Who Else Begins Projects They Know Are Out Of Their League?

I do it all the time. Something breaks around the house, and I think to myself “Hey…I have tools, I have a penis…I can fix this”. And before you know it there are holes in the wall, the cat is dangling from the ceiling fan, and my wife is using a broom to turn off the smoke alarm.

And yet, despite all evidence to the contrary, I still think I can handle major home improvement projects.

Case in point: tomorrow, I am going to be installing a new dining room floor. I’ve ripped up the carpet (yes, the previous owners had carpeted the dining room…don’t ask) and tomorrow I put down wooden parquet floor tiles. What are my qualifications for installing a new floor? How many times have I done this in the past? Ummm…that’d be “none” and “zero”, respectively.

But, (and this is the question I ask before every project that always comes back to bite me in the ass) how fricking hard can it be?? I mean, I pull up all the staples that they used to secure the carpet pad, I make sure the plywood base is nice and smooth, I slather on the adhesive, and I lay down the tiles. What can go wrong??

Well, I’m sure I have an answer to that question tomorrow.

So, anyone else have an inflated sense of “I can do this”?

I had a CD player in my Toyota Celica convertible. I loved that car. One day, a CD wouldn’t eject. Hubby, rather than taking it to be repaired, like I’d asked, took it apart… I sold the car without a CD player.
I had VCR. It was easy to use, state of the art, when it was new. He decided to watch a questionable movie while I wasn’t home one day. The movie got stuck, so he took the VCR apart. I have a DVD player he replaced it with.
The used Corvette convertible we bought to replace the Celica had a 12 disc CD changer, in the trunk. He thought it had a loose connection. Now we change CDs, one at a time, in the cockpit. :rolleyes: I love my husband very much. I need to take his tools away from him.

Hal Briston, you do not have any failed home improvement projects.

None, not a single, solitary one.

You have an embarrassing wealth of educational home improvement experiences. :smiley:

Who Else Begins Projects They Know Are Out Of Their League?

Well, I got married…

Not me; I don’t tackle the big projects myself. I have a friend, however, who is a pistol. When I was fixing my house up to sell, she talked me into making waaay more cosmetic changes than I’d planned. Including changing out the bathroom faucets. She didn’t tell me until after her unsuccessful attempt to install them that she’d never done it before. But, for the record, her attempt was only unsuccessful because she lacked the brute strength necessary to get the job done.

I get frustrated too easily, and I expect perfection. Which is a deadly combination (case in point: I gave up on getting rid of the ugly-ass curtains, and it required a friend with brute strength (and patience) to take care of that nasty task). So I end up doing nothing, and letting others do for me. Not really a good way to get through life. So this weekend, my friend (who will be taking on a number of projects in my house) is gonna have to teach me. Heh. I won’t tell her until she’s already knee deep, though, or she’ll run screaming from the challenge.

I begin every home project secure in the knowledge that I am a hopeless incompetent. This is tremendously liberating because I can have all the enjoyment of running to Home Depot and using power tools and not have to worry about the way things actually turns out.

My wife says she is fine with this, as long as I remember to point the chain saw away from me.

We have a good marriage and a contractor on retainer.

Strangely enough, although neither of us had done it before and although our house was full of all kinds of strange moldings and odd angles, we managed to lay about 1500 square feet of laminate flooring in three rooms of our house in three days and, if I do say so myself, it looked fabulous when we were done. And we even managed to not get divorced over it (although it was close a couple of times).

At that point, needless to say, we retired from home improvement to rest on our laurels henceforth. There are times when, having succeeded once, there’s no point in trying again because it for sure ain’t happening twice.

I only can think of one. In my first house, my wife wanted the dining room wallpaper down and then we would paint the walls. I have always been very handy and I figured, “How hard could this be?”
Turns out very hard. The wallpaper was pasted directly to unprimed sheetrock and was not the peelable style wallpaper.
After a lot of work, we got the wallpaper off and much of the old paste off and two much of the wallpaper facing.
I had to punt, get my friends over and put up fresh ¼” sheetrock on one wall and prime and paint it. The other two walls, I paneled and built floor to ceiling bookshelves in front of them. It came out very nice and I brought the shelving to our new home, so it all worked out. However to this day, I hate projects that involve wallpaper.

All my other projects have generally gone very well. Unfortunately I need to strip my son’s room of its wallpaper and I fear the worst. This will probably be a late winter and early spring project. I am not looking forward to it.

Jim {Hal, let us know how it went}

I assume there is a doorway transition between your Dining room and kitchen or something. Does the flooring make a smooth transition from one room to the next. Could that be made better by laying down a layer of 1/4" plywood. If not, do yourself a favor and pick up a nice mantle so you don’t trip while carrying the turkey in for Thanksgiving.

Plan your tile pattern. My dad is a contractor, and nothing would piss him off more than to see that someone had laid down the tile so that there were itty bitty shity pieces left in noticeable spots.

Also remember not to lay all the adhesive at once. You’re not as fast as you think you are.

Also, don’t feel too bad. My dad (the carpenter) had us living in a house without a kitchen floor or cabinet doors for 2 years, and no knobs on the kitchen cabinet doors for another year. The willingness to do the work is half the battle (alright, so maybe not half, or even a quarter but, . . . uhh good luck sucker, and make sure the wife keeps the cat away from the glue.)

In general, I tend to do okay because I have a tendancy to over analyze. Still, a recent adventure involved doing a lift and steering replacment on my jeep and what should have taken about eight hours wound up taking three days (good thing I has some extra vacation days laying around :D). A trip to the mechanic afterwards to make sure everything was okay brought on the comment, “You would have died.” Looking back at it, it’s hard to figure out where all the time went, but go it did.

What a difference a day makes.

And now I am quite beaten, aching, and sore. But, things went much better than expected. I fell just short on supplies, so after I make a quick Home D trip in the morning I’ll spend another two, maybe three hours finishing everything up before collapsing on the couch for a well-deserved day of watching football.

Incidentally, Jim – if you like, feel free to borrow my wallpaper steamer when the time comes. It makes life much easier.

Hal, that looks great. Good job.
Even if you run a little long, at least the Giants-Bears are the night game.

Thanks for the offer, I might take you up on it.

Jim

My ex-husband, the HVAC professional, had us living in a house with no central heat or air for a couple of years. Now, my husband is a handyman, and we still have no handrail on the basement stairs, unfinished radiator covers, a definite lack of curtain rods in the living room (therefore naked windows), and unassembled Christmas toys from last Christmas. Last week, he hooked up the hot water for the bathroom sink. We’ve lived here for almost eight months.

Do seduction attempts count? As with the OP, most of them began with the belief that having a penis qualified me for great things.

As a bequeathment thingy, I got a lovely old cedar chest of drawers from my nanna when she died. It had seen a lot of years (she got it from HER mum) and was estimated at around 120 years old.

So, what did I do? I started ‘restoring’ it to original condition.

Aaaaaaand fucked it up totally in the process. :frowning:

Sorry Nanna. I tried my best, but I should’a known that things like ‘patience’ and ‘attention to detail’ were not quite part of my psychological makeup.

:smiley:

My husband painted professionally for eight or so years. We’ve lived in this house for three years, and we have exactly one room and one hallway completely painted (they all need painting). We moved into this house with a five-year plan, and he says that means he gets five years to paint everything - after that, I can start in on it (in his defense, he is an absolutely fantastic painter).

As for the OP, I do this all the time. I always think I can do stuff that I have no real idea about. I’ve learned to run my big ideas by my husband first, because he is a lot more realistic than me. Everything sounds like a good idea at the time, to me.

(Nice floor, Hal. We have to re-do our living room floor - I hope it looks as good when we’re done.)

featherlou and MissGypsy my husband does home improvement (you name it - painting, remodeling, kitchens, bathrooms, electrical - everything) for a living. I’ve found that the only way to get a project finished is for me to start it and hopelessly screw it up. You should have SEEN the look on his face when I started painting the bathroom using a high gloss paint - and a brush that was an inch and a half wide. :smiley:

Me: “Hey, since I’m home from school for a few months, I want to repaint my bedroom.”
Parents: “Do you have the slightest idea what you’re doing?”
Me: “Nope! Not a clue! But how hard can it be? Done in a few days.”
Parents: “Okay. First you need to repair the many cracks from water damage in the wall. Here’s a Home Depot gift card we’ve had lying around the house. Have fun.”

After four days of washing/plastering/puttying/sanding, then three days of priming/painting/touching up, it looked really good, though.

I, like a moron, have decided I’m going to start taking Aikido classes next Saturday morning. You’ll note that this has two “out of my league” elements - that I’m going to learn a martial art and that I’m going to get up at the butt-crack of dawn on a Saturday to do it.

Yeah, I was going to ask Hal how useful the penis turned out to be. I never got around to procuring one so I stick to very manageable projects.