Good Morning. I am James, aka exlrrp, and I am your host today on the Saturday Morning Home Repair Blog, a place where the DailyKos community comes together to talk about home repair and remodeling. Feel free to ask any questions you'd like and I and/or one of the experts here will attempt to answer them.
Personally, I live in rural Oregon in a large old house I'm constantly remodeling or repairing. I'm a retired contractor and building inspector so I have the skills for it and tools for it which is good because its not just a house, its and adventure
I didn't do anything much in tne way of home repairs this week, I was traveling over Christmas in California. I also should have written this before the Rose Bowl, I and the entire rest of our state are bummed out.
So instead of writing about a project, I'd like to give you some really good advice. I call it The 2d rule of Home repair (the first being: Whatever happens, DON'T PANIC!!)
This advice will help you whatever you do and if you do it, you'll know more than many people who call themselves journeymen. If you do this, things will work better in your life, no fooling.
And here it is: Always Read The Instructions First! The corollary is: And Then follow them! I can't tell you how many times I read the instructions on some material AFTER I started and found out I was doing it wrong---untill I started following The 2d Rule. Everything: paint, sheetrock mud, any tool you buy, any can or bag of stuff---the things you buy and use have the instructions written right on the side and theyre writt.
I know that there's reluctance to do this---people just want to take the thing out of the box and then have it all work perfectly. If you want to have a prayer of this happening, then read the instructions FIRST. And no one likes to look like they don't know what theyre doing.
but here's some Eternal Wisdom, some high level info: people who know what theyre doing---or WANT to know what theyre doing---read the instructions first. This gets even more crucial if your name is on the bottom line----having to pay two or three times to get something done because it didn't come out right the first time is a real drag. (Ask me how I know this. Go ahead, just ask!) As the saying goes, there's never enough time to do it right the first time but there's always enough time to do it over.
So there you go, some really great advice suitable for any project. With that, I'll open it up for your discussion