What I Learned About Myself When I Had To Fix My Home

I grew up in rural Alberta with a pair of DIY parents and two brothers. Family chores were divided by gender; Mom did the cooking and cleaning, while Dad repaired the vehicles and renovated the house. While I occasionally helped Dad with projects around the house, it was generally as an observer, someone to keep him company while he did the task.

As I got older, I leaned on my brothers and then my husband for any “guy jobs” around the house. It was my husband’s job to maintain our vehicles or fix the plumbing issues, even though he had little experience in that area. Because I’d often watched my dad fix things, I knew more about home repair and woodworking than my husband. So when we renovated our floors, my husband tore out the carpet, but I ended up laying down the laminate.

After we separated, it seemed as if our 40-year-old condo decided to fall apart. I was struggling to deal with this new season of life, with its financial and legal hassles, and then the furnace quit, the hot water tank sat on the verge of failure, and the washing machine began to leak. Of course, I didn’t have money to hire someone to fix them, so I rolled up my sleeves (with much internal “You can do this!”) and turned the washing machine on its side.

I drained all the water from it. Then I found the pump. I fished an ancient, colorless baby sock out of the pump and then an even older, less recognizable pair of kids’ underwear. Thanks to this success, I felt proud of my troubleshooting abilities. I put it all back together again, stood it up, and ran a test load. It still leaked. Feeling defeated, I called a repairman, who charged me $150 to say that the washing machine tub was old and rusted and would cost over $600 just for the new part.

I found new washing machines on a good sale. I hired a DIY guy to fix the furnace and replace the hot water tank, and paid him cash under the table. Most importantly, I told myself I could handle household problems without relying on the guys in my life.

And then I moved into an even older home, slated for demolition so a condo tower could be built. The rent was half the price of any other home in Metro Vancouver (which meant it was actually within my budget), but the fine print said I was responsible for all repairs on the home. This was my place for the next ten months, and the landlord wouldn’t be bailing me out. Okay, what could go wrong?

Again, everything. The furnace quit. The toilet quit. The roof leaked. The walls leaked. The basement leaked. The lights flickered. The oven died. The sink leaked.

I called my brother (who lived 12 hours away from me) and asked him how hard it was to change a toilet. I had five kids and one toilet; even if I could afford a plumber, I didn’t have time to wait for one to arrive. My brother asked why I wanted to change the toilet, and I described the problem. He said I didn’t need to change the entire toilet, just one part inside. Off I went to the hardware store to find that part ($20); back home, I came to fix it (twenty minutes). Watching the clean water swirling down through the bottom of the toilet gave me an immense feeling of accomplishment. I could take care of my kids. I could take care of my home.

The furnace wasn’t such an easy fix. It took me a few days to realize that somehow, every morning, the house felt cold, and the furnace wasn’t running. One morning, we woke up to a dead furnace, no matter what buttons I pushed on the thermostat, so I called a furnace repair company. Just after noon, the furnace kicked in. Just before supper, the repair guy arrived. He looked at the thermostat. He looked at the furnace. Then he shrugged. “It works,” he said, billed me $150, and left again.

The next morning, the furnace was quiet. The house was cold. I called my brother. He had me check all the vents all around the house to see if any were blocked. (Hmmm, the repair guy didn’t do that.) He had me open up the front of the furnace and check a few other things (which the repair guy also hadn’t done). 

In the end, we decided that a sensor on the outside of the home must be off. When the temperature dropped below 0°C (as it only rarely does in Vancouver), the sensor got confused and shut off entirely. When the temperature rose above 0°C again, the sensor recovered. As the house was being torn down in a few months, I didn’t want to replace the furnace, so we simply lived in the living room around two space heaters for a few days until the cold spell ended and the furnace returned to normal operations.

When the oven refused to work, I did some googling and learned it also had a failed sensor. The thought of fixing the oven left me feeling depressed for a few days. Then I told myself that if I could fix a toilet, I could fix this, too. I watched some YouTube videos on how to replace the sensor. My 4-year-old son was totally ready to help me with the project. 

Then I looked up the cost of the part. At a minimum, it was over $100 for the part, which would take about 6 weeks to reach my local parts shop. Again, this was for an oven that would likely get thrown out in a few months. I chose to buy a countertop toaster oven instead, and then I had to debone our Christmas turkey to fit it into that oven for roasting.

A friend’s son, who was an apprentice electrician, helped me fix the flickering lights. I bucketed water out of the basement during the atmospheric river that wiped out the highway to Alberta that year. Also, I hung pictures wherever I wanted to. I ran wiring through the ceiling tiles to move my modem to a better position in the house so I could actually access the internet from my computer in my bedroom office. Then I replaced the pipe under the sink, which had corroded so badly it crumpled under my hand when I pulled it out. I fixed my kids’ bikes.

And I learned I could do it. I learned I actually liked doing it. I liked solving problems in my home, fixing broken things, and seeing quick results when a leak stopped or an appliance worked better. When my brother sent me a box of his old tools, including a drill and impact driver, my face lit up. Now I can fix things around my home even quicker and better!

Now I live in a 40-year-old duplex, which I bought knowing what I’d have to fix and also knowing that I could do it. I’m also in a new, healthy relationship where instead of dividing our roles in the home by gender, we talk about what needs to get done and who can do it. He bakes bread because he likes doing it. I’ve fixed the two sinks that leaked, because I can do it. We repair our bikes together and take turns mowing the lawn. When we changed the light in our room to a ceiling fan, he was the project director because he knows more about electrical than I do, but I helped review the instructions and discuss exactly how we were going to make this work.

Being a single mom in a home that needed a lot of work taught me that I could do that work—and didn’t mind. Being a married mom in a good home that needs a few repairs has taught me to value partnership, co-operation, and helping each other.

But if my Jeep dies, we take it to the dealer – we hate fixing vehicles.

Feature image from Canva.