Not your ordinary handiman

December 11, 2023 5:20 AM

"I call myself a part-time autodidact handyman, a playful term to distract folks from the fact that, on paper at least, I have no business whatsoever working on their house. I have a decent education in theology and literature, but zero official qualifications for building a deck or plumbing a kitchen sink or adding lights to an entryway."
posted by kmt (27 comments total)

I suppose I, too, am an autodidact handyman. It comes with owning a house. I employ more enthusiasm than skill, and I guess everything I do takes twice as long as a professional would need. But this year I re-screened my windows, replacing the old, damaged screens with new material. I can now speak confidently about splines, thank you very much. And I installed a new drip irrigation system around the back yard, to conserve water. It took a couple of tries and yeah, yeah, a professional would have done better. But there's a sense of confidence that comes with looking out of my (re-screened) window at the (nicely irrigated) back yard.

This morning I noticed a lizard preening in the sun on a rock in my garden, like he was the Lion King. I guess that's how I look, comical but still proud.
posted by SPrintF at 7:08 AM on December 11, 2023 [7 favorites]

Plenty of people who actually get paid for being a handyman are such.

And doing repairs on owner occupied homes have work that reflects such. Its one thing where the plumbing lacks a proper vent stack, another where the installed shower stall has no actual underfloor and the flexing of plastic caused it to crack and that is why the shower leaked.
posted by rough ashlar at 7:26 AM on December 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

Metafilter: more enthusiasm than skill
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 9:18 AM on December 11, 2023 [10 favorites]

"Autodidact isn’t quite right, though, because for years I worked as a laborer alongside experienced, qualified, and certified tradespeople: carpenters, bricklayers, a plumber, an electrician, and a glazier, all of which constituted a kind of informal apprenticeship in the general principles of building and construction."

There's a lot to be said for apprenticeships, whether formal or informal, especially in a world where a college degree is required for such critical jobs as [checks notes] representing the Oscar Mayer corporation and its fine meat products by driving the iconic Wienermobile.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 9:29 AM on December 11, 2023 [6 favorites]

It also helps to know someone who's qualified and certified in case any...uh...accidents happen, like when you go to replace a faucet (a pretty easy thing that everyone can/should be able to do!) and the entire stop twists off in your hand, so to halt the gushing water you try turning off the main valve which then starts leaking from the stem because it hasn't been closed in forty years.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:40 AM on December 11, 2023 [5 favorites]

One of the most useful things that I've learned is that you should be able to fix/replace anything outside the walls yourself, outside of big things like an HVAC system. Doing that (of course, knowing all the necessary safety stuff, such as shutting off power to electrical stuff first and then being able to test to make sure that the power is off to the correct circuit) helps build confidence for bigger/more complicated jobs.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:45 AM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

Having nearly been electrocuted by a previous owner's "handyman special" wiring job, my feelings on this are mixed. Yay for a careful and ethical handyman, but I still want licensed professionals whenever possible.
posted by emjaybee at 9:59 AM on December 11, 2023 [6 favorites]

If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you qualified and certified in case any...uh...accidents happen.
posted by AlSweigart at 10:29 AM on December 11, 2023 [6 favorites]

That was fabulous. It's insightful, well written. Despite the title... it's more about his relationships with the rest of the world. Very well done.
posted by dfm500 at 10:35 AM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

And I really liked the art.
posted by dfm500 at 10:40 AM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

agreed home ownership (especially an old house) launches you into this lifestyle. Mr Supermedusa and I laid bricks after watching a few how-to videos. it came out pretty good!
posted by supermedusa at 11:52 AM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

I have a decent education in theology and literature, but zero official qualifications for building

There’s a neat ironic symmetry here since Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 12:22 PM on December 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

The observation that a person seeking a repair is vulnerable in so many ways is one that I have thought about so many times. My childhood was spent in a somewhat new but also somewhat poorly-constructed house, and every repair was a financial disaster for my parents. Nothing ever got fixed unless it was on fire or about to be, or otherwise just absolutely essential for living. My mother never got out of that mindset, even after she moved into a nicer home and began making decent wages. There is so much shame in a thing that breaks, somehow, at least when you own it.

I have no idea what certifications the people my landlord hires for a variety of repairs may or may not have. I do know that they seem to show up very promptly but then every repair turns into a long saga that has me fearing for everyone's lives and the structural integrity of the apartment. Whether that is due to the repair people, the age of the building, or the jankiness of prior installations or repairs, I don't know enough to say. The repair folks are all unfailingly kind, as well, though, and if it happens that that is my landlord's primary criterion, well, I think that's okay by me.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:59 PM on December 11, 2023 [5 favorites]

I could mend nets. Thatch a roof. Build stairs. Make a basket from reeds. Splint the leg of a cow. Cut turf. Build a wall. Go three rounds with Joe in the ring Da put up in the barn. I could dance sets. Read the sky. Make a barrel for mackerel. Mend roads. Make a boat. Stuff a saddle. Put a wheel on a cart. Strike a deal. Make a field. Work the swarth turner, the float and the thresher. I could read the sea. Shoot straight. Make a shoe. Shear sheep. Remember poems. Set potatoes. Plough and harrow. Read the wind. Tend bees. Bind wyndes. Make a coffin. Take a drink. I could frighten you with stories. I knew the song to sing to a cow when milking. I could play twenty-seven tunes on my accordion.

That's the entirety of Chapter 9 in I could read the sky [1997] by Timothy O'Grady (words) and Steve Pyke (pics).
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:02 PM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

Well anyway I can take a drink, and I have a rich repertoire of songs I sing to the dog as we're walking.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 2:50 PM on December 11, 2023

I suppose I, too, am an autodidact handyman. It comes with owning a house.

Me too, and in the old days, Sears would just send you a house and you could just build it. Yeah you probably needed help. Some of them are still standing to this day. They actually didn't sell many of them - 75,000 over 35 years. They weren't a significant percentage of homes built or sold. But still people could do it.

We imagine that building homes is super complex and dangerous for the layperson and in some ways it is. But it honestly hasn't changed that much for single family homes since the Sears days.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:04 PM on December 11, 2023

I thought the middle part where the writer says " I am not an entrepreneur, an adventurer, or a risk-taker." kind of sad, while juxtapositioning that against the mental health problems vs "My kids get regular doses of “No limits!” and “You can be whatever you want!” in school, and I resent it because it simply isn’t true."

Dude, you are an entrepreneur, and adventurer, and a risk taker. You are all of those things. You are also letting your mental health limitations cloud your children's future without even implying the same mental health issues apply to them.

Also schools telling children they can be whatever they want is most assuredly true, but the work/luck side of that is unfortunately implied, and most people don't want to do the work and would rather be moderately comfortable, which is also fine.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:22 PM on December 11, 2023

so to halt the gushing water you try turning off the main valve which then starts leaking from the stem because it hasn't been closed in forty years.

This is where drinking with one of your professors pays off. She'd point out the price difference between a ball valve and the various twist valves and then how much longer the ball valve would last VS the rubber rotting out in the various twist type valves. She'd rant about the value of copper pipes for the anti microbial properties along with 60+ years of live VS 10-20 claimed life of the then new plastic pipes. The rants about using a mechanical water hammer arrestor would then be followed about how well they work with tales of the prison design work she'd done. Because prisoners have nothing better to do than turn on and off a fixture to create water hammer. Along with how few home owners would drain lines enough to get air back into the cheaper air style and how the air in it would dissolve into the water making them useless in the future. Then compare the prices of the material and the labor. And the advise on old iron pipes - treat it as a replace everything job. Because that is how it is gonna go - the pipes will break apart as you try and twist/untwist them. She liked brass. Myself, I'd pick a nice stainless steel for the main intake valve. At this point you might ask why the $2 more expensive valve isn't used but the answer is $2 X all the things the better product isn't used means less money in the pockets of the builder/repair person.

If one goes and buys (or has bought for you) one of the 'congrats! You have a home' books they point out how you should at least once a year go and turn each valve on and off. Even the shitty butterfly valves on the toilet. (Be sure you have a 2nd person who can shut off the already tested main WRT those damn butterfly valves)

And keep this in mind, when you go to sell the home inspector or buyer may just do that valve twisting so best to consider doing that and replacing whatever rubber seals/packing material the valve has before listing.

As for what 'non professionals' can do, a chem prof used his sawmill rig to cut pine on family land to make the 2 by floor joists and the construction labor was teens, an automechanic, a gal who had part of a nursing degree, a truck driver, a guy who made tires and later was in elected office. The electrical and plumbing was the same teen and mechanic which was fine by the state as it was labor by the owner occupants.
posted by rough ashlar at 3:38 PM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

building a deck or plumbing a kitchen sink or adding lights to an entryway

All of them illegal to do here in Australia without registration, which normally won't be possible without qualifications. (Building a deck is sometimes a bit grey, but you probably need a building permit, which you mostly won't get without being a registered builder.)

At a theoretical level I disagree with the slide to licensing for every little thing, we're creating a nation of people that have no idea how anything works, but for every handyperson that does a good job there's ten people that have five beers on a Sunday afternoon and just kinda give it a crack. I've worked on enough properties that have been subject to the latter that I can see the point.
posted by deadwax at 4:40 PM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

The few times that I have hired a handyman as described in this article it went down like this:

1. I tried to describe the problem as detailed as I could, but they weren't interested in my input because they obviously knew more than I did.
2. They gave me a quote that I knew would not be high enough, but since they weren't listening to me I said what the hell.
3. They completed the job, but it cost them way more than they expected it to.
4. They asked/strongly hinted at me giving them more money than I had originally agreed to.
5. I did not, because all of this could have been prevented if they listened to me in the first place.
6. I never worked with this handyman again, and I am glad.
posted by Quonab at 5:07 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Building a deck or plumbing a kitchen sink or adding lights to an entryway
All of them illegal to do here in Australia without registration
The first is something you can do with an 'owner-builder' permit, a kind of builder license allowing you to do anything from building a deck (which I am almost finished doing) to building a whole house (which I did quite a few years ago), as long as you own the home. You can do any small building jobs without government interference as long as the value of the work is under $11k (which doesn't buy you much). You can build a deck without any kind of permit as long as it's no more than 25 m² and no more than 1m off the ground. Such is the poor level of faith in owner-builders that you have to notify any prospective purchasers of the home of the scope of work done under an owner-builder permit for six years from when the permit was issued (and you can only get one license every six years). You can't legally plumb a sink or add new lights without a license, though.

We're definitely turning into a nation of people who can't do things around the house, I think. I occasionally look at new houses that are available and pine for the days when people bought a new house that was absolutely basic because that's what they could afford. Unlike today where every new home has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a double garage with floor coverings, window dressing, with driveway and landscaping all done. In the days when I was a young chap, you bought what you absolutely needed and got a bunch of mates around with a concrete mixer to pour your own driveway then spend the next few decades gradually adding rooms with the help of the neighbours. No wonder we have a housing crisis - we don't build any affordable houses!

Having spent the past few years gradually renovating our 1980s-built home, I am firmly of the view that the only response to 'they don't build 'em like they used to' is 'thank fuck for that' because if they still built houses the way they used to, people that can't fix and repair anything would be absolutely fucked.
posted by dg at 10:12 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yeah, my "mostly" above was carrying quite a bit of weight. Owner building is a thing but 99% of people don't go there. I've done it for myself and managed owner built jobs commercially (no dwellings) where there are fewer restrictions.

In the days when I was a young chap, you bought what you absolutely needed and got a bunch of mates around with a concrete mixer to pour your own driveway then spend the next few decades gradually adding rooms with the help of the neighbours.

The driveway was probably fine. The rest was 90% of the time a bucket of shit. Sorry but most of those 60's to 80's self done additions are a nightmare to maintain and sometimes a real problem to try and put right.
posted by deadwax at 2:41 AM on December 12, 2023

All of them illegal to do here in Australia without registration, which normally won't be possible without qualifications.

All illegal to do in the US as well, without permits at least (which in most cities require professional drawings).


Sorry but most of those 60's to 80's self done additions are a nightmare to maintain and sometimes a real problem to try and put right.

That's 100% true, but also extremely 'middle class' thinking. Like "This room isn't good enough for occupation because the floor is kinda wonky and it's leaky so it doesn't stay at the temperature I choose on my Nest at all times." is extremely middle class line of thought. Poor people live in worse houses than rich people because they are poor and can't afford to fix them correctly. But so many get the causation backwards, and say they "don't fix them correctly because they are poor and therefore dumb." and the fix is to not allow them to buy houses at all. I think everyone can see the problem with that.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:51 AM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

That's 100% true, but also extremely 'middle class' thinking. Like "This room isn't good enough for occupation because the floor is kinda wonky and it's leaky so it doesn't stay at the temperature I choose on my Nest at all times." is extremely middle class line of thought.

Whenever someone opened something up in my childhood home things like "jesus christ I can't believe you haven't had a fire" and "anyway this is full of mold because the subfloor wasn't correctly installed" tended to come up. Was that also too middle class?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:08 AM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

The driveway was probably fine. The rest was 90% of the time a bucket of shit. Sorry but most of those 60's to 80's self done additions are a nightmare to maintain and sometimes a real problem to try and put right.
It's definitely a thing where inexperienced people often do a poor job of building. But experienced and licensed people often do as well. Some of the things I've seen in rebuilding my home (a home professionally built in the '80s) make me wonder how it hasn't fallen down and fixing the work of 'professionals' has been a big part of my life for the past few years. I do think standards and mandatory inspections have improved the quality of homes and additions to homes over the last couple of decades, whether built by professionals or amateurs.

There's nothing middle-class about poor quality home 'improvements' and I've seen just as much shoddy building work on supposedly high-quality homes as on budget builds. In fact, people with lots of money are at least as likely to try and save a few bucks with sub-standard work that's out of sight.
posted by dg at 1:55 PM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

There's nothing middle-class about poor quality home 'improvements' and I've seen just as much shoddy building work on supposedly high-quality homes as on budget builds

I think the poster was saying that it's a "middle class" thing to complain about those poor-quality improvements, and therefore frivolous to want licensed and trained people working on houses.

But poor people don't want to live in leaky, crooked homes with exposed wiring any more than middle class people do. Shoddy repairs and additions aren't "good" just because middle class people can sometimes fix them at great expense before they render the house uninhabitable.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 2:44 PM on December 12, 2023

fixing the work of 'professionals' has been a big part of my life for the past few years

Mine too, I have some stories, but I have to have had minimum two beers to be able to tell them without ranting. In Victoria at least late 90's apartment builds seem to be a particular nadir, I think most likely because the move from council to private building surveying was botched. Thanks Mr Kennett. But even they didn't generally treat things like footings as optional, as you're likely to find a 70's Sunday afternoon special did.

But poor people don't want to live in leaky, crooked homes with exposed wiring any more than middle class people do.

And they are less likely to be able to be afford to fix them when they discover the sins the new paint that was put on for the auction is hiding. Which is completely legal, house buying here is 100% caveat emptor, with zero obligation to disclose anything.
posted by deadwax at 3:30 PM on December 12, 2023