Homeowner Lessons

As a newer homeowner, here's some lessons I've learned:

1. Home inspectors don't catch everything.

2. Turn off the water before disassembling a faucet.

3. Measure your PVC pipe before tackling that new garbage disposal install.

4. If you fail to measure that pipe, you won't want to brave a blizzard because its 1/2" short.

5. I hate plumbing.

6. Snowblowing in the wind: An exercise in futility.

7. If your wife won't let you buy a toilet plunger because "we can get one when we need one", try to convince her that's not good reasoning. Its embarassing for the house guest who creates the "need".

8. If swearing is not your vice, and you wish to keep it that way, avoid plumbing, dryer vents, and all other projects requiring tools.

9. Replacing outlets is easy, anyone can do that.

10. Replacing ceiling fans seems to be more difficult for me.

11. A Dremel is quite useful.

14. Don't cheap out on an electric drill.

15. Forget flowers, dinner, and cards. Actually finishing a long promised project around the house scores just as many points with the wife.

16. Its easier- and maybe even cheaper- to replace an entire doorframe and door rather than one piece, should a dog choose to eat half of said frame.

17. Pop in the garage in the winter = a mess on your clean new door and frame.

18. Store unused potatoes in your small basement laundry room with high humidity. Then watch em' grow and take over a small, forgotten corner.

19. Measure twice, cut once.....I'll still screw up.

20. Measure three times, cut once, tweak the cut a little.....still wrong.

21. Measure four times, cut once, return to hardware store for more wood, call father and father-in-law for advice, measure 6 times, walk away, eat some toast, return, measure twice more, cut once ever so delicately......ahhhh there we have it!

22. Your wife has the best opinion on decorating.

23. I hate plumbing.

That's all for now!

Congrads! You're a Homeowner! PS- your dryer is broken.

Not sure what I paid my home inspector for right now. A couple days into being excited about my first home (which is fairly move-in ready), I noticed that the exhaust vent had become disconnected from where it fed out of the house. No big deal. This looks like a job for H.I.T.

While looking it over, I noticed it looked wet next to my dryer. I couldn't really see, as it was dark, so I grabbed a flashlight. That's when I found that the tubing leading from the dryer exhaust had been torn, and the dyer had been spewing hot, wet dyer lint all over behind the washer, dyer, and into the storage area below our steps.

How long it has been doing this, I do not know. I pull out the dyer, begin to look at things, and realize that though the vent is torn, all the tubing is still completely clogged with lint as well. Not to mention the dang this is set up with several sharp turns = fire hazard.

Just found a great excuse to buy a Shopvac.

What slays me is that just before closing, we asked the sellers to install a radon mitigation system. The system was put in just adjacent to the dryer. So either the home inspector missed the problem, or whoever installed the mitigation system didn't bother to bring it up, or both. Nice.

As I went about rectifying the situation, I vacuumed out the tubing and piping that vents the dryer. A couple pipes were hard to get at to see, so I took pictures to check the progress. In that process, I found my inner endoscopy nurse. These look a little bit like images from the Tin Man's last colonoscopy.

Everything looks fine Mr. Tin Man. Just a few small polyps. That's normal for your age. Some new aluminum foil flexible tubing, some aluminum tape, a few clamps, and good vacuuming, and you're on your way.......

H.I.T.

I have entered myself into an old and presitgious institution; H.I.T. or, Husband In Training. A self imposed course, I'm trying to develop into someone that could actually be useful around the house. Its a well known fact that when I pick up a tool, my IQ drops by 50-60 points. Tim Taylor, the accident prone host of Tool Time in the show "Home Improvement" is dear to my heart.

I'm fairly proud of recent achievements however, including hanging Christmas lights (successful and injury free use of a staple gun) and the unclogging of a sink.

A side note on the sink. After 4 bottles of Drano didnt' work, my dad suggested I take apart the elbow under the sink and clean it out. So I did.

It was the most disgusting thing I've ever done.

And I'm a nurse.

I was close to vomiting as I cleared out the foul, putrid clog in the sink, feeling like quite the man with my floral printed kitchen gloves. Nothing oozes manhood like kitchen gloves and flowers.

But hey, sink works like a charm now.