Home > Marriage > Winter > A Man and His Tools
A Man and His Tools
My wife and I define home improvement differently …
by Jim Killam
 1 of 2
"A power I have, but of what strength and nature I am not yet instructed."
—William Shakespeare
Recently, I built a closet by sawing a hole in the wall between an upstairs hallway and our garage attic. To accomplish this, I borrowed one of the coolest tools ever invented, a reciprocating saw. It looks like the lovechild of a jigsaw and the gun Arnold Schwarzenegger used in the Terminator movies. It was loud, messy, and made quick work of the wall.
This project turned out quite well, especially when viewed in dim light. After 22 years of marriage, my wife, Lauren, has learned when to trust me on home projects and when to have the phone book ready. Her red-flag list includes anything involving electricity, water, chewing gum, or taking apart major appliances.
This follows a lecture from Ted the repairman. Lauren called him after I'd tried to fix the dishwasher by taking apart the motor, then putting it back together with far fewer pieces than it had originally.
A few months prior to that, I had created a water cannon in the basement by installing a whole-house filter but forgetting to tighten the nuts before turning the water back on. Eventually everything stopped leaking, but the incident got me banned from plumbing projects.
[A little historical context here: The naysayers forget that failure is the greatest teacher. Remember, Thomas Edison failed 10,000 times before he fixed his dishwasher.]
Currently, I'm raising our kitchen ceiling. This first involved tearing down the old ceiling using a crowbar and the aforementioned reciprocating saw. Everything was going perfectly, until I made the mistake of casually remarking to Lauren: "You know, I'll bet I could take down this entire house in less than a day."
At that point, she began hiding the power tools.
We have carpenter friends—trained guys with expensive tools—who have no problem calling in professional help for jobs they aren't qualified to do in their own homes. Plumbing, electricity, plastering, whatever. If it doesn't involve sawing boards and hammering nails, they don't want to risk screwing it up. Their wives always appear exceptionally happy and relaxed.
I, on the other hand, am a journalist with little pride when it comes to home improvement projects. If something goes well, we've saved money. If something goes horribly wrong, I can write about it. For some reason, this makes my wife nervous.
This problem is not limited to journalists. It extends to any husband who can derive side benefits from being a klutz. One of our pastors—I'll call him "Jason," because that's his real name—sought to impress his wife, Lisa, a couple Decembers ago by cutting down an evergreen from their yard and using it as their Christmas tree. The tool he initially chose, for anyone who hasn't watched lumberjack contests on ESPN2, was an ax. But after one swing, the ax handle shattered.
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