Girls Can Be Handy Too


 

These jobs aren't a big deal but they're big to me because I almost never do odd jobs around the house (Honeeeey... can you fix the door? Honeeeey... can you change the lightbulb? Honeeeeey... can you lift the heavy thing?). This is partly based on the fact that Gary is already good at these things because he's done them all before, and partly because I'm a bit lazy at manual labour, and partly because girls often aren't encouraged or expected to do things like this. Dumb.

Anyway, I'm taking charge of lots of little jobs that require not a lot of prior expertise and I'm finding them a good way to build my efficiency with skills that will come in handy for the bigger stuff, like learning how to use the power drill, measuring twice and cutting once, and getting used to jobs that have cobwebs nearby. I'm getting more confident and getting better at problem solving and taking risks.

Here is a list of all my finest accomplishments:

Door Handle
The bedroom door wouldn't close because the latch wasn't clicking into place due to the strikeplate (google it) being... well, not being there at all. I ended up cutting a piece of metal to size to use as a crappy, in-the-meantime strikeplate. I had to pre-drill holes into the metal, then screw it into the door so that when the door closed the latch would slide against it and click in. Hooray, we have a closing door!

   

 Cost: $0
Time taken: 30 minutes
Tools: Drill, screws, hacksaw, willpower.

Man Hole Cover
We have a manhole that didn't have a cover and was either letting a draught in or letting all the warm air out... either way, it had to be covered. Gary drew me a cross-section of what is normally in a man hole, then I went up the ladder and stuck my head in it to see if it was the same. If you've seen the movie Arachnophobia like I have then you'll understand why this was the hardest thing I'll ever have to do. I measure the hole then found a piece of wood that was not doing much and used a shark saw (I think the fancy name might be 'hand saw' but mine has a picture of a shark on the packet so shark saw it is) to cut it slightly larger than the hole, and so that it would sit on the lip of the hole. I then wrote a clever joke on it to be discovered at some future time, Jumanji-style, and popped it into the ceiling, and I didn't even have one spider crawl in or out of my nose.

   
Cost: $0
Time taken: 30 minutes plus a lot of time stopping to complain about how boring sawing is
Tools: Shark saw.

Front Door Seal
All manner of insects, beasts and floods could fit through the space under our front door. At some point, someone must have decided that a door that fits the door frame is simply unacceptable, and needs to be adjusted so that there could be at least an inch of space underneath, presumably to let in snakes and burglars in.

I spent (what was supposed to be 1 hour, and ended up being) 4 hours attaching a door seal to the front door. As I'm finding frequently, the instructions are on the packet and all I had to do was follow them and also google door-related vocab. It took a lot of doing and undoing then doing again to get it right and get it to a point where the door closed, and it also sealed.


Cost: $30
Time taken: 4 hours for a rookie
Tools: Electric screwdriver (power drill with a screwdriver bit), saw, measuring tape.


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