As a European:
Struggle to find a craftsman to do any small work.
Work really needs to get done.
Go online, find how it is done.
Go to some hardware store and buy everything and a couple of extras, just for good measure.
Start the work.
Break or destroy whatever the cause of the problem.
Realize the original work was already badly done, is too old to be safe or was half assed together by some lazy person.
Go back online, find modern solution.
Go back to store, buy extra materials.
Break things even more.
Replace bad original work with modern solution, creating in the meanwhile a solution to conected bad work you can’t solve to the work you’ve done.
It works and it is safe.
Eventually, one of the crafts worker calls back.
Sees the work you have done: “Why did you bother doing all of that? You spent too much money.”
Describes shoddy solution, like what was before the damage you solved by yourself.
“Fuck my luck.”
End note: I faced this when fixing a sewers issue and a renewal of an electrical circuit.
This is so accurate. I absolutely hate that it’s super hard to find qualified craftsmen nowadays. And worse, sometimes they’re clearly unqualified AND don’t speak my language, so communication is super frustrating.
I can find plenty of craftspeople. But usually they will only take specific jobs, with specific outcomes.
I have a situation where I have to have a bathroom completely demolished and plumbing and waste water lines redone.
It’s a simple deal and a quick work yet nobody will take it because there are special demands that need to be met (it involves insurances) like ripping old water lines completely from the wall and run new tubes.
But “ripping out the old is too much work and puttin new pipes into the wall is too conplex: leave the old ones as is and put the new ones outside the wall”.
Nope. Old out, new in. Everything through conduits, with joints and safety valves inside inspection bixes. And there they go running.
I was almost finished redoing a floor when one of the planks kicked back in the table saw and hit me in the arm. I didn’t think anything of it, and then realized the threshold I bought wouldn’t work.
So there I was, in Home Depot at 8:58pm, walking back to the flooring section when I realize that I’ve been dripping blood on the floor from a cut in my arm the entire time.
The trick is to bring in whatever busted piece you have and find the exact match. Nobody’s gonna think you’re shoplifting rusted garbage and usually you can knock out your purchase in just one trip.
If your project/fix is too complicated to bring in the busted piece, may God have mercy on your soul.
It’s always the plumbing that makes for the late night trips too. Missing a piece of wood or something electrical, and it’s fine. You can fix it tomorrow. But busted a pipe and have water cut off to the house until it’s fixed? That’s when you make a late night run to wherever is still open.
Ah, that Saturday evening at our old house when we came back from the movies at 23h, brushed our teeth and the the faucet in the master bathroom broke and water kept running. Oh, the great many Sundays we spent at Leroy Merlin and at furniture stores to find a cabinet to put under the new sink after we had to redo the whole plumbing.
And the previous owners of our current house had a thing for shitty electrical wiring. They did a lot of stupid things and we keep fixing their mess as we find them. There’s a special place in hell for those DIYers.
Ah, I remember getting the stairs redone. They had 1990s vinyl on them, and we wanted non- slip carpet. I was smart enough not to do the carpeting myself, but surely I could strip it?
Turns out the vinyl was attached with pure fucking magic, and the nothing short of xenomorph blood was getting that shit off, apart from hard labour. So after 2 days of violence, I find out that they can’t actually glue carpet to paint. They used to be able to, but the modern glue puts not killing the user over being convenient for me, which is fair. This wasn’t true for the previous glue, which I had to burn and scrape off.
Unfortunately, unlike the vinyl, the paint too was very high quality. And thick enough to serve as a a staircase by itself, so after using some expensive goopy enzymatic paint stripper, and some good old fashioned harsh chemicals, I ended up sanding away the remaining paint over the next week.
It’s been two years, and I think I finally vacuumed up the last dust.
Never again.
Jesus Christ on a motorbike that sounds like hell! :O
The guy on the right is carefree and full of joy compared to a guy who walks to the auto-parts store.
That second guy was me walking into a target at 9pm to buy bungee cords after is spent an hour on the side of the highway in -20 weather trying to straighten my skidplate out enough that it wasn’t dragging after I slid into a median.
That’s me, but with my 3d printer.
