So last month I covered the cleaning aspect of housekeeping. I mentioned in the beginning of this year that housekeeping encompasses cleaning, home repairs, decorating and organizing.
For the month of February, the focus will be on basic home repairs. Knowing how to do some of these can help save money.
This past week I got to experience a taste of this after discovering a leaky pipe in my kitchen. Normally leaks come from underneath the sink. But this one was coming through the cabinet next to my sink.
It unfortunately required my husband, who is not a plumber, to take out our cabinets and break through the wall to find the source of the leak. A corroded pipe was the culprit.
Since the sink had to be removed, he figured it was as good a time as any to get a new one. I wasn’t really thrilled about the idea. I wanted the pipe fixed and my water working again.
But he convinced me to take a trip to our nearest Home Depot, where I fell in love with a sink. You know you are old when a sink brings you thrills.
Anyway, we got a smokin’ deal. For a couple of hundred dollars we got not only a sink but it came with a faucet (the fancy kind you can turn into a sprayer), a built-in soap dispenser and two custom-sized grates that fit inside the sink. You can use them to place food items on top for easy rinsing, without them touching the sink.
The pipe-repair-turned-new-kitchen-sink project took almost three days. It would have cost a lot more money had we hired a professional.
So although my handy repairman takes a bit longer, I will go without to save some money. This is just an example of how home repairs can cost less when you learn to do them.
With that, future blogs will be looking at a variety of basic home repairs. You just might learn that you are handier than you thought.