I Suck at Home Repairs

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As I may have mentioned a time or two, I am a failure at making minor home repairs.

Let me be clear, I 'm not entirely incompetent. If I were the perfect caricature of a bumbling dolt; hammering his thumb, spilling the paint bucket, and generally making a clusterf*@k out of everything I touched it would almost be forgivable. 

My problem is that I'm the perfect combination of just competent enough to understand what to do and how when it comes to most basic fixes around the house, but insufficient skilled to effectively make said repair.

This in and of itself wouldn't be too bad if it were not for the fact that I also possess the glorious man-need be handy around the house in order to validate my Y-chromosome. 

Inevitably I get into a simple repair, and it takes three times as long and six more trips to the hardware store than it would if I knew what I was doing. I like to imagine my bearded, lumberjack shirt wearing heavily muscled man ancestors (or mancestors), watching over me as I flail ineffectually underneath the kitchen sink. They would probably stand, arms folded, shaking their rugged heads in shame and disappointment as they slowly choke the life out of grizzly bears with nothing but their blue jean clad quadriceps. 

I thought I'd keep a running log of a home repair as I start, and inevitably screw it up, eventually either fixing it or giving up and calling someone to come fix it for me thus bringing great dishonor upon myself. 

The Job 

In this particular instance the very simple home repair in question is a leaky sink faucet coupled with a reoccurring clogged drain in one of the bathrooms. 

Periodically the sink in the downstairs bathroom becomes clogged. This probably happens once a month on average.

Depending on who in our household you ask, the reason the sink clogs so frequently varies.

So that we're all on the same page here, the downstairs bathroom is my wife's bathroom. It has a a countertop with space for all her lady stuff like makeup and lotions and that assorted pile of bobby pins, loose earrings, hair ties and bracelets that have taken over the soap tray.

 The upstairs bathroom is unfinished, and has nothing but a two inch rim around a free standing sink upon which items may be placed. It's literally one step above a pale of water in the middle of the floor. Naturally that is the one I use.  

With the appropriate bathroom assignment situation's clarified, you can see where my wife's claim that the clogged sink is a result of the one or two times I have shaved my neck down there falls apart pretty quickly. 

Clearly the clogged sink is from a tangled clod of hair that made it's way from her head, to her hairbrush, into the sink where it slithered down the drain, and unionized or something and is now blockading the drain in protest preparing a list of demands for things like fancier conditioner.

Fresh from the rousing success of just having repaired a leaky kitchen sink, (a project that took three days instead of the twenty five minutes it should have) when my wife informed me the sink was leaking in her bathroom I decided I'd fix that and try to take care of that pesky recurring clog while I was at it.

Naturally after bumbling your way through one plumbing task, you should jump right into a second one, right?

So the job would be simple: Fix the leak, take the J-bend out and see if there is a pseudo-sentient hair amalgamation to extract, put it back together, stand back and stroke my glorious moustachio and beard in stoic approval of my own good work.   

Assuming that everything would go disastrously wrong I decided to chronicle the job. Below is the running diary of said task:

Day 1- Friday

4:00 PM

I decide to tackle the bathroom sink right after Emily leaves for work. Figuring I'd do it while she was out and have it leak free and draining like a champ by the time she came home. Thoroughly impressed with my rugged sink fixing man skills, there would proceed to be gallons of making out.

 4:05 PM

In my zeal for home repairing, at no point do I bother to run some water through the sink to locate the initial leak which had been reported to me. I have no idea what joint was actually leaking.

Figuring I'd have to take everything apart anyway in order to clean out wherever the clog is, I launch right into trying to take the pipes apart with a wrench. My assumption is that once the clog is dealt with, the leak will be sorted out when I put everything back together and tighten it.

I begin the process of attempting to disassemble the drain with the tools I have collected:

  • Adjustable wrench x1
  • Roll of paper towels x1

At no point does it occur to me that I have possibly under-prepared.

4:06 PM

I am unable to budge the joints holding the various pieces of pipe together with my single wrench. I probably need to get a second wrench to apply some force in opposite directions.

I own a second wrench.

Aforementioned wrench is in the basement.

I am not in the basement, I am in the bathroom.

That wrench can go f*@k itself. I'll make it work with the one.

Update 4:08 PM

Due to an unforeseeable complication involving inadequate wrenches the pop up drain breaks off of the bottom of the sink.

This project has now escalated to require a trip to Lowe's. I'll need some plumbers putty or something to glue the thing back together.

Now in a towering sink drain related rage, I do the responsible thing and procrastinate on returning to the task for the rest of the afternoon. I hang out with the dogs instead.

Day 2- Saturday

5:00 PM

Armed with a bright eyed and bushy tailed enthusiasm for sink repair as well as an extensive font of knowledge obtained via searching "How to replace a sink drain" on Google and reading a single article I am now prepared to re-tackle this job.

5:15 PM

My first step is to remove this bad boy from the sink so I can see what I'm dealing with. After the application of a bit of tactfully applied smacking the crap out of the pipe and wrenching it free I get the drain out of the sink.

I am met with this sight.

Well that's Gross.

I then look at the actual drain piece I've pulled out.

 Aaaand also gross. If you have a particularly weak gag reflex, I apologize for not having prepared you for that.

Now thoroughly aware that I have been washing my hands in a bacterial ooze filled basin of filth I set off for Lowe's to purchase all of the materials I'll need.

As I, prepare to leave, old drain in hand, I realize the threaded part of the thing is cracked. This displeases me. The piece was either already cracked, or I cracked it manhandling it out of the sink like a toothless rock gumming barbarian. 

I elect to presume the former.

I insinuate that the drain's mother was a lady of ill repute who conjugated with many foreign made pipe wrenches.

I leave for the hardware store.

6:00 PM

I arrive at Lowes.

Because I am well versed in the location of plumbing supplies in Lowes from the previously mentioned kitchen sink fiasco, I get right down to business and start looking for the parts I'll need.

From this point on, you may feel free to imagine the theme song from Jeopardy playing on a loop in the background as I stare at the wall of drain pieces attempting to match the old bits that I've brought with me to shiny new counterparts which don't smell like a four day old bag of vomit.

One would imagine that simply taking a piece, finding the one on the shelves that looks like it, and grabbing it would be a relatively simple task which should require no more than a few minutes of time and minimal brain power, right?

6:45 PM

I have been standing in this plumbing aisle for so long that I begin to forget what my life was like before I walked into this Lowes.

Much like a goldfish in captivity, my understanding of the world narrows to this single fourteen foot wide, hundred foot long prison of gaskets, flanges and union joints. The outside world is but a distant memory, lost to the all consuming task of picking out the proper replacement parts for this god forsaken sink.

I grab parts that I think are correct at first, only to realize they are slightly incorrect on some way or another a few minutes later. The signs, describing the dimensions of each individual part might as well be written in hieroglyphics for all the good they are doing me.

I had enough parts to have built two and a half of the section of drain I wanted to build at one point, all sprawled out on the floor like some sort of Beautiful Mind style web of madness.   

That picture is the tidy, sane version of the mess I made on the floor of this establishment, once I had narrowed things down quite a bit. Also, I'm not sure where that mystery liquid on the floor came from. Lets just presume they are the countless tears I shed during my imprisonment in aisle 14.

  I have a feeling if anyone else walked into that aisle looking to pick up a few things for their own home and saw me steadily building a rat-man style den for myself on the middle of the floor they quietly turned around, went home to hug their wife and children and are proceeding to live out the remainder of their life with new-found appreciation for their sanity.

Eventually I do get things under control and collect all the supplies I will be needing to make my repair. 

6:50 PM

I leave Lowes.

I am surprised to find that the world has not progressed to a futuristic state of utopia during the time I was inside the building. I locate my car and head home.

7:00 PM

Returned home with my goods, I set to work putting the new drain in the sink.

I follow the instructions provided on the packaging that the new drain came in and manage to replace it in a fairly successful and uneventful manner. Plumbers putty on the underside of the bit that goes into the bowl of the sink, and screw it all together. 

With the new drain in place, I begin to get all the other pieces of pipe ready to put everything back together when it occurs to me that I really never found the reason the drain has been backing up. All the pipes I took off were pretty clear.

I notice that I might be able to take off that tiny, unsuspecting little bit of pipe that you can see coming from the wall in the picture above.

Could it be?

I will say this. The things that I have seen cannot be unseen. Should you chose to continue reading beyond this point, you do so with the understanding that I cannot be held responsible for the psychological trauma that may be inflicted upon you by what is to come. You have been warned.

I remove the pipe and shine the flashlight of my phone into the opening in the wall. 

I was not prepared.

Oh dear sweet virgin Mary what am I looking at? What foul vortex of pure evil could be responsible for regurgitating this twisted clod of concentrated hate?

As I reached into the drain with whatever would serve to dislodge and pull free any portion of this fetid wad of sludge I swear to you it began whispering to me in a dead tongue. I saw visions of the end of days and my nose began to bleed. Whatever hell-pit this thing had come from, it was loathe to be extracted from my bathroom drain, and it would destroy me and all that I hold dear given the chance.

Calling upon every ounce of inner strength in my body, I removed as much as I could reach. In the end, I wound up with a golf ball sized wad of horrible filth. They should have cast this thing as the piece of Voldemort's soul that get's blasted off of Harry in the last movie. It was that foul.

To help put the size of that abomination in perspective. If you look closely you can see a q-tip lodged in there. A poor unfortunate casualty, absorbed into the elder hive mind before being destroyed along with it. 

In order to ensure that it could never hurt anyone again I had to walk this thing to Mordor and throw it into a f*@king volcano.

7:30 PM

After performing a cleansing ritual and scrubbing the topmost layer of skin off my hands with steel wool I get back to work putting the sink back together.

It all seems to be going well, and I get everything put back together.

I test the sink.

It leaks profusely.

Son of a parasite ridden three toed sloth, why is this thing leaking?

I isolate the leak to the nut that holds the stopper mechanism in place. Wishing a pestilence upon the nut, the company that manufactures the nut, and the first born children of all of the employees who work in the factory where they produce that nut I remove it to find that it's cracked.

..... balls.

Day 3-Sunday

8:00 AM

Guess where I am again?

Don't let the heavenly rays of light shining down from above on the front of this store fool you. This is a place of sadness and misfortune.

I've got every square inch of the plumbing aisle eternally etched onto the insides of my eyelids, it does not take me long to get in, locate the replacement nut and get back out. 

8:30 AM

I arrive back at home with the nut, quickly swap it for the cracked one, give everything one last tightening, and fire that baby up.

Nailed it.

I stand back and bask in the glory of my handiwork. I am the master of my domain. My mancestors are slightly less ashamed of me this day. Tonight I will feast.

The Laptop Charger

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I learned a lesson the other day; Sometimes following my innate man-instincts to rig something together with nothing but tape and stubbornness is actually a perfectly viable solution. Here's how I learned that lesson:

I'm fairly certain Griff wants to be a bomb disposal dog when he grows up. This is the only logical conclusion I am able to come to based on his obsession with biting through wires.

(On a side note, I would watch the hell out of an Air Bud/Hurt Locker mashup sequel where Air Bud goes to Afghanistan and diffuses bombs like a total badass). 

His first victim was my gaming headset, and at some indeterminate time he nibbled his adorably deviant way through the cord to Emily's Chromebook.

Dramatic.JPG

We don't know when he did it, but if we're being honest, it was probably on my watch. This is why we have dogs and not children; if Griff chews the laptop cord I can replace it, but if my baby sticks a fork in a light socket or something I go to jail.

I went out to Target after work the day after the chewed cord had been discovered in order to pick up a universal charger as a replacement. It would seem that our Target carries only one type of universal charger. The creatively named "Targus Laptop Charger" seen here:

 
 

Now, I've got a bone to pick with the good people in the package design department over at Targus. Their package proudly states that this charger "INCLUDES 6 CONNECTOR TIPS". What they have neglected to provide you, the customer with is any sort of indication as to what size any of those tips are. Not only is the package sealed in such a way that you cannot look at the tips hidden away in there, but nowhere on the front, back, top, bottom or sides of this thing does it give any information about these six connector tips. 

Presumably they are all different sizes to fit a variety of laptops, but for all I can tell from the way it's been packaged, this thing it could just be a grab bag where some minimum wage factory worker closes their eyes, grabs a handful of connectors out of a bin and chucks them in there at random. If that guy was having a bad day there could just be six identical connectors in there with a note that says "Go F@#k yourself".

 
 

Now obviously that's preposterous, there are of course going to be six different connectors, (Also the idea that a factory worker is throwing random connectors in is absurd. They'd obviously have outsourced that job to a robot years ago.) but I've got no way of knowing if any of them are a match for my wife's laptop. 

This thing costs sixty bucks and it's pretty much a total crap shoot as to if it works or not. C'mon Targus, get your shit together.

So there is like a 50/50 shot that this thing isn't going to work, but it's the only one they've got and like hell I'm going to walk out of this Target and have to drive five minutes to the Best Buy right down the road.

I get home with my begrudgingly purchased laptop charger only to discover that none of the six connector tips are even close to the correct size for my wife's laptop. I'm sure, somehow this is my own fault but I feel much better about my failures blaming them on a faceless laptop peripherals manufacturer that cant defend themselves from my snippy internet whining. So yeah, up yours Targus Laptop Charger.

At this point, the laptop is at like 9% battery and Emily needs it for work stuff. Time is short, plus its 8:30 at night and I'm not driving back out so that more companies can lie to me about the universality of their laptop chargers.

I decide it's time to handle this like a man. A man with little to no understanding of electronics or wiring but abundant access to electrical tape and a pair of scissors. 

Sometimes I have what we'll refer to as 'Man Episodes'. These occur primarily when I get the idea into my head that I'm going to fix or build something. A man episode can start any time without warning whenever there is something my brain deems 'manly' that needs doing.

Once the Man Episode has begun, I go completely silent. I suppose my brain assumes that to achieve maximum machismo I am required to be stoic and silent. I'll just get up and begin gathering all of the supplies I think I'll need. I then begin laying them out very precisely in my designated work area like I'm some kind of safe cracker or jewel thief as opposed to an idiot laying out his kitchen table with the same supplies second graders use to make arts and crafts. 

This happens frequently enough that as soon as I begin my supply gathering ritual, my wife understands that I'm off in my own world and pretty much just leaves me to my devices. I presume she is judging me in silence and reflecting on the direction of her life which led her to be married to such a disappointment.

Upon entering into a full fledged Man Episode fugue sate over this laptop cord and completing the gathering of supplies ritual I sit down and begin to work. I am always very serious about the fixin' I am doing during these Man Episodes; my brain invents some version of the task that is way more complicated and cool than whatever it actually is. As I sit there with my little spread of tools and this busted laptop charger the scene in my head looks something like this:

 
Surgeon.JPG
 

Meanwhile, outside of the delusional badass wire surgeon fantasy I've concocted for myself, the way the situation actually looks is more accurately represented by this: 

 
Tool.JPG
 

I may have taken some artistic liberty with the sparkles, but they just felt right.

I cut away the chewed up bits of the wire and stripped the plastic sheath from the now cleanly cut ends. I found a few different bundles of wires within the outermost casing and using my finely honed skills of knowing what colors are the same color as each other I matched up the individual wires, wrapped them together and taped them up with electrical tape.

When all the individual wires were connected to each other I taped the whole thing up in a wad and admired my handy-work.

Despite looking like it had been smacked together by a chimp in a unitard, when I plugged it in, it worked perfectly.

I am a god.

It has been several weeks since this happened, and I still feel like a total badass every time I look at the cord to my wife's laptop. The life lesson here I think is something like: Though usually rigging something together in a haphazard and likely unsafe manner is a terrible, terrible idea, sometimes it works out and you get to strut around basking in your own glory.

Also, enjoy those small victories in life. When I look at that shittily taped together laptop cord, I feel like I am riding on a t-rex whilst wearing a monocle and fake moustache like some sort of dinosaur riding Cowboy/dapper gentleman. Also the t-rex has a monocle and moustache too.

 
 

This is what gets me through the day. 

So I Convinced Someone to Marry Me...

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On July 19th 2014, exactly one year ago from the official launch of this website,  I got married to the lady in the picture above. As the old folk saying goes: 

“If you make it through the first year of marriage, you know everything there is to know about being married and have the authority to create a website about it.”
— Countless mud covered peasants from the old country

Never one to defy the timeless wisdom of people from an undefined ancestral homeland, I decided I'd make a website dedicated to adventures in married life. Now you might be thinking something like "Look here you insufferable bag of chinchilla droppings, being married for one year doesn't win you any awards. Where do you get off getting on the internet and pretending like you've got any sort of credibility talking about these sort of things?"

Well firstly, easy buddy. There's no need for colorful name calling, we're all pals here. Secondly, you're absolutely right. Despite the direct contradiction to that quote I made up, I'm not any sort of expert nor do I pretend to be doing anything on this site more than sharing with you my journey as a newly married person going forward in life.

I like to write, and I like to do creative type things, and I don't get a ton of outlet for that in my day to day life. This site is a way for me to exercise that part of myself in a way that is both fun for me, and provides people with a little bit of entertainment.

As for the other portion of this site, Ask a Husband, that is a way for me to make running this site somewhat of a two way street. Rather than just firing my own thoughts and stories out over the internet at your face, I can create a platform for people to reach out to me as well. It might be for legitimate thoughts and advice on something, it might be for the sake of hearing my reaction to a situation, I sincerely hope it's not for the derivation of jollies from some sort of pervy advice columnist fetish, but whatever floats your boat I guess.

Going forward it is my hope that this blog can be a source of entertainment and perhaps provide a bit of inspiration to others going through their own adventures in Husbanding or Wifeing.

For a more in depth explanation of the genesis of this site and my reasons for making it you can check out the blurb in the about section HERE. 

In preparation for the official launch of my site, I've prepared a little buffer of material that is scheduled to post over the next few days before things settle into a regular rhythm of updates. Please be sure to check back through the week for a handful of posts both here and in Ask a Husband. If stories about doing a terrible job fixing things, possibly becoming a sex offender, and being generally annoying to my wife seem interesting to you, you are in for a treat. Also, I don't remember off the top of my head, but there are probably at least three or four references to pooing sprinkled throughout the upcoming content.

I'll try to make announcements on Facebook and Twitter about new posts, so follow along there if you are interested in knowing when there is new stuff to come look at.

If you think others would enjoy this site as well, feel free to share via whatever medium you prefer. Facebook, twitter, and pinterest are all integrated into the site, but don't be afraid to get creative. Other ways you might share this site with someone include:

  • Email
  • Smoke Signals
  • Carrier Pigeon
  • Shouting the web address at a Walmart through a megaphone
  • Word of mouth
  • Hand written letter on stationary that has baby animals on it
  • Kidnap someones child and include the address of this site in your cut out newspaper ransom note.
  • Skywriting
  • Interpretive dance outside a strip mall

Just go crazy with it. The more the merrier I say!

PS #1: It was pointed out to me that I should have an RSS feed on here so that folksies can subscribe to receive regular notifications when I update content. Being the technological wizard that I am, I googled "How do I RSS feed." read a sweet tutorial and set one up. For your convenience, an RSS feed for both AiH and Ask a Husband are now set up and will appear at the bottom of each post.

PS #2: In case you are bad at understanding the concept of sarcasm, when I said I was a technological wizard before, I was lying through my lying face at you. My actual level of technological ability hovers somewhere right around the range where I can act like I'm totally tech savvy while secretly having to search google for things like "How to set up an RSS feed".

That being said, currently, I have commenting, liking, sharing, and subscribing via e-mail all enabled on each of these blog posts, though at the moment it seems things are formatted so that just going into the section of the site for the Chronicles or Ask a Husband brings you to some sort of overview page. In order to access the liking, commenting ect. you actually have to click on the title of a particular post.   

Until I ineptly fumble my way through fixing that, I just wanted to let folks know here that I will love you forever if you take the extra step of clicking the post title so that you can like, comment and share to help spread word of the site around (and also validate my existence).