My husband is an amazing person with numerous attributes. He’s smart, generous, kind, analytical, empathetic, logical and extremely successful. If there was just one little issue with him....it’s that he sort of blows at anything related to home repair. As stated in a previous blog entry he has even found himself trapped on our roof after deciding to clean out the gutters. We have a long list of G.R. home improvement stories that we both enjoy, most involve about 16 trips to Home Depot per day until the project is complete.
We have a ceiling fan in our room, it’s one of the nicer name brands, but it does not matter how nice a fan is if it’s not installed correctly. For a long time the light on the fan didn’t work. It was the main source of light in our room, so that was quite a dark period for us. G.R. fixed that issue only to find that now the fan can not be turned off. You can turn the light switch off as you enter our room and then both the light and the fan are off, but if you have the light on the fan has to be on. We also can’t control the speed, so the wind is always whipping around our room. We have both decided just to live this way, the idea of G.R. gambling his life one more time by touching the wiring is to daunting.
G.R. has one major technique for fixing things. He “jiggles” them. I can’t make fun of this because it has worked time and time again. One freezing night we noticed our heat was not working. I was ringing up dollar signs in my head, figuring we were screwed, as G.R. went downstairs to “look at stuff”. While down there he took the furnace and “jiggled something”. The heat started shooting through the vents right away. This jiggling has also worked on toilets, cars and our babies when they are screaming.
You don’t have to look very far to see where G.R. developed his skills. His dad, also a superb human, faces similar issues. When we moved into our home my father-in-law was trying to run cable to the upstairs with G.R. He carefully measured around the plastic plate that would be fixed to the wall and then cut out the space he had outlined. He placed the plastic cover over the hole and it went right through. The hole has to be smaller than the item you use to cover it up.
I’ll never forget one day when G.R.’s dad was dispensing advice about a certain home repair situation. He was very serious in saying to G.R., “Now this is what you need to do in situations like this.” G.R. and I both leaned in thinking we were about to receive some nugget of information that has been handed down through the family for years. Very slowly he explained, “You want to take apart the item. Then get a bag. Place the item in a bag and go to Home Depot. Find someone and say, ‘This one is not working. I need another one of these, please’.”
We have found a happy medium with my brother in law rule. No one can do anything in our home (meaning G.R. and his dad) without the capable presence of either my brother-in-law or his. This has worked well for us, now G.R. sits near them as they complete a task and basically cheers them on. And everyone gets to live.
We have a ceiling fan in our room, it’s one of the nicer name brands, but it does not matter how nice a fan is if it’s not installed correctly. For a long time the light on the fan didn’t work. It was the main source of light in our room, so that was quite a dark period for us. G.R. fixed that issue only to find that now the fan can not be turned off. You can turn the light switch off as you enter our room and then both the light and the fan are off, but if you have the light on the fan has to be on. We also can’t control the speed, so the wind is always whipping around our room. We have both decided just to live this way, the idea of G.R. gambling his life one more time by touching the wiring is to daunting.
G.R. has one major technique for fixing things. He “jiggles” them. I can’t make fun of this because it has worked time and time again. One freezing night we noticed our heat was not working. I was ringing up dollar signs in my head, figuring we were screwed, as G.R. went downstairs to “look at stuff”. While down there he took the furnace and “jiggled something”. The heat started shooting through the vents right away. This jiggling has also worked on toilets, cars and our babies when they are screaming.
You don’t have to look very far to see where G.R. developed his skills. His dad, also a superb human, faces similar issues. When we moved into our home my father-in-law was trying to run cable to the upstairs with G.R. He carefully measured around the plastic plate that would be fixed to the wall and then cut out the space he had outlined. He placed the plastic cover over the hole and it went right through. The hole has to be smaller than the item you use to cover it up.
I’ll never forget one day when G.R.’s dad was dispensing advice about a certain home repair situation. He was very serious in saying to G.R., “Now this is what you need to do in situations like this.” G.R. and I both leaned in thinking we were about to receive some nugget of information that has been handed down through the family for years. Very slowly he explained, “You want to take apart the item. Then get a bag. Place the item in a bag and go to Home Depot. Find someone and say, ‘This one is not working. I need another one of these, please’.”
We have found a happy medium with my brother in law rule. No one can do anything in our home (meaning G.R. and his dad) without the capable presence of either my brother-in-law or his. This has worked well for us, now G.R. sits near them as they complete a task and basically cheers them on. And everyone gets to live.
4 comments:
That's hilarious, Dave will love this one. He still can't figure out how the fan has been installed to "work" the way it does.
Wow, I wish I could put up some sort of rebuttal, but unfortunately, everything you've said is true. Even though you see the truth, I still love when our daughter tells people that I can fix anything. How long do you think before she realizes my ineptitude at these things?
Honey, you do fix everything. I say that all the time. You fix all the little situations that go wrong. You know, like when a couch needs to go through a window.
I gotta say this sounds like my Rainman!!! Every project he attempts (and always decides to start near closing time of Home Depot) results in numerous trips to the store in the following days - many exclamations of "You have got to be kidding!" and a decision not to try again the next time - which we always forget when it is time for the next project!!!
www.shutthefridge.blogspot.com
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