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Basically it annoys me when people insist they can't learn. Won't learn, don't want to learn, don't have the time to learn? Fine. But life isn't an RPG and you don't have a magical inability to learn how to turn a screwdriver because you put too many points into one stat and not another.
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Mar 2, 2024 21:56
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I've gotten discouraged from doing home repairs due to the accretion of problems between it being a very old home and a cheapass prior rental owner combined with particular aesthetic preferences for period appropriate stylings. A bunch of things should have been simple, but I've learned nothing in this house ever really is so there have been a number of times where I've bailed out once I got a couple issues deep. Case in point: this past November our builder grade kitchen faucet began to fail and leak. As noted upthread this should be a fairly simple swap out, but Gary decided to use the least common piping arrangement (I think it was two hole where most modern sets were three hole or something?) so absent drilling new holes in our counter my choices were either a four figure artisan replacement or current version of the builder grade fixture. I elected for the latter, which was a pain in the rear end to track down and took a little while for the part to come in. I jammed myself under the sink and discovered that the the underside of the fixtures were bored into a chunk of wood deep enough that I couldn't reasonably get traction on them to uncouple everything. We were now pushing close enough up to Thanksgiving that rather than try and figure out the specialty tool required I elected to call the handyman to finish everything off rather than hosting Thanksgiving with a non-functional sink when I ran into another problem that would take time to solve.
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Mar 2, 2024 22:11
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The house I grew up in was rented and any time anything broke, the landlord (named Gary) would send this fat guy name Daryl over to fix it. Except he never fixed it. He’d stand around for a while, maybe cut a hole in the wall, inevitably make whatever the problem was worse, and then leave, promising he’d be back soon to finish the job. My dad assumed that if this professional was having trouble, it was definitely beyond him to attempt. I eventually decided to go to the library to get some basic plumbing/home repair books, borrowed some tools, and ended up fixing most of the problems myself. All while my dad insisted that I shouldn’t dare attempt something so complicated as taking a drain trap off to run a snake or clean the furnace’s pilot light. It was like a perfect home repair Yin Yang, a man so learnedly helpless that he would refuse to change a lightbulb and a man so confident but idiotic that things would break down merely by being in his presence. My parents stayed in that house waaaay too long and when we finally decided to move them out, it was somehow being reclaimed by the sea despite being in the middle of dry land.
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Mar 2, 2024 22:45
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Cyrano4747 posted:On the other hand, I can't count the number of students I had who would just straight up refuse to try something saying that they knew they were bad writers, or knew the subject was too complex for them. There's a lot of learned helplessness that comes from an unwillingness to try, fail, take on criticism, and do better. Oh, I absolutely agree that they should try. try everything, particularly if they are interested/curious. Keep at it. Then decide. steckles posted:... This is a big part of the problem: Discouragement from authority figures.
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Mar 2, 2024 22:49
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Cyrano4747 posted:Aptitude is a thing but you don’t need any to do basic home repairs. Any idiot can patch dry wall or replace a toilet or put in a new faucet. I will have you know I am not just ANY idiot when it comes to home repairs, I am THE idiot. All of this is good point though and a lot of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I’m not great at all with tools or handy work, but I can do basics if I set my mind to it. I just don’t enjoy it at all. Thankfully one of our best friends here does handy work for a living and has been helping us out. I try not to reach out often, I don’t want to take advantage of anyone, but def helps lead in the right direction if we aren’t sure.
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Mar 2, 2024 23:15
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steckles posted:My parents stayed in that house waaaay too long and when we finally decided to move them out, it was somehow being reclaimed by the sea despite being in the middle of dry land. 
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Mar 2, 2024 23:26
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steckles posted:home repair books, borrowed some tools, and ended up fixing most of the problems myself. All while my dad insisted that I shouldn’t dare attempt something so complicated as I have about neutral karma with landlords, I have fixed things they really don't want to repair, and also cut holes in walls to run pipes and Ethernet cables (those 99¢ double light switch blank out plates will cover just about any tenant sins, you can just screw them directly into the drywall) nobody has ever given me any grief so long as I paid rent on time + left the place broom swept when I moved out so they could turn it over to another tenant asap
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Mar 2, 2024 23:37
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Cyrano4747 posted:Agreed 100% and if someone just says they can't be hosed to learn how and just want to write a check to have a plumber unclog their sink, hey that's totally legit. Mostly it frustrates me because when I do see it it's from people who have an expressed need, have the time, but just feel intimidated. You should've seen me let the air out of a radiator in a room full of doctors, I got amazed comments from 5 people about it
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Mar 2, 2024 23:45
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Ha! That reminds me of the time the doctor left me in the exam room cooling my heels. After about ten minutes I was triggered by the uneven shut-lines on his wall cabinets. They had Euro 4-way hinges, so I adjusted them. He comes in about ten minutes later & apologized. After pointing out the cabinet doors, he was amazed; he'd had people in to adjust them & they all said it couldn't be done.
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Mar 3, 2024 01:34
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Democratic Pirate posted:Not because of this thread, but I feel like a chump for having a plumber replace a faucet a few weeks ago. It’s DIY’able but we didn’t have the time or mental capacity for it given ongoing medical/work stressors. Replacing a sink is also in the middle of the pain in the rear end scale, I'd feel no guilt over hiring someone to do that if the price was right
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Mar 3, 2024 01:52
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PainterofCrap posted:Ha! That reminds me of the time the doctor left me in the exam room cooling my heels. After about ten minutes I was triggered by the uneven shut-lines on his wall cabinets. They had Euro 4-way hinges, so I adjusted them. This is how you get the *good* meds prescribed
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Mar 3, 2024 02:17
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So I lied about going to chop would to celebrate. I actually stripped the wallpaper in my bedroom and put on primer because I want to try a fancy new paint job. In the process I may have made a couple mistakes. I've painted walls before, but they've either been naked plaster or paint over existing paint. Under the wallpaper for half the walls was paint but under the rest it was just, like, paper? I figured that was just drywall and how drywall works, but... I'm beginning to think that maybe I shouldn't have painted the paper because it seems to be rolling up a little bit. And I'm not 100% sure where I've gone wrong but I'm definitely thinking I went wrong somewhere and I should have done something else, because this definitely doesn't seem right. Ah well, nothing to do at this point but finish the thing and see how it looks, I guess. (it's just the primer on for now) GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Mar 3, 2024 |
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Mar 3, 2024 04:52
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If it was a brown paper, then it sounds like the wallpaper took off the surface of the drywall with it. If that's the case, you'll usually get bubbling if you prime or paint directly over it. A specialty primer like Zinsser Gardz will seal it to prevent bubbling and then you can paint, or you may need to do some skim coating to make it look good first. Pictures would probably help.
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Mar 3, 2024 05:46
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Democratic Pirate posted:Not because of this thread, but I feel like a chump for having a plumber replace a faucet a few weeks ago. It’s DIY’able but we didn’t have the time or mental capacity for it given ongoing medical/work stressors. When my water heater broke a couple years ago, it was right in the middle of me dealing with a surprise whole house rewiring. I did a little bit of research and had a pretty good idea it was the thermocouple, and I probably could have spent an hour or two figuring out the right one to buy and a couple hours trying to figure out how to get the old one out and install the new one. But at the time, on top of everything else, I was happy to pay a plumber to diagnose and fix it for a couple hundred bucks. And it was a bad thermocouple. Also a few years ago I was rebuilding my bicycle and felt like such a doofus having to take it to my local bike shop because I just could not get the hub out. I felt less bad when they informed me that they had to take a blowtorch to it to get the metal loosened up to finally get it off, and less bad still when they only charged me $17.
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Mar 3, 2024 06:32
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ROJO posted:I have finally passed the critical mass of fluorescent tubes out in my garage that I want to go ahead and replace them all with LED tubes. Two questions: My friend the lighting designer recommended these when I asked him the same question: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Lithoni...RI-M6/300263608 I bought the slightly more expensive ones that are adjustable Kelvin temperature but haven’t installed them yet
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Mar 3, 2024 07:28
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FISHMANPET posted:Also a few years ago I was rebuilding my bicycle and felt like such a doofus having to take it to my local bike shop because I just could not get the hub out. I felt less bad when they informed me that they had to take a blowtorch to it to get the metal loosened up to finally get it off, and less bad still when they only charged me $17. Parts and labor: $35 Got to use blowtorch: -$18 Net bill: $17
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Mar 3, 2024 08:40
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Cyrano4747 posted:Basically it annoys me when people insist they can't learn. Won't learn, don't want to learn, don't have the time to learn? Fine. Pretty much this, and a lot of the 'I don't have time' crap is just that: crap. Be willing to suck at something. Be willing to get better. Be willing to just try. My cousin once told me he 'didn't have time to learn how to apply silicon'. My dude, the time it would take you to watch a 4 minute youtube video and just do it is going to be a tiny fraction of the net time spent trying to hire someone to do it for you. And yeah, your first go with silicon is probably going to suck, but so what - that's the journey. I still have my very first silicon job in my bathroom and it's kinda a loving mess, but it seals poo poo and I learned, and I got better. It took me all of 3 or 4 more attempts before I got way better and the costs is $12 and literally under 15 minutes per job. And yeah - don't 'be willing to try' everything. I'm absolutely hiring a professional to touch anything on our gas lines and major plumping infrastructure, but screwdrivers, silicon and sinks - that poo poo is easy if you just try and go in with the expectation that you aren't going to do a perfect job the first time.
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Mar 3, 2024 09:26
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Democratic Pirate posted:Parts and labor: $35 The bicycle mechanics I've known probably would have spent most of the day with the bike on the stand and the tool at the 12-o'clock position challenging every friend who walked in the store to see if they were the rightful king of cyclists.
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Mar 3, 2024 11:59
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Sorry I don't have my caulk gun certification
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Mar 3, 2024 13:22
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I don’t touch electric and gas, the rest I do badly, but that’s a problem for the next owner (city center apartment, at least it looks better than it did)
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Mar 3, 2024 14:10
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Canine Blues Arooo posted:My cousin once told me he 'didn't have time to learn how to apply silicon'. My dude, the time it would take you to watch a 4 minute youtube video and just do it is going to be a tiny fraction of the net time spent trying to hire someone to do it for you. And yeah, your first go with silicon is probably going to suck, but so what - that's the journey. I still have my very first silicon job in my bathroom and it's kinda a loving mess, but it seals poo poo and I learned, and I got better. It took me all of 3 or 4 more attempts before I got way better and the costs is $12 and literally under 15 minutes per job. I think the biggest help for me (and to be clear, I'm very much the computer toucher can't do poo poo with my hands type, but I'm learning!) was years ago when my wife and I did silicon on our tub liner, and were so scared of making the job look terrible that we got one of those smoother tools (highly recommended, it looks great) and spent a long time on it until it was perfect. Then we had a guy in to fix something that involved having to redo the silicon. He said he could reapply it for some small amount (~$20?) or leave it and let us redo it. It was a small enough amount that we just paid and then his job was way worse than ours. It was a good reminder to us that, especially on simple jobs, giving a poo poo is like 90% of the job.
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Mar 3, 2024 14:53
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Finding good infornation is not exactly quick and easy anymore. It took me like an hour to find a four minute video on how to apply silicon and decide I actually trusted it to be giving me the relevant and needed information and not just be some scam site trying to deliver me minimal or incorrect information to get me to watch their ads. Especially since the first several such videos didnt actually say anything at all as far as I could tell. (I think the first one that actually gave useful info was on home depots website)
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Mar 3, 2024 15:02
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What's really hard is finding a contractor who knows how to install a whole-house radium water system, I had to figure out how to do it myself. It's been a phenomenol boost to my vigors, I swear that it's cured my consumption
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Mar 3, 2024 15:10
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GlyphGryph posted:Finding good infornation is not exactly quick and easy anymore. It took me like an hour to find a four minute video on how to apply silicon and decide I actually trusted it to be giving me the relevant and needed information and not just be some scam site trying to deliver me minimal or incorrect information to get me to watch their ads. Especially since the first several such videos didnt actually say anything at all as far as I could tell. (I think the first one that actually gave useful info was on home depots website) We live in an SEO-addled information hellscape but if it took you an hour you really need to figure out what's wrong with your searching. This is the first video result for "how to apply silicone caulk" and just skipping through it briefly it looks like he shows the whole process and it's more or less correct. Not watching a full 15 minute so maybe I'm going to be showing my rear end and I missed the part where he tries to scam your bitcoin or whatever, but at a quick glance it looks OK. Took me less than a minute, and 30 seconds of that was quickly skipping through the video to see what he was demonstrating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnD_LCzcLH4&t=3s Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Mar 3, 2024 |
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Mar 3, 2024 15:11
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Hopefully you'll find a couple sources of good videos. I like Home Renovision as my first stop. Ask This Old House as a second. Sometimes TOH isn't very practical for a homeowner, like just use your track saw, but oh no the track is too long. Just cut the track to length, I didn't pay for it, who cares.
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Mar 3, 2024 15:45
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Yeah as Ive been searching I have found Home Depot to be a good first stop and This Old House to be a good source for slightly more depth. I havent seen any Home Renovision videos, I will check them out I guess.Cyrano4747 posted:We live in an SEO-addled information hellscape but if it took you an hour you really need to figure out what's wrong with your searching. Part of the problem is if its new to you you wont know the search terms (I didnt know to call it caulk back when I searched) you're more likely to get the crap, and a lot of it isnt like bitcoin scams its just empty content that exists to get you watch as long as possible and view ads without actually telling you anything at all. And watching one video isnt enough because if youre ignorant of the subject you have no way to tell the difference between those videos and one that says useful stuff. I am also pretty bad at search nowadays but most people are.
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Mar 3, 2024 16:09
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Guy Axlerod posted:Hopefully you'll find a couple sources of good videos. I like Home Renovision as my first stop. Ask This Old House as a second. See Jane Drill is great too. Vancouver Carpenter for anything drywall.
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Mar 3, 2024 16:48
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GlyphGryph posted:Yeah as Ive been searching I have found Home Depot to be a good first stop and This Old House to be a good source for slightly more depth. I havent seen any Home Renovision videos, I will check them out I guess. In that case I'd recommend just buying a really basic book. There is a whole industry of basic homeowner repair books. Like, really, really basic poo poo. This is just a random example, I'm not endorsing this particular book, but stuff like this: https://www.amazon.com/Family-Handyman-Whole-House-Repair/dp/1621455394 That should at least give you the basic vocabulary to look up things, like knowing what caulk is. My bet is that the instructions are probably pretty OK in and of themselves, just because the sort of basic tasks that a book like that is aimed at aren't all that difficult. edit: point being that not knowing even the basics is a solvable problem.
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Mar 3, 2024 17:23
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Home Depot and Lowes both have their own books of "here's how to do a ton of basic handyman tasks". Black & Decker makes a book that's an excellent guide to residential electrical tasks. They're good resources to have around, and at bare minimum will give you the vocabulary to get more detail if you need it.
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Mar 3, 2024 18:17
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Its wild talking to my friends that do zero DIY work. Telling them to look up the model number of the thing that’s broke and to find a parts diagram is like revealing sorcery.
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Mar 3, 2024 18:27
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GlyphGryph posted:Finding good infornation is not exactly quick and easy anymore. It took me like an hour to find a four minute video on how to apply silicon and decide I actually trusted it to be giving me the relevant and needed information and not just be some scam site trying to deliver me minimal or incorrect information to get me to watch their ads. Especially since the first several such videos didnt actually say anything at all as far as I could tell. (I think the first one that actually gave useful info was on home depots website) Yeah, this is a good point. Even popular/well watched sites/videos can be terribly wrong. I remember back when "Scotty Kilmer", an automotive journalist or something turned "I know how to work on cars, here's a video" was posting absolutely dangerous bullshit like how to use compression fittings to repair barke lines - a thing that is such a bad idea that it's actually illegal. When you don't know what you don't know the wrong/non specific search terms can turn up a lot of garbage and you don't have a basis to know if it's correct or not. That's part of what makes these forums so valuable.
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Mar 3, 2024 18:47
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While we're recommending books, I thought this was a good intro for people who are just getting started. Safe and Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair
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Mar 3, 2024 19:00
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When I bought my first house a few years ago I bought a bunch of used black and decker books from abebooks. Dirt cheap and very valuable reference for, say, figuring out why an electronic stud finder doesn’t work in my house - the drywall is slapped on top of plaster and lathe, so the wall is too thick for the electric ones to reliably find the studs. A dead simple magnetic one, for finding either drywall screws or lathe nails, is the only option that works at all.
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Mar 3, 2024 19:07
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The best stud finder for my money is a rare earth magnet. You just slide it along the wall until it sticks, and then you can leave it there to mark where the nail/screw is.
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Mar 3, 2024 21:51
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... I genuinely wasn't aware people used things other than magnets.
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Mar 3, 2024 22:08
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e: NVM thats what you said
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Mar 3, 2024 22:10
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Only works if your drywall screws actually went into the studs which is not always the case in my house.
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Mar 3, 2024 22:38
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bird with big dick posted:Only works if your drywall screws actually went into the studs which is not always the case in my house. I find 3 or 4 in the same stud to eliminate any outliers.
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Mar 4, 2024 00:32
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TerminalSaint posted:I find 3 or 4 in the same stud to eliminate any outliers. Depends how tweaked up your drywallers were. *sultry, alluring voice* Maybe they’re in the stud Maybe it’s amphetamine
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Mar 4, 2024 02:49
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You can also have warped wood, have fun thinking about that possibility
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Mar 4, 2024 03:02
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