Last week, part of our ceiling collapsed.
It’s not as bad as it sounds. It was a drop ceiling in the one room in the house that still has that. A leak sprung from our second floor bathtub’s drain pipe and started water soaking into the big drop ceiling tile. The tile got so saturated with water that it collapsed to the floor. Luckily, we have two bathrooms, so we can just use the other shower while we fix the drain pipe. No buckets for water collection necessary!
I got up into the drop ceiling to see what was up, felt around pipes and found exactly where the leak was: Where a metal pipe fits into a PVC pipe. So I got out my wrench, gloves, and bottle of Blaster to try and and take apart the pipes. (It turns out you’re not supposed to use Blaster on PVC anyway, kids!) After stinking up the place with Blaster and rubbing my fingers raw trying to get the pipes apart, I had a flashback…
The culprit
A few years ago, one of the toilets wouldn’t stop running. The water would keep running through the tank. The seal wasn’t tight anymore. So I attempted to fix it. But this toilet was so old that the style of flushing mechanism (technical term) wasn’t manufactured anymore, so I couldn’t buy a replacement part. Instead, I had to take the whole thing apart, take out the whole flushing thing-a-majig, and put in a new one.
Each screw was excruciating to take off. The toilet probably hadn’t been taken apart in forty years, when it was made. The screws were rusted in place. I spent weeks trying to slowly get the thing apart. I eventually did it, but was a trying experience.
With this drain pipe in the ceiling, I could suddenly see the same thing happening. I saw myself spraying Blaster up there after work, night after night, and pathetically trying to yank the pipes around in their little enclosed area, then probably having to buy tools that I might or might not ever use again.
So instead, I decided it was time to call the professionals. Marge called a guy the next day, he came over a few houes later, and by 5PM, it was fixed. And our pockets were lighter by $149. Ouch!
Call it a Frugal Failure, but sometimes I think it’s worth it to go to the professionals. We paid up to get the bats permanently out of our house last year. Whenever a job takes specialty knowledge, expensive tools, or is obviously going to take us forever to get done, I consider them.
Other times I look to professionals instead of DIYing it
Certain types of food. I’ve never tried making my own beer or wine. I know people do it. And I imagine it tastes somewhere on the scale from “okay” to “something died in this.” But there are people who spend their lives dedicated to the alchemy of alcoholic drinks. I could try to learn some things and waste my time buying equipment and making my own barely palatable swill. Or, for the few times a year I buy beer or wine, I could just go to the experts who live and breath this stuff and buy something that has been tested and judged to be nummy by all.
Birthday Beers 2016
Likewise, there’s some foods I would order out but not make myself. Eggplant parmesan? That’s tough. The breading and everything, plus eggplant is temperamental. Get takeout.
We had real ramen in Japan, and I tried to re-create it at home. Well, it’s a two-day process and involves lots of specialty ingredients, and it still doesn’t taste as good. Nuh-uh. If I want a bowl of this particular soup, I’ll go to a place.
Baked goods? I’ll give it a try.
Car repair. I can do minor car things. I can replace a headlight. I can put in more oil and washer fluid. I can inflate tires and jump a battery. But basically, when it comes to getting dirty, I’ll let someone else handle it. I call AAA to replace a flat because if I did it, I have a fear the tire would fly off while driving down on the highway.
We achieve savings on maintenance by owning something that doesn’t require much work (Honda Civic and Toyota Corrolla) and by not driving much. We put about 10,000 miles a year on our two cars combined. Our annual maintenance costs are pretty low just because of that, so I don’t mind having someone else change the oil.
