I’M AFRAID I MIGHT HAVE BECOME A FORMER HANDYMAN!

I look back fondly on all the household repair jobs I did with my dad, painting, plastering, plumbing, planting trees, pulling old tree stumps out, re-finishing the basement… My dad was very handy, and he taught me a lot about home repairs.

The confidence I got from dad as far as home repair/ownership encouraged me to buy my first house before my credit was good enough to finance a car. Thanks to my dad’s tutelage, I was prepared when a deep freeze hit my area and I had to venture into the crawl space of my new house and wrap the exposed pipes to stop them from freezing.

I met my future wife and she wanted a bigger house to raise our family in. She encouraged me to sell the small Cape Cod style house I was living in so we could start shopping for “our” first house.

I needed to prepare the house for sale and thought it would present a lot better if I re-finished the hardwood floors in the living room and dining room. I borrowed a power sander from one of my customers at the garage I owned and went to work. It was a much harder job than I had anticipated and took me over two days to complete. But I finished with one more skill for my handyman resume’.

My wife and I bought our first house, a duplex. There was an open wall on the second floor that dropped into the first-floor family room. We were scared to death one of the kids would fall through that half wall. I talked to my dad, and he came right over and helped me put wooden rods up that matched the decor and made the room child proof.

Another task I accomplished in the duplex was to put a fence in. I saved several hundred dollars by doing that job with a friend from work, Steve, who lived nearby.

We probably stayed in the duplex longer than we should have. To make it marginally livable, as the family was growing, I cut our garage in half and made a family room. I simply put a plywood floor, wall and ceiling in the portion with the home entry door and then left the other half for much needed storage.

Later in our marriage my wife and I had a ranch house built. We were able to eliminate the down payment by doing all of the painting, interior and exterior. With help from friends and family that task was taken care of and our house was ready to live in!

I did a lot of work on the “Green House” (As we called it- just referring to its’ color- we were not gardeners). I was working as many overtime hours as I could get which left no time for home improvements so, on the first Thanksgiving we were in the house, I stayed home and installed fans while Eileen took all of the kids (six at the time) to the relatives houses for their celebrations. Anyone who has raised kids knows, it’s a toss-up as to who did the most work that day.

Moving on to our final house. More of the same; I installed ceiling fans, I replaced an exhaust fan in one of the bathrooms, retiled the laundry room and built a temporary wall and ceiling in the basement so it would look like I was in an office when I taught on-line during the Covid Situation (Teaching police related college classes was another way of making extra money- I did it for about 10 years).

As time went by, I was not as excited about tackling jobs around the house. I was older, Eileen and I had divorced, I had less energy and more things to do.

I was able to keep the house in the settlement and it never did empty out. Some kids left, other kids came back, some brought their own kids. At this time, I have two kids and two grandkids living with me. At the end of the month one of the kids is moving out with the two grandkids, and my ex-wife is moving back with my youngest daughter, Erin- Yes, I know, that’s a lot of material for a completely different story.

They volunteered to help paint and do other improvements and to purchase some accessories that they said would, “Make the house more livable.”

One of the improvements they provided was a new family room ceiling fan with a light. I have put no less than ten of those in and had every confidence I would have no problem with that task. I would be replacing a fan I installed.

My son P.J. and I emptied the family room and prepped the walls and ceiling on Friday so Eileen, Erin and I could hit the ground running on Saturday.

We painted all day and completed the room before it was time for them to return to their apartment. Eileen asked if I could install the fan before they returned to paint another room. I figured it would take me about a half hour to an hour and said I would be glad to.

I was confident to the point of cockiness as I had put the previous fan, and many others up. I was now, in my own mind, an expert! My usual routine, when doing such a job, is to mark how the old piece was connected and wire the new piece the same way. But, hey, you might have forgotten that I was now a self-proclaimed expert and that was not necessary!

New fan instructions: “Connect the black ceiling wire to the black fan wire and the white ceiling wire to the white fan wire….” Well,,,, look at this! The wires in my ceiling are 1 Purple, 1 Orange and two Greys? Hmmmmm, thought to self- What should I do? What did I do last time? Why do I have more wires than I need? Why aren’t they the right colors? What color was connected to the purple wire? What color was connected to the orange wire?

In addition to that dilemma the new fan came with a base that was at least twice as big as the fan base I had taken off. The new base would not connect to the ceiling box. The ceiling box had a loose cap that had holes for 4 screws with one screw in place. The other three screws were missing.

Well! I tried different combinations of wiring, called my brother in Las Vegas, who has experience as an electrician. Then tried more combinations of wiring. During all of this drama a thought kept coming to me… WHY DIDN’T YOU MAKE A NOTE OF HOW YOU WIRED THE LAST FAN YOU JUST TOOK DOWN! I was so discouraged.

Finally, I got it all right. I used the grey wires as ground. I put a grey and purple from the ceiling with a blue wire from the fan and then I took an orange and grey wire from the ceiling and put it with a black wire from the fan. I turned the power back on and one switch turned on the fan and a second switch turned on the light.

SUCCESS!

I was doubting myself, big time, and then after a bunch of praying, fixing and refixing I had just what I wanted- a fan and a light operated by separate switches!

I learned that I need to take notes because the part of me that used to be a fantastic memory seems to have “left the building!”

Well, since that debacle, I have put up 5 blinds, and helped paint three rooms and a hallway.

I’m slowly getting my confidence back and I’m pretty sure when the next job comes up, I’ll be ready but, just in case, maybe you could send me the names of some good handymen in the Chicago area!

Thanks for reading, please comment on what you liked, didn’t like, similar experiences, failures, successes…

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Thank you

Phil