A Wild Story Illustrates What Do-It-Yourself Chores to Avoid
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
By Bill Primavera
Some of you may be old enough to remember the men’s movement of the mid-1970s, which I tolerated for just a short while.
Men would gather to pursue personal growth and to relate better to others by sharing issues and discussing how we might best deal with them. Personally, it didn’t do much for me, but it was in one of these groups that I heard the most fantastical story about what we should not be doing ourselves around the house. I’ve waited 50 years to tell it.
One night when it was a rather quiet member’s time to share, he told the story about how he had climbed a ladder on his two-story house to clean his gutters, lost his balance, fell and knocked himself unconscious. When he came to, he was in the hospital emergency room, his wife by his side, having his head checked out.
While there, he discovered that his whole outlook on life had changed and that his brush with death had created in him an I-don’t-give-a-damn attitude about most everything. In effect, he became an older hippie and “dropped out.”
The bottom line for him was that a simple, albeit dangerous chore, around the house had totally altered his lifestyle. For me, it was proof positive that I should never do anything around the house that is either dangerous or for which I am unqualified.
But we guys are a stubborn lot. And women are right up there with us when it comes to the satisfaction that we derive from doing ourselves what we might hand over to others for a price. There are other factors involved, both practical and psychological.
For one, not all of us are loaded with money. When I first moved to the suburbs, I could barely scrape together the money needed for the mortgage, utilities and taxes each month, much less even considering whether I could afford a service to have my lawn cut or my shrubbery pruned.
On the other hand, with a young family and a stressful job, I was grateful for the therapeutic element that came with building my own bookshelves, applying my own wallpaper and doing my own foundation plantings. I would step back and say, “Wow, that’s some heck of a job; no one could possibly do it better.”
And you know what? Except for some really skilled artisans I found along the way, like a carpenter who was an artist with wood and a painter who could do faux work that should be in a museum, my handiwork from years past stands up very well indeed.
To this day, I still marvel at my skills as a wallpaper hanger and how I always managed to achieve perfectly matched patterns with each corner miraculously matched to the other.
But the years do take their toll. As soon as the snow melted in early spring, I would start my ritual: redressing my driveway and parking area by leveling the mounds of crushed bluestone created by the snowplow during the course of the winter.
Of course, I would soon hear a window open with my wife admonishing me to stop immediately, warning that the chore was as taxing as shoveling snow and that I was too old to take it on. I would respond that it’s good, healthy exercise for me. We would go back and forth; she would win, but only because I try to be a good husband and don’t want to worry her.
It was a different time of life and I faced the reality that I was a different kind of homeowner with a different kind of to-do list – mainly who to call to get the various jobs done that needed to be done.
According to the Consumer Products Safety Commission, nearly a quarter-million people have to visit emergency rooms each year simply because they fall off a ladder. Chores that require ladders are the most dangerous.
In descending order, the next most dangerous home improvement activities are lawnmower accidents; power tool accidents; chemical-related accidents (pool chemicals, paints, lubricants, solvents and other household or workshop cleaning agents, so read those labels carefully!); chainsaw accidents (I was always afraid to even own one); and finally, electric shock. (Always assume a wire is “hot,” unless you know for sure that the power has been turned off.)
Happy do-it-yourselfing, but be careful which chores you choose.
Bill Primavera is a realtor associated with William Raveis Real Estate and founder of Primavera Public Relations, Inc., specializing in lifestyles, real estate and development. To engage the services of The Home Guru and his team to market your home for sale, call 914-522-2076.
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