Humor

Home Repair

By on • ( 46 Comments )

You can do anything with one of these.

Most home repair jobs can be handled without hiring professional help. All it requires is a certain attitude. First you have to believe in your ability to accomplish a somewhat complex task. You must also be willing to risk making a problem worse rather than better, because that will occasionally happen. Though it’s rare. And you must maintain a level head, so that you can assess the repair situation, and any contingencies that may arise, in a logical, common sense manner.

For example, our bathroom had a minor plumbing issue. Water would leak out the faucet handles of the shower whenever the faucets were opened. No big deal, but after a while I got tired of it and decided to fix this problem.

I logically and correctly assessed that the compression washers and valve seats in the faucet valve stems required replacement. Pretty easy job. And I’d done this before, so I knew how to fix it.

I started with the hot water side, on the left. I got the old faucet seat out with a bit of a yank (it was in there pretty tight). Then I put the pipe dope on the new one, and confidently inserted it into the pipe head and turned the nifty little seat wrench I had just purchased from Home Depot.

But it wouldn’t thread into place. I tried and tried for about 15 minutes, but I just couldn’t seem to get it onto the pipe threads in the exact proper position, so that it would start to screw in.

It’s a must to remain level-headed and logical in these situations. So I attempted to keep my cool while assessing the situation.

The shower wall on the left, and the cold water faucet handle on the right were complicating things, because they were getting in the way of my seat wrench, forcing me to go about a third of a turn, then pull the seat wrench out, reposition it, and put it back in.

This short turning radius was frustrating. But after I calmed down and my hands stopped trembling, I decided I’d have to pull the cold water faucet out, so that I could get close to a full 360 degree revolving bite on the seat wrench, and get that dilly of a faucet seat threaded into place.

But the screw on the faucet handle was frozen. I struggled with it, while a few feelings of apoplexy kind of popped through my skull. Finally, after several cerebral hemorrages, I stripped the head of the fucking screw. So then I had to spend the next goddamned hour drilling the asshole screw out, and ruining the friggin’ valve stem in the process.

But after much drilling and swearing I finally got the muther-fucking stubborn, shithead, ass-wad valve stem out, and at last had a nearly full circular muther-fucking swing available for installing the goddamned, muther-ass, stupid, pissy-assed-bastard hot water side faucet seat.

With this near full-freedom swing, blazing eyes, and a breath of desperate hope in my flaring nostrils, I attempted to thread this shitty-ass faucet seat one more fucking time. But wouldn’t you know? I still couldn’t get the cocksucking, ballbusting, jackass, stupid, damned son-of-a-bitch to go in!!!

I stormed away. Stomped into my bedroom. Closed (slammed) the door. Slapped my head a bunch of times. Called every plumber who ever invented plumbing a dumb-assed mother-fucking son-of-a-bitch.

But after a bit I finally calmed down. And then an idea occurred to me. What would happen if I tried turning the seat wrench clockwise, rather than counter-clockwise?

So I gave that little ingenious trick a try.

Instant success.

And so you see, I can handle home repair jobs. I don’t need professional help.

Categories: Humor

46 replies »

  3. I’m glad that you don’t need professional help “for home repairs.” Those faucets can be annoying. Hubby used to do those types of repairs, until he injured his neck in a car accident. Now it’s just too painful to be crawling under the sink/tub/whatever, so we call in a plumber. Hubby did try to remove the really, really old showerhead when we moved into our new house, but couldn’t get it free. When the plumbers came to install the bathtub overfit, they simply cut the showerhead pipe off and installed a new one a little lower (the original was, I swear, about 7 feet up the wall). It was well worth the cost.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  9. Ahaha! You might need psychological help after all that! As you know we recently finished renos. DIY reno’s. I know exactly how you feel. Just don’t slap your head too many times, as you don’t want brain damage to go with the reno damage. Then you’d have to call a neuro in and we all know how costly and useless that is.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    • Well said. The time factor is always deceiving. Just today I tried to disconnect a garden hose. About a 30 second job, normally. But due to some unforeseen circumstances I’m going to have to do some digging, so I can remove the ABS pipe protecting sleeve and, and, ah shit, it’s a long story. But my 30 second job is now at least a 30 minute project.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  18. The only difference between us? I would have never tried to turn it the other way… I be standing there when my wife walked up and unscrewed it in 10 seconds. Ohh, and I would have started cussing a lot sooner.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I take it handyman work is not your strong suit. I’ve perfected the skills enough to usually keep my tantrums at bay for about the first 15 minutes. Not bragging, though. Just sayin’.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

Go ahead, blurt it out:

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.