Broom Handle Repairs....

Indeed, these are the days my friends. After calling the air conditioner guy he informed me it would cost $1,500 to fix my ac. Great. Sounds good. Too bad I don't actually have $1,500 to fix the damn thing. After enduring another scorching Southern California day with temps reaching 101 and my abode reaching 95 I had to do something. So, I called my sister and we headed over to Home Depot and bought one of the ac wall units for $200.

To see my sister and I do home improvements is akin to watching Lucy and Ethel engaging in zany antics. As professional as we think we are, Bob Villa we are not. Take for instance my bathroom. I have a small area in the bathroom that feels like the floor has started sinking in. When you walk across it you actually can feel yourself going down. Do I call a plumber, a carpenter, someone with any real expertise on the matter? Nope. Instead my sister comes over and surprises me with something she made herself. What is it? She somehow screwed together pieces of plywood and covered them in a soft material- making it look like a rug. She then took said rug and placed it over the sunken area. What does the rug do you ask? Good question. It doesn't take care of the area with the problem. However, it does provide a sturdy rug for me and anyone else who walks over it. Sure the area still is sinking but when you walk across it certainly doesn't feel like it....

It reminds of growing up with a single mother. My mother could fix a lot of things, I just don't think they were the proper way to fix things. But as my mother always said, "as long as it gets the job done who cares." My mother used a broom handle for everything. When the sink got clogged up- use the broom handle. When the garbage disposal broke- use the broom handle. When the fridge was making a loud noise- hit it with the broom handle.

Now cut back to today. My sister and are I attempting to lift the wall unit into its space, which coincidently happens to be almost 6 feet high. We were so hot and sweaty and here we were trying to lift the darn thing over our heads (they are quite heavy) and we almost dropped it because we were laughing so hard. We finally get the thing in (note my sister didn't think it was too important to asemble certain pieces of the unit, until AFTER we had placed it in the wall- BAD IDEA). We get the work done and now we have a big gap in the wall because the unit was small for the space. What great Martha Stewart idea do we devise to cover these gaps? Just what you would expect from the two of us- packing tape and cardboard.

Okay, so at first glance it might not look like much but I am quite proud of our handywork. Sure it won't garner any awards from HGTV and it would have been much easier to call the ac guy and pay him to fix it but like my mother said- as long as it works.

I guess the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree...