Some of us have spent a lot of time with our hands down the drain, pulling the lid off the toilet, or crawling under the hood of an old car, but the rest of us sometimes need help. The thing is, most home repairs are pretty easy to do once you’ve done them a few times. Here are five tips to help you start making repairs around the house.
Start Small
Some of the easiest repairs to make around the house are simple tricks that can fix a problem in seconds. For example, if your toilet won’t stop running, you can take off the lid of the tank and look inside. Get close and check the runners if your sliding door keeps coming off its hinges. When you take the first small step toward home repair, you’ll see that it’s not all smoke and mirrors. Leave the harder things to mechanics and handymen, but try your hand at some of the easier things around your house.
Research
People usually think of a handyman as a rough genius who knows exactly what’s wrong or can figure out what’s wrong by hitting it with a big wrench. However, the internet has made these skills much easier to learn. Home repair and project channels are run by both experts and regular people. These channels give clear and easy-to-understand instructions for us non-experts. Many of them explain in detail how a certain piece of equipment works, which will help you fix it on your own the next time it breaks.
There is, of course, a lot of old writing about how to fix things, since this has been an important topic for hundreds of years. The detailed plans and explanations in these books will help you fix anything from homes to machines to cars.
Try not to take on more than you can handle.
After you’ve taken care of the basics, you can save a lot of money by moving on to bigger repairs and projects. Of course, you should never make mistakes that could hurt you or cost you a lot of money. For some repairs, if you do the parts you know how to do, you can save money and learn how to do the whole job in the future. Don’t fix the whole garage door, but learn how to measure the springs so you know how to order them. Then hire a pro to do the hard things.
Watch the Men Who Fix Things
When you watch people work on your house, don’t feel like you’re snooping. Instead, think of it as research in the field and ask a lot of questions, as long as you aren’t getting in the way or being too annoying. Most repairmen like what they do and love to talk about what they do and how it works. You’d be surprised how much you can learn just by asking what’s going on with your pipes or electrical connections.
Take pride in what you own.
Many of us don’t put enough value on the little things that make our lives easier. Without many of the machines and mechanisms around us, we would still spend most of our time trying to stay warm in the winter and find food. When you realize how important these modern conveniences are, you suddenly care a lot more about keeping them in good shape and making sure they keep working. Keeping this in mind and imagining a world without refrigerators or doors can give you the push you need to learn how your stuff works, why it stopped working, and what you can do to fix it.
You can start becoming more of a handyman around the house by using these tips and tricks. You can get a long way if you keep things in perspective and don’t fear the unknown.
