home improvement

I'm no handy man. I didn't grow up in a family that did a lot of jobs around the house. My parents did some small things from time to time, but as a whole, they never really did much to the homes we lived in. There is really only one thing I remember them doing - when I was a kid they had to repair the floor under the toilet because of water damage to it, but that's really the only thing I can remember.

Well, being a homeowner for the past 1 1/2 years has forced me to do handy man/ DIY type stuff. I'm really not thrilled (to say the least) to have to do things like this. One reason is that I really don't feel competent doing them. Stemming from this, I always feel like I'm going to do more damage than repair. I am more like Tim 'the Toolman' Taylor (Home Improvement the TV show) than Bob Villa (formerly of This Old House). I'm afraid I'll make a huge whole in the wall or break a pipe or electrocute myself. So I'm hesitant to jump into any home projects.

But after a 1 1/2 years in our house and after 1 1/2 years of us saying we need to trade our huge water guzzling toilets for newer more efficient ones, I finally made the plunge. I did the upstairs toilet 5 or 6 weeks ago and it wasn't too bad. It only took me 2 1/2 hours, which for never having done it before and not knowing what I was doing, was not too bad (or at least I think so).

Having lots of confidence from having done the first toilet, I set my mind to replace the basement toilet. And it only took me a little over a week to get it installed. Yes, a week. Not an hour, not 2 hours, not even five hours, but more than a week. There were so many issues with removing the old toilet. And once I got it up, there quickly arose many issues with getting the new one in. Whoever installed the old one took a lot of short cuts which meant I couldn't just take the old one out and put the new one in. It was a lot of stress and hassle to figure out what needed to be done and then to execute the correct course of action.

I won't go into all the details. In fact I'm going to try really hard to repress the whole experience. I'm going to shove it down deep inside, deep down in a place where it can never bother me again. I'm joking. Well mostly joking. Well maybe I'm joking a little and the rest is mostly serious. I am really glad that the toilet is installed and I will never have to do it again. Until we get another house which has an old toilet. Please no, just please no... And now I've got a ceiling fan to install in Adelle's room. But I've told Jo that once the fan is done, I'm done with home improvements for a while.

In other news, we got a minivan. I never thought I'd be excited about a minivan. But we got a cool one. Its a Mazda MPV which is described as 'the sports car of minivans.' But who am I kidding, its still a minivan.