See what I did there?
Last night we added one more skill to our ever-expanding list of DIY capabilities! Plumbing.
Even though we’ve dabbled in plumbing before… we’ve replaced garbage disposals, faucets, drains and last spring our water heater tank crapped out on us (oh the puns in this post!). I woke up one Thursday morning to enjoy my daily steamy shower, only to be blessed with what felt like glacial run-off coming out of our shower head.
After consulting Tony the Tiger (my dad, the go-to for all home related questions), he felt confident we’d be capable of replacing it on our own. So after work that night, we rolled up our sleeves and plunged in.
Long story short: They didn’t make tanks like our old one any more. So we actually had to cut, rearrange and weld new copper water pipes to feed the water supply into the water tank. After about 10 trips to a few different hardware stores, a whole weekend without water (every time we turned the main back on, the pipes to the water heater leaked profusely), that Sunday night around 7pm (after a gas leak scare) we finally had hot water. Whew!
And yes, we did shower that weekend. My BFFs Amanda and Bryon were kind enough to allow us to shower at their place! Thanks guys!
Even tho the whole hot water tank situation really pissed us off at the time, we were kind of glad to have the opportunity to learn to do something new, and that we saved quite a bit of money doing it ourselves. There’s just something fulfilling in brushing off the dust at the end and admiring your handy work.
So when we finally got fed up with our eternally slow-dripping wall-hung toilet last night, we rolled up our sleeves again and realized that you don’t always have to be a plumber *or a pro* to be able to fix something. Luckily, it all boiled down to some rusty screws, deteriorated seals and a not-fully-tightened water connection. We were thrilled that it didn’t end up being something we had to call in a professional for and spend an arm and a leg to have replaced. No butt crack required! Wooo!
But there are still A LOT of things that we’re still petrified to do or just simply refuse to do ourselves. Mostly electrical or things that require special equipment.
There are also a lot of things that we have ALREADY done and can do relatively efficiently. Like upholstery, hanging siding, painting, drywalling, a lot of automotive stuff… (Travis is the automotive guy, I try to help and learn what and where I can.) We’ve replaced everything from brakes, to two fuel pumps (ugh both required dropping the tank, one in the blistering summer heat, and one in the frigid arctic winter – and we don’t have a garage). We put my completely deer-wrecked Sunfire back together with Frankenstein parts (new hood, doors, headlights etc…) We completely rebuilt our first motorcycle, a 1983 Honda Nighthawk and did a LOT of work on our second ’99 Yamaha Vstar… We rehabbed a pop-up camper, rebuilt a ski boat from scratch without anything but the hull! (Which we traded for our Vstar!)
I could go on, but you get the idea!
Anyway, the point is we don’t really have any real training on any of this stuff. We just kind of have had to do a lot of it, mostly to save some money. I guess we’ve always been into “DIY” and just didn’t realize it. There’s almost always something going on around our house, I’m just really stoked that we’re finally getting around to doing all this fun stuff IN the house!
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