! We have one of those locally owned, family hardware stores about 3 miles from our house (a long distance by my standards), valiantly holding its own against the big box stores.
I almost never know how to fix what I want to fix when I come in, but I bring the broken piece and the guys there come over, take a gander at the problem, and lead me to the thingamajiggy that will make everything better. I brought K-daughter along to demonstrate to her how the process works. In this case, I suggested to my guy Joe we might need a new ballast. My guy Joe looked over the fixture, showed me a $50 ballast, and then showed me a $12 new fixture that would work even better than the ballast.
K-daughter and I tooled on home, hooked up the fixture, and sure enough, good-as-new. (In fact, it was new). But then the fixture next to it started acting up, probably out of jealousy. Back in the car we go, back to my guy Joe.
Fixture number 2 was an even quicker fix. And all was good.
Only two trips to the hardware store. I called Dad to tell him about this. "Yeah . . . " he said. And then after another pause he added, "Sometimes you get lucky."
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