"If we have to hire someone to fix it I will do it myself." Famous last words if you ask me. Though my father never missed a day of work in my entire life, his hard work and perseverance stood for nothing when it came to repairing and renovating our home. We would refer to the half finished jobs that appeared on both the inside and outside of the house as TyVek torture, named aptly for the paper that had begun to peel off the side of the house. My mother often stressed and whined that our house was becoming the neighborhood eyesore but he still insisted on doing things himself. He swore his persistence was simply to be more of a penny pincher then he already was but to everyone else it seemed like a way to feel more macho.

The toilet broke when I was 12 and he must have fixed it with shoe string hundreds of times until my mother finally broke down and had someone come fix it while he was working. The deck he built but never properly sealed to prevent water damage and rot created quite a nuisance when the wood shrank and huge gaps began to appear. This created a dangerous nuisance to anyone who wanted to venture out into our backyard which consisted of two half built stone walls and a shed on stilts. Windows were put in but he never got around to properly sealing the area around it which resulted in countless cases of the flu winter after winter. Every Christmas the family would pool money together to buy him a gift card to the nearest repair store in hopes that maybe he would be motivated enough to complete even one job. He often scoffed at our attempts saying that he just had not had time to do it properly. I fear the time to complete his renovations and repairs may never come.

Now that I am older and I am in the market to create a home for myself and my future family I remember the safety hazards and discontent my father, the disaster renovator, put us through. So upon moving into my home the first rule in my house is simple. "Leave it to the professionals."

Learn more about this author, Amanda Sherwood.
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