Back when I was a software engineer I really enjoyed fixing bugs, my bugs, other people’s bugs, old bugs, new bugs, difficult to reproduce bugs, you name it. There was something about figuring out the problem, making the fix, closing the bug report and watching the tests pass. Very satisfying. And you could get into a groove and do hundreds in a row if you wanted to.

I was thinking recently about the fact that I’m a lot more likely to try to fix stuff around the house myself than I used to be. Part of why that’s true is I just have more time since I retired. But, a bigger part of it is that since I’ve been making more stuff of size and complexity I’ve got a lot more confidence. Also, some of the skills that I’ve had to learn to make things are also skills that are useful for repairing things. A good example is the seat cushion on my leather recliner in the living room. It is probably ten years old and the seat cushion foam had given up from lots of use. I had just done the upholstery for the Morris chair that I built and I realized that I could probably restore my recliner using the same skills. I ordered a replacement foam cushion from Foam Factory ( these folks are awesome BTW, fast, high quality, easy web site ) and then I gave the whole chair a nice conditioning with saddle soap. When the foam came I just extracted the old foam and got rid of it and inserted the new foam. Now the chair is like new ( actually better because I used a higher quality foam than the original manufacturer ).

And that’s another aspect of making and fixing intersecting, the tools and materials. Once you start understanding the what’s available for materials that are pre-processed ( I’m not going to get all the tools to cut 6” thick foam from raw stock for the few jobs I’d ever do…) you can do better fixes. And having a drill press and a band saw makes doing lots fixes simple and easy.

After looking at renting a power washer ( all the ones for rent looked like kicked shit ) I ended up buying an inexpensive electric one. I’ve power washed our decks ( I used to pay someone to do it) but also I realized that it would take all the pollen stains, lichen, mold etc… off our teak deck furniture. It does a great job, I am going to have to sand it a bit and oil it now but it looks great. My new found wood finishing skills and tools will come in handy.

I really like not wasting things just because they had some minor defect. I also like not having to find an negotiate with someone else to do the work. Rebuilding a couple of mountain bikes from the 1990’s into cruisers for me and my wife is a good example of this. When I tried to find a bike shop to do it they basically said I’d have to wait forever to get them to do it and why didn’t I just buy a new bike… They’re great bikes and there wasn’t anything important wrong with them but the system is set up to discard things and replace them, not maintain or fix them.

There’s also the peace of mind of not walking past something that’s sorta broken day after day and having that feeling of “I should really get that fixed…” sometimes for years. Now I can just fix it.