The Joy of Having General Skills

By General Skills, I don't mean readin', writin' and 'rithmetic, altho they are most important. Besides those I mean carpentry skills, painting skills, plumbing skills, electrical skills, yard work skills etc. In other words what a guy or gal needs to know and do if they own a home. "Skills" may be pushing it for some, but at least knowledge of how things work, like electricity and plumbing for example.

If you are or have been a homeowner, you should recognize some of these skills -- in you. They're unavoidable the longer you own your home. As a homeowner I've been forced since 1976 to acquire all of these skills to some degree -- at least to be mediocre. Why? To save labor costs by not hiring a general contractor, or carpenter or plumber etc. 

Doing it myself has just been matter-of-fact. Something needed work, so I looked it up in my 1977 Reader's Digest Complete Do-it-Yourself Manual (DIY), an invaluable guide to which I still refer. Not because it's written that well (altho it's close enough for government work), but because of the hand-drawn step-by-step illustrations. Simply invaluable.

Getting married was the beginning of life skills acquisition for me. Our rented bungalo in Hopewell Boro, with living room, bedroom, kitchen and bath, needed help. So Jan came up with the paint colors, which I agreed with readily, and we painted for a week. Jan chose a black and white motif for our bathroom, so she sewed the b & w curtains, and I installed the b & w self-stick floor tiles over the existing linoleum. But the kitchen needed special work. So we chose orange paint for the cabinets, and a b & w alternating tile pattern for the new linoeum, which I installed, adhesive and all, with only a few buckles. 

The main thing I had going for me was that I wasn't afraid to try, and Janet was my encourager. The only other thing I had put together before then was my beloved car models when I was 13-15. Dad had never taught me any household skills, other than cleaning commodes, and swabbing and buffing floors, when we lived together for two years when I was 15-17. He and mom had divorced when I was four. My second dad, Ralph, hadn't taught me general skills either, since he worked long hours. So by the time I moved out when I was 18, I had no handyman skills to speak of.

But 1977 was the real beginning, for me, of the do-it-yourself phenomenon, now well established.Now we have self-help magazines and books on every possible topic, from building decks to making a Christmas wreaths for the front door (neither of which we've done, but we do have a wreath on the front door, and I would like a small deck off the bedroom).

My first home project, which was greatly added to by the expertise of my homeowner friend and coworker Joe Weeast, was to tear down a nasty living room wall, replace it with sheet rock, tape it, prime it, and cover it with foresty wallpaper full of tall ferns. The wall was 9 feet tall and 12 feet long. At least it wasn't all four walls, or I wouldn't have attempted it. The demolition of the lathe and plaster was tedious but straightforward. I do well with demolition, the easiest part. 

Joe had a truck, so we loaded it with four sheets of half inch sheet rock from Hamilton Supply, and hung it up on a weekend. All this time I was trying to remember each step, each measurement, every nail hammered, in my head. (It was the days before screws were used for sheet rock installation.) Joe showed me how to lay spackling tape and joint compound for the seems. Then it was sanding and painting a prime coat, before Janet and I got busy hanging the green wallpaper. Janet had also read up on how to hang it, as had I, so after snapping chalk lines, we got it done in a three or so hours. Our first of many, many, home projects.

And at the end of the project we had new tools: the paste, tray, brush, roller etc. for the wallpaper (used again later), more paint to prime the rest of the smoke-covered, stinky walls; a plumb bob (which I still have); a small jig-saw to go with my circular saw which Jan had bought me, from Sears, and sawhorses to lay the sheet rock on and cut out the one foot wide lengths for the top of the wall. 

That was the start of my home tool collection. When we moved to our second home in 1979, we added yard tools like rakes, brooms, tree saws, hand saws, a sit-down Murray lawnmower, and much more. All left by Bill & Cathy Cross, the sellers, whom we are still in touch with today. Us from their old home and them from a large RV somewhere in Arizona.

And that brings us to the importance of homeowner tools. More expensive tools like the electric circular saw, jig-saw, and sander are mandatory in my opinion (we'll keep yard tools out of this for the moment - that's a whole other category). A plumber's wrench, duck tape, plumber's putty, all sizes and types of washers from metal to rubber, wrenches, screwdrivers large and small (mine range from 3" to 12"), and screws and nails of every type and size, together with storage shelves for all the paint cans, are all necessities in my opinion. And this is not nearly what I've acquired over more than 30 years, believe me.

By 1979 when we sold our first home on Nottingham Way, I had built glass and wood end tables and matching coffee table, and large (6' tall, 5' wide) portable self-standing shelves. Both ideas Janet found in Apartment Life Magazine which we loved -- now long out of print. But many more have replaced it, along with all the shows on HGTV for example.

So we are in an age of DIY and its time to get with the times.

As a homeowner, I'm finally getting comfortable with that.

By Rodney Richards, NJ