The Do It Yourself Life

DO IT YOURSELF LIFE by Cali Grimshaw

I grew up in a DO IT YOURSELF home with a DO IT YOURSELF dad. Then I grew up and married a DO IT YOURSELF man who believed in teaching our children the same principles. It must go back to that independent pioneer stock which runs deep on all sides of the family. It would never have occurred to any of the men in my family to call a “professional” for help when it was even remotely possible to figure it out yourself. Specialists were called as a last resort, when all else had failed. You only pay for them as a penance after you’ve already spent a fortune with the wrong tools or to fix a real doozy of a mess.

As a result, a large part of our “leisure” time in life has been spent putting in sprinkler systems, landscaping yards, mowing lawns, building or remodeling houses, painting walls, and “fixing stuff.” If there were “frequent driver miles” awarded for trips to Home Depot we would have accumulated enough by now to travel anywhere in the world for free. But, alas, I think my husband would rather stay at home and build something with his own two hands.

After all these years I’ve discovered some interesting rules in regard to the DO IT YOURSELF LIFE:

1. The number of trips to Home Depot it takes to complete a project is directly disproportionate to the size of the project. For example, what should be a 15 minute repair on your sprinkler system will turn into at least half a Saturday by the time you’ve run back and forth to the hardware store trying to locate and buy just the right part.

2. Plumbing breakdowns only happen when you have a house full of company who all need to use the bathroom at the same time. WARNING: Really big plumbing disasters can cause swearing in otherwise very well mannered people.

3. Toddlers are as good as terrorists when it comes to providing opportunities for improving your home repair skills. Don’t be fooled by their angelic little faces. They all came to earth knowing EXACTLY what to do with a roll of toilet paper, a toilet, and a few moments of unsupervised time……and they can do it FAST! Before you know it people will be running every which way in panic and you will get to try your hand at taking up carpeting, repainting walls, and other delightful pastimes. It will be enough to make you wonder why you ever had kids. WARNING: They can be deadly with crayons, scissors and Elmer’s glue as well!

4. In hindsight, the cost of rented equipment, time, and frustration will almost always be more than the cost of hiring a Professional. But then, what’s the fun in that?

5. If a live chipmunk is caught in your furnace pipe, it will cease to function.

6. If a live skunk is caught in anything, your whole house might cease to function. It won’t smell very good either!

7. Freshly oiled linseed rags mixed with a few dried leaves and a little horse manure in a sealed garbage can will create quite a fire! It will also make the fire chief wonder if you are absent minded…..or an arsonist.

8. If you want to bury a trampoline don’t necessarily believe it when Blue Stakes tells you there are no power lines under the area to be dug!

9. A rented backhoe in your driveway can make the neighbors a little uneasy after a major power outage the week before when you rented one.

10. Ceiling sheet rock, from the floor below, is a very fragile surface to walk on unless you have superpowers!

11. Old septic tanks can make life interesting.

12. Squirrels and power lines don’t always mix. If you hear a loud snap just as you are heading out of town on vacation for a week, don’t expect anything in your freezer to still be frozen when you return.

13. You will only locate the right tool for the job, after you have given up looking and bought another one.

14. The right tool for the job at hand is the one your brother in law borrowed last weekend and never returned.

15. The local hospital emergency room makes half its profits from DO IT YOURSELFERS!

16. If you see the man of your house carrying a sledgehammer, renting a jackhammer, or coming home from work on a rented backhoe…..your life is about to change forever!

17. If the man of your house buys a tractor….your life already has changed forever!

18. The money you saved remodeling your own house can be used for pay for chiropractic visits, emergency room co-pays, and/or marriage counseling.

19. The paint color you need to match the wall that just got repaired was discontinued last week.

20. There is no such thing as a single home improvement project…..one project always leads to many others.

In spite of it all, if you are lucky enough to be married to a DO IT YOURSELFER, you are lucky indeed! Life will never be dull, and you can know that whatever comes your way you have someone who can “figure it out!” I wouldn’t have it any other way.