A man with a limited budget is a dangerous thing when it comes to home repair. That's especially true when that man has virtually no handyman skills whatsoever. That man is me. I will confess now to these home repair fails that I had no business attempting.

Roof Repair

There's nothing more important to a home than a good roof. A few years ago, we had a home that had a leak near the chimney. I dreaded every thunderstorm, because I knew that the water was coming in the house. Did I contact a roofing expert? Nope. I decided I would do it myself with some help from foam rubber in a can. And, no, I'm not joking.

I might as well have made that fake concrete block with the rubber. Part of the problem was I could never determine the exact location in my attic where the water was coming in. So, I cluster bombed my attic with foam rubber. The good news is that in the event that my old house gets blown over, it is guaranteed to bounce at least two miles.

Bringing a cable in from outside

A few years ago, I decided I would do a satellite dish installation by myself. How hard could it be? Very hard as it turns out. Aligning the dish was tricky enough considering I had to dodge some trees and figure out the exact angle that it needed to be pointed. This is where I should have paid attention in math class. Amazingly enough, I got that part right, but realized way too late that I had no natural place to bring the cable inside. The key word in that sentence is "natural".

A redneck (me) with a drill and the need to get through a brick wall is danger waiting to happen. I ended up drilling a hole through the wall at the front of our house which made my wife real happy. To make matters worse, I forgot that drill bits get a tiny bit hot after drilling through brick for a couple minutes and tried to remove the bit with my hand. Several layers of skin later, I was able to get the dish cable through our front wall, but then realized I hadn't figured out how to waterproof that hole. I put a small towel in it.

Repairing a drop ceiling

My parent's home had a drop ceiling. When we had a dishwasher fail, water damaged several of the tiles and they needed to be replaced. I should have called someone who knew how to do this. It might have taken them 10 minutes. It took me 3 months. And, the sad part is I never ever really got it right. Connecting the tiles together wasn't really hard. But, figuring out how to successfully terminate the ceiling in the corners did not work out for me.

Spare yourself the pain I inflicted on me and come talk to the real experts at the 2016 Southern Idaho Home and Garden Show. I bet none of those guys have ever used a towel to waterproof a wall in a home.

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