Projects

(By the way, thanks for all the supportive comments about bicycling on the last post, everyone!)

When I bought my house, I understood that I was buying a long list of projects. I’m actually pretty lucky: the house I bought will be 70 next year, and for the last 55 years it was owned by man who took meticulous care of the house. The circuits and cables are labeled, the fifty-year-old carpet and wallpaper is in excellent condition, and when he fixed things, he fixed them properly. Compare this to the house of my friends N&S, where I’ve been training on home repairs. Their house is 90 years old, still has its original plaster and lathe walls, and every repair uncovers 90 years of “making do” construction that is rarely up to professional standards.

I started on my list of projects this weekend by replacing the door locks, and I got a taste of weekends to come. It goes like this. I work on a project until I get stuck, in this case because door locks are a slightly different size than they were decades ago. I send my father pictures like this:

Then we talk on the phone, and he sends me pictures like this, explaining what I need to do.

Repeat as necessary. I had to caution my father that I was not willing to fix things that were simply worn– if I did that, I’d have to replace the whole house. I’m strictly limiting repairs to actually broken (or about-to-break) items.

I am so lucky to have my dad, who knows how to fix just about anything. I’ll be the first to give him a five-star rating, so that he can build up his new long-distance repair consulting business.