Handyman Dan

Buying a house is a commitment. Everyone knows that. But what does it really mean?

It means always trying to save a buck everywhere you spend. It means discovering new problems everywhere you look. It means trips to Home Depot. It means another trip to Home Depot to return the thing you just bought to get the next size up. Most of all, it means learning how to fix stuff and do things yourself.

These first few photos are the before. Nothing too exciting but I know that I’ll be stoked in a few years looking back at this post to see them here. I imagine that much will have changed by then. Note the metal conduit running from the cement near the door. The switch wasn’t working and the light fixture was pretty shit.

We thought about opening up the cement to feed the electrical closer to the wall. But that would have meant cutting into the foundation wall to gain a few inches. No thanks.

For whatever reason, the previous occupants thought that this square of plywood nailed to a frame on the wall was a good idea. It meant that the door wouldn’t open all the way among other things. It became my temporary tool storage but the weight of it all began to sag the shelf. This needs to go ASAP.

When we moved from Signal Hill, we did a pretty good job of purging our things and thinning out the garage. This is where we landed. It needs to get about 20-30% slimmer from here. The washer eventually went to another home and the plan was to stack everything along the way on one side.

I never considered myself handy

Growing up, I was an indoorsy kid. I spent my time playing video games and poking around on a computer. My parents were always super handy. If you’ve ever been to their house, you know what I mean. I grew up around a garage full of tools and knowledgable parents but I never so much as picked up a screwdriver in my teens. I just wasn’t interested.

Fast forward to today, Caitlyn and I are the proud owners of a 2 bedroom house built in 1947. Technically, we could try to qualify for the Mills Act if we did a few things to the front of the house.

Ever since we bought the place, our weekends have been filled with fixing the place up and taking care of it. I can say that I’ve been inside, on top and underneath the house. It’s crazy now going to Home Depot, instead of a bunch of random materials, I see a world of possibilities. I can’t unsee it.

Over Spring Break this year, money was a little tight as we are still adjusting to our mortgage payment. This means that there wasn’t a fancy camping vacation planned but instead a week of good old fashioned work around the house.

Lucky for me, both my parents are semi retired now, so they came over to help out and drop some knowledge on our unexperienced brains. The main things we wanted to tackle was expanding the electricity in the garage and removing a root near our back door. The entire garage is a work in progress.

In the morning before my parents came over, I climbed the ladder and started to demo a few remnants in the garage including some studs that were stuck in the ceiling where a wall once stood. I couldn’t get behind the screws that held them in so I started to bounce on them and they began to loosen and come down. As I’m sure that many men feel happens to them, as soon as my wife came over to see how things were going, there was one stud that wouldn’t budge. As I used the crow bar to pry it off just a little more, a loud rack emanated from the joist along this knot in the wood. Caitlyn looked at me and frowned. Yep, I’m destroying the garage with reckless abandon. What a start to the day.

My Dad in his element. He just shows up and gets to work.

I couldn’t help but notice the cool shadows coming from the pergola over the spread of tools. I always liked the way electrical tools looked. Sometimes I think about my brief interest in becoming an electrician in my early twenties.

My Dad and I worked on the wiring while my Mom and Caitlyn used a reciprocating saw to tear up the roots. I always admired how my mom never shied away from working with her hands. More recently, she likes to remind me of her latest purchase, a double bevel miter saw which she calls her “big mutha”. Seriously, she’s not afraid to get dirty, ever.

Aside from little tips and tricks that I picked up from my Dad when working with electricity, it was just plain fun to spend time with them. They’ve always be do-it-yourselfers, so it was only natural that they wanted to come over and fix some shit. From the funny sayings that come from my mother to the way that seems to always eavesdrop on her, we were laughing throughout the entire day. I really enjoy hanging out with them and learning what I can from their years of experience. Buying this place wasn’t just purchasing a place to live but a whole new hobby and outlook on how I live and spend money. I think that is home buying’s greatest gift.

Learning from the boss. This was my viewpoint for most of the day. Just trying to soak it all in.

Here you can see the new external conduit on the face of the garage. The plan was to run an outlet into the top left corner that we could plug bistro lights into and control with the switch. We would stick a lighting fixture in the center that would be motion activated and the right side of the T would feel power into the garage near the bench.

Surprisingly, electrical wire is pretty dense and stiff. Much stiffer than I thought. I mean, it does need to run 120 volts of power. I still don’t fully understand how my Dad rigged it up here. The power was being fed into the switch from the bottom, then sending always on power straight through the back and upward. Also the switch was set to control just one of the outlets above it while leaving the rest on continuously. Looking at it now, I think this set up was the wrong set up as we had to open it up and fix something later that day. There’s a green ground wire running into the wire nut on the left side that doesn’t make sense. It’s still magic to me.

Caitlyn and my Mom working on the huge root near the back door. Eventually, we want to pour concrete and wrap the first step around where the root was.
My Mom blushes in her yard work glow. She probably spend more time outside than inside at this point.

The washed root drying in the sun while Carter investigates the bugs in the grass. I can get all deep and say the root is a metaphor for decluttering things in your life no matter how deeply it sits. But we all know that’s a bunch of bullshit.

My tool bench is starting to take shape. We still need to handle the windows which we busted out a few days after this photo. The outlets you see are the result of that top right side of the T outside feeding into the garage. It provided two outlets for the bench and ran along the ceiling to power the door opener.

Soon enough, the garage will take shape and be the little workshop/storage space that we intend. For now, I’ll bask in the warm 4000K glow of our newly installed LED’s.

I never considered myself handy

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