I hate home repairs.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Not really angry enough to pit this, but, dammit, when I first encountered them, I thought shoji, the wood-and-paper doors and windows found all over Japan, were absolutely fantastic. I was even more happy to find that all the doors and windows of my new apartment are shoji. Now, I hate them.

Not too long ago, a friend of mine came to visit. One of the first things he did when he came to my apartment was accidentally put his foot through the shoji leading to my balcony, leaving a gaping hole in the paper. It didn’t bother me so much, but it did look pretty ugly and was visible to the rest of the neighborhood.

I have no idea how to repair these things, but I figured I’d give it a try today. I went to our local Komeri Home Center, bought a roll of shoji paper, the tape and tools I’d need, and went to work.

I pried up the tatami in the room so I could pull out the shoji. Then I began by slowly and carefully peeling off the old paper. I had hoped to get all of it off, but the glue that had been used before was not cooperating, so I eventually had to just rip the paper off and chisel away at the glue and paper left behind. After that, I wiped the surface down until it was really clean with a towel, took out the new paper and measured and cut off a sheet large enough for the door. Following the instructions that came with the sheet, I used some tacks to fix the sheet securely to the top of the back of the door. Then I proceeded to slowly and deliberately fix tape around the frame and along all ten of the crossbars within the frame. So far so good.

The taping was done, so then it was time to attach the sheet. After removing the backing for all of the tape, I carefully unrolled the paper, trying my damnedest to keep it as taut as possible. Finally, I got the entire door covered in paper and all that was left was to trim the excess. I went around the edge of the frame with a razor, carefully following the inside of the door frame. After three sides I felt I was already home free. I slowly sliced along the fourth side when, just as you could have expected, I slipped and sliced a one inch hole into the paper. :smack:

That is one and a half hours of my life I will never get back. I’m just going to call and have somebody come do this for me next time. :frowning:

This is why I hate doing home repairs. I never remember the successes, just the epic fails.

2

I’ve got the builders in at the moment. They’re taking the doors out between my front room and my dining room, so I’ve got the illusion of more space (and more actual light).

I either hire professionals or study how to do something before I do it myself. (Recently I learnt how to cook omelettes :slight_smile: .)

3

As a guy who makes a living fixing people’s homes, I thank you! Yeah it’s hard and sometimes frustrating but I do get a sense of satisfaction from a job well done. The hardest part is getting the customers to realize that all this work and skill comes at a price.

4

I feel your DIY pain.

I have electrocuted myself, cut myseslf, almost fallen off ladders, gotten metal debris in my eye from installing faucets, and have had similar ‘epic’ fails where I just walk away and make someone else to it.

A few years ago I found during a DIY bathroom remodel, that dry wall repair was much harder than it looks (damn you HGTV!!). It wasn’t that bad, but you could definitely tell that patch work had been done. Blech. So I decided to apply a hand-trowel plaster look to the walls and ceiling to cover up my crappy dry wall job. In the end it looked fantastic. However, if I need to do dry wall repair on that scale again- I think I’ll hire someone (maybe. I’m stubborn).

I learned a lot during that bathroom remodel. How to take out and reinstall a toilet, remove vinyl flooring that’s been glued to concrete, install and grout tile, remove and install baseboards, run plumbing lines and some minor electrical work. In the end the sense of accomplishment was grand and the mistakes, accidents and ‘fails’ are now something I can laugh about.

Don’t let the “wasted time” get you down, just think of it as a learning experience. Everything we do results in XYZ hours that we’ll never get back. Sometimes some of those things are disappointing, but learn from it and continue on.

:slight_smile:

5

kdeus, in confession two weeks ago: “Well, father, you know we’ve been doing a lot of renovations on the house lately…”

Priest, into his beard: “Uh-oh.”

kdeus: “Well, this week I gave the Lord some very specific instructions about what he should do with the house, the job I was doing and the hammer I had recently bounced off my thumb. Fortunately, he did not follow my instructions.”

Priest: “He’s good like that.”

6

I’ve been telling everyone that it was a learning experience, and that is how I’m going to treat it. I now know better than to trim the paper without some kind of guide. The instructions I read even suggested using a ruler, but oh no, I thought! I can slice a straight line just fine without digging out that ruler! :smack:

Also, the paper at the top of the door isn’t as taut as the paper at the bottom, and I know exactly why. I switched methods of fixing the paper halfway through and apparently, method #2 was much better than #1. I’ll redo the job this weekend, maybe on Sunday if I’m not feeling too lazy.

7

Here is what I absolutely love about the OP: Such is the plaint of every do-it-yourselfer the world over. Whether it’s replacing the in-window shade in Frankfurt, repairing the roof tiles in Lisbon, patching the yurt in Mongolia or fixing a leaky pipe in Denver, homeowners have a common enemy – maintenance! I feel your pain, Seoda, truly I do. But don’t give up. Home repairs are a matter of experience and one day you’ll replace that shoji paper like a pro.