Shit Every Grown-Ass Man Ought to Know How to Fix — Chapter 1: You Ain't Gotta Be a Contractor, Dumbass.
Let me tell you something.
I've spent a good part of my life building shit, tearing shit apart, and fixing shit somebody else fucked up.
Decks. Porches. Railings. Doors. You name it.
And after all these years, I've come to one conclusion.
A whole lot of people don't know how to fix a goddamn thing.
And some of them are apparently pretty comfortable with that arrangement.
Now, before somebody gets their panties twisted, I ain't saying everybody ought to know how to build a house. Hell, I've worked around men who claimed to be professional contractors that I wouldn't trust to assemble a sandwich.
I'm talking about the little stuff.
A toilet that won't quit running. A cabinet door hanging crooked. A hole in the drywall. A gate that drags across the ground every time you try to open the son of a bitch.
Little things that break in just about every house sooner or later.
And what do people do?
They either ignore it until it gets worse, call somebody and pay them a hundred bucks to tighten two screws, or watch seventeen YouTube videos until they're so goddamn confused they decide to move instead.
I've seen people live with a crooked cabinet door for three years.
Three fucking years.
They'll walk past that thing every morning, complain about it every afternoon, and then spend their entire Saturday arguing with strangers on Facebook about something that ain't got a damn thing to do with them.
Meanwhile, the cabinet door is still hanging there like it's drunk.
Get a screwdriver, for Christ's sake.
I Don't Give a Shit Whether You're a Man or a Woman.
Yeah, I know what the title of this book says.
Shit Every Grown-Ass Man Ought to Know How to Fix.
I wrote it that way because I liked the title. And because I figure a grown-ass man ought to know how to do a few things besides operate a television remote, scratch his balls, and locate the beer.
But this book ain't just for men.
I've known women who could work circles around men on a construction site. And I've known men who couldn't hang a picture without putting six holes in the wall and blaming the goddamn hammer.
Being handy ain't something you're born with because you've got a dick.
It's something you learn.
And if nobody ever taught you, how the hell are you supposed to know?
That's what this book is for.
And if you're a woman reading this because your husband has been promising to fix the bathroom door since Easter, go ahead and hand him the book when you're finished.
Hell, wrap it up for Christmas.
Maybe he'll get the hint.
Everybody Starts Somewhere.
I wasn't born knowing how to swing a hammer.
Nobody was.
You learn by watching, asking questions, trying things, making mistakes, and occasionally standing there staring at something you just broke while wondering how much the replacement is gonna cost.
That's part of it.
But there's a difference between making a mistake and being a dumbass.
A mistake is putting a screw in the wrong place.
Being a dumbass is seeing sparks coming out of an electrical outlet and deciding you're gonna stick a screwdriver in there to see what's going on.
Don't do that shit.
There are jobs you can learn to handle yourself, and there are jobs where you need to pick up the phone and call somebody who knows what they're doing.
Electricity, gas lines, major structural problems, and anything that could seriously hurt somebody ain't places to prove how tough you are.
I've never understood people who think calling a professional somehow makes them less of a man.
You know what makes you look like an idiot?
Standing in your front yard watching the fire department spray water on your house because you decided YouTube made you a licensed electrician.
Knowing your limits is part of knowing how to fix things.
You Don't Need a Garage Full of Expensive Shit.
Some folks think you need five thousand dollars' worth of tools before you can fix anything.
Bullshit.
For most of the repairs we're going to cover, you need a handful of basic tools, a little patience, and enough common sense to read the instructions before you start tearing things apart.
A decent screwdriver.
A hammer.
A tape measure.
A pair of pliers.
Maybe a drill, depending on what you're doing.
That's a pretty good start.
We'll talk about tools in the next chapter, including what you actually need and what you can leave sitting on the shelf at the hardware store.
And let me tell you something else.
Just because a tool costs four hundred dollars doesn't mean the guy holding it knows what the hell he's doing.
I've seen men walk onto jobs with enough expensive equipment to open their own hardware store, then spend twenty minutes trying to figure out which way a board goes.
Meanwhile, some old bastard with a beat-up tape measure and a hammer he's owned since 1987 has already finished the job and gone home.
Tools don't make you handy.
Knowing how to use them does.
Quit Being Afraid to Try.
Here's something I've noticed.
A lot of people ain't necessarily incapable of fixing things.
They're just afraid they're gonna screw something up.
And I get it.
Nobody wants to turn a twenty-dollar problem into a two- hundred-dollar problem.
But if a cabinet hinge is loose, you ain't gonna destroy your house by learning how to tighten it.
If a door squeaks, you don't need to hire a contractor to figure out which hinge is making the noise.
You start small.
You learn what the parts are called.
You figure out what the problem is.
And then you fix the damn thing.
And here's another opinion of mine that nobody asked for.
I think we've gotten a little too comfortable paying other people to do things we're perfectly capable of learning ourselves.
Now, don't misunderstand me. I make my living doing construction work. I'm not trying to put myself out of business.
But there's a difference between hiring a contractor to rebuild your deck and calling somebody because your kitchen drawer won't close.
One of those is a legitimate construction project.
The other one might be a fork stuck behind the drawer.
Check for the goddamn fork first.
The first time you repair something yourself, even something simple, there's a certain satisfaction that comes with it.
You stand there looking at it thinking, Well, I'll be damned. I actually fixed that son of a bitch.
And the next time something breaks, you ain't quite so intimidated.
That's how it starts.
Here's What We're Gonna Do.
I've picked ten common household repairs that just about anybody can learn to understand.
Some are inside the house. Some are outside.
Nothing in this book requires you to be a professional carpenter, plumber, or construction worker.
I'm going to tell you what tools you'll need, what the materials should roughly cost, how long the job might take, and how to go about fixing it.
I'll also tell you what can go wrong, because that's usually the part nobody bothers mentioning until you're standing in the middle of the bathroom with water running down your leg.
And where something might be more serious than it looks, I'll tell you that, too.
I'm not promising you'll become a master carpenter by the time you finish this book.
Hell, you might still hit your thumb with a hammer.
You might put a screw in backward.
You might discover that whoever built your house apparently measured everything with a fucking banana.
But you ought to walk away knowing a few things you didn't know before.
And maybe the next time something breaks around your house, instead of immediately reaching for your phone to call somebody, you'll reach for your toolbox.
Just make sure you know what you're doing before you start.
Because if you turn a loose cabinet hinge into a kitchen renovation, don't come blaming me.
And for God's sake, if you take something apart, pay attention to how the son of a bitch goes back together.
You'd be amazed how many grown adults discover they've got six screws left over and decide those must've been optional.
Now let's go find you some tools.
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