Home Repairs Comedy

Here’s how my attempt at home repairs went while Bo was gone in Africa for 3 weeks. These stories are all from the past 3 weeks but I couldn’t post them because Bo had no idea I was doing any of this while he was gone. Hopefully he’ll never leave again or if he does, we’ll have the money to hire someone who can do this CORRECTLY!

Painting:

Here’s the funny story of attempting to paint. I had a gift card to home depot AND walmart and didn’t want to spend money out of the family budget to pay for painting since there was no money in there and Bo didn’t know I was doing this. I figured I’d use my walmart card to purchase the supplies and use the home depot card to buy the paint. (mistake #1). So I get the roller kit with all the needed stuff from walmart and go buy the paint from home depot. Did this on a friday. Got home late friday night and was motivated so I taped everything off (all the trim/baseboards/etc) and decide to start painting at like 10pm. I went to dump the NAVY BLUE paint into the paint pan I bought at walmart and the whole corner was cracked out of it… the paint would have just run straight through onto the floor. Had to wait until saturday to go buy good paint pans at Home Depot. I got up saturday morning, went to Home Depot, bought the good paint trays and went back home to paint. It was so nice outside, I decided to mow the lawn instead and mowed 90% of the lawn until the mower ran out of gas. Bummer. Put that away and decided to go BACK to Home Depot (3rd time in less than 12 hours now) to buy the edging for the yard I wanted to install… to make a nice border between the rocks and the grass so the grass doesn’t grow up into the rocks. Wasted a few hours out back digging holes in the yard and made NO progress. Gave up on that and went inside to eat. Ate food, decided to give the edging 1 more try and went back outside for a couple hours and tried again and ruined more of the yard and didn’t get anywhere with that, decided to quit until i had some guy available to help me dig the 30 foot trench. Went back inside to paint…. poured the navy blue paint into the pan and finally started painting! about 5 min into it, I realized I was painting the WRONG WALL!!!! (Mistake #2). Navy blue paint on the wrong wall… UGHHHHHHH! … move over to the correct wall and start over. Paint the whole thing and run out of paint with about a 2’x2′ section left (cuz that amount of paint was on the wrong wall, it would have been perfect had I not done that)..,. so I’m pressing REALLY hard with the roller trying to stretch the paint out to cover that little square and the roller snaps in half (DAMN WALMART!!!!) (Mistake #3). The roller flies OVER MY HEAD and lands on the carpeted floor behind me. I only laid plastic out about 2 feet from the wall, not expecting to throw paint backwards over my head. :/ So the roller now snapped in half with the navy blue paint on it is laying on our white carpet behind me. Fantastic. BACK TO HOME DEPOT (4th time in less than 24 hours) to get paint remover and a new roller. Come back home, clean up MOST of the mess, finish up and go to bed. Sunday after church I go rip the tape off the trim and VIOLA! the trim is BLUE! (Mistake #4). Paint soaked all through the tape onto the trim… fantastic. The places where it did not soak through the tape it ripped chunks of paint off the wall so now the wall is uneven with beige chunks and blue trim. I decided to just rip the trim off the wall (mistake #5) to clean it up and paint behind it. Bad idea. Took me almost the next week to clean the trim and paint behind it and there are large holes now gouged out of the wall where I used a screw driver/butter knife/paint mixer/hammer to try to rip the trim from the wall. (Mistake #6). That is my story of trying to paint ONE wall. I have 3 left. please pray for me. :)

TV Wall Mount:

Bo wanted to get the motorized wall mount for his flat screen tv to hang on the wall. Lucky for him, I catered to his desires while he was gone in Africa because I missed him and decided to buy it and install it for him. Bought it at Costco and brought it home. Our friends came over to help me install it. It didn’t take that long, got it BOLTED into the studs and hung on the wall. Hang the tv and turn it on to test it out! Hit the remote and hear “click” and that’s it. No motor running, nothing moving (the tv is supposed to move and tilt forward). again, “click” again, “click” … NOTHING. Grrrrr. Troubleshoot it as best we can and decide the motor is shot. Fantastic. I even called vizio for tech support to see if we maybe missed a switch or something because this thing is BRAND NEW, it should be working. Well vizio does not have tech support for their wall mounts, only for the tv’s. there is NO support for the wall mounts, they tell me to contact the store where I purchased it from and ask them. Yeah, right, Costco is going to have tech support for me?? Doubtful. So, friends come back over a 2nd time… we UNinstall the whole thing, pack it back up in the box and I return it to the store the next day. re-purchase a new one, friends come back over a 3rd time and REinstall it and it finally works this time! WOO HOO! 1 project COMPLETE!!

Edging:

I wanted to edge the yard … between the rocks and grass because the grass is growing up into the rocks so at one of my MANY trips to Home Depot over the weekend I purchased the black rolled up edging stuff. Saturday I tried to dig the trench. It needed to be about 4″ deep x 1″ wide for 30 feet long. I dug holes and made a mess. Quit and went inside for dinner. Got powered up and decided to give it another try. Used my shovel, dug more holes, used my step on edging tool thing and got no where, used a small hand shovel and dug more holes. Gave up. Left everything out in the backyard for a week. Attended a wedding on Saturday and came home that evening and it was all gone… INSTALLED!!!! Our friends (who have been over multiple times to help me already while Bo is gone) came and magically completed it for me while I was gone! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!