Labor Day 25: Learning to Do Home Repair

 

Working on the House and Forcing Myself to Learn 

Labor Day in 2025. Normally I’d go for a run to start off the day. I’m good about taking advantage of days where I’d normally work. Today is a free day. But I’ve wasted enough time this year sitting around and watching YouTube when I should’ve been fixing some eye sores in the house. I started yesterday. I bought a ceiling fan at Lowes, then tried to install it. Next I took off the old model, the ones that’s developed an irritating hum. Looked up in the ceiling where the junction box should be. I’m still not sure what it is. It’s a junction box of sorts, I guess. But it looks nothing like the ones in the online tutorials. My house is old (1941) so there’s that. It’s not uncommon to take off a wall plate and stare with confusion at what sits inside.

Even if the old piece that worked just fine with the old fan is operational, the bracket for the fan doesn’t line up. The antique in the ceiling needs to be replaced. It’s a little loose anyway. That makes me think it might have been the problem with the low hum fan in the first place. Especially if the hum is from a slight vibration and not the motor, we have the culprit. Either way it has to go. I crawled up in the attic to get a better look between the 2 x 4s. The attic crawl space over my bedroom isn’t even big enough to be called a crawl space. Not to mention it’s covered with spray in foam. I can’t get back in there. I decided right then I would call an electrician. They might be able to do it from the bedroom by cutting a wider hole in the ceiling and yanking out the old unit.

I’m in new territory here so I’ll wait.

Being in the attic for a brief time made me realize how awful the condition of the hatch door is. It’s never been in great shape. I don’t have one of those handy fold-down ladders and I generally avoid going up there as much as possible. But the hatch is  another one of those projects, like the fan, that I’ve put off for too many years. So here we are, Labor Day and I head off to Lowes to buy a lightweight hatch and a patch kit for some drywall. I didn’t really know what to use. Regular plywood is too heavy. The associate helped me find a ¼ inch thick plywood and cut it to my specs. It nearly fit. I had to trim about a half an inch off the sides in a half ass way. I used a jigsaw because I didn’t have a circular saw. It looks as bad as you can imagine, but it fits.

I also stuck a piece of foam insulator to the top (attic side). I’m not sure how well this will work yet. None of these projects are as easy as they play out in your head. But I’ve learned to expect this and just go with it. Not that my attitude is chill, far from it. But I do expect delays and problems. Some of that is living in an old house and retrofitting here and there. I won’t pretend I work on the house all the time either. I’m more of yard guy, as I’ve detailed many times. Landscaping is a soothing balm for my soul where home repair, a festering sore. Painting might be the one exception. Not because I love to paint, but there isn’t a lot that can go wrong. Don’t like the color, buy new paint. Spill on the floor, clean it up. Painting is the kind of house work I can do without help.

And speaking of paint, I slapped on 3 coats of primer to my new wood hatch door after I stuck the insulation on. Even without doing the project I really wanted, I still managed a successful day of projects. The patch kit was for a hole in the ceiling near the hatch. I slapped on a patch and covered it with compound. Again, we’ll see how it holds. I’m not sure why it matters whether or not I got anything done. It’s Labor Day after all…who cares if you sit down and watch TV or sleep in late? Maybe because home repair stuff is always so tedious to me, I take every opportunity to brag about the smallest wins. Well maybe humble brag at least. I’m not exactly showing my work or telling you how expert the work was. Whenever I take on some new home project I go through this unhealthy self-criticism about my lack of knowledge. But the only way to get increase knowledge is to work on the house more often.

As I’ve stated however, I loathe it. I’d rather spend all day cutting grass and digging holes in the yard than 1 hour trying to do any type of house repair.  But even mildly successful work builds just enough confidence to try again.

Or maybe just wait till next year.