our first DIY home project
I'd like to preface this by saying: I absolutely abhor construction or DIY building projects.
I can build a computer if given the individual parts, that's fine. But the act of using any power tools like a jigsaw or a power drill? Suddenly, I'm panting like a dog and clutching my chest, I think I'm having a heart palpitation?
AKA: Get me the heck out of here, this is a nightmare and I don't want to get hurt or see anyone get hurt.
Irrational, I know, but ever since I was young, I've had an aversion to construction and personally preferred not to build anything of any sorts. I lucked out that my stepdad was quite the handyman and took care of all that growing up. Even though I admire and accept that building is a very necessary skill, I'd be happy-dory with all that remaining a mystery.
It is a mystery left best to the magicians who can tame and command such power tools to their will.
Me? I'll stick to the digital playground of building and tearing down where I have the safety measures of CTRL+Z. That sounds more like something I can handle.
So, why am I mentioning any of this? Well -- my husband and I installed not one but two cat doors today, all completely on our own! Yipeeee!
He handled the power tools.. but let me say, he and I are the same when it comes to power tools and DIY. We'd like to leave it to the professionals while we focus on our specialties. Everyone wins, right?
It's funny because we've been having great communication in so many regards, but faced with this project, I struggled communicating anything intelligble at all. I know so little, I couldn't summon useful language or terms or the name of the tools or possible solutions. In fact, I probably switched them around a lot and used them interchangeably!
When we encountered a blocker, I wasn't sure how to communicate what was going wrong or what even was wrong? There were several times we both kind of stopped and just scratched our heads in unison. The previous project manager in me is ??? -- we did not prepare properly, we do not have enough information to move forward in an optimal manner!
My husband, bless his heart, wanted to reduce my DIY stress and figure it out on his own. I got worked up, offered to watch tutorial videos and read instructions to ensure we had all the information and preparation we needed, but he asked me to trust him.
Welp, now that all is said and done, bygones are bygones, right? I did end up pulling out trusty YouTube tutorials and applied the escape room technique of 'take note of absolutely everything, it might be a clue, a part of the puzzle, or THE puzzle we need to prioritize before moving onto the next stage'.
At one point, I asked, "why not try to screw it from the other side?", and that literally saved us from having to go back to Home Depot for the 3rd time today. Houston, we have lift-off!
I'll definitely give him his flowers, though, because if it weren't for him, these doors would've never been done in the first place. Plus, he actually knew the name of the tools and while he has little experience using them, he has hours more than my 0 experience. The cheers goes ultimately to him, and now the whole family gets a bonus in our quality of living!
To all of you skilled mothertruckers who can build and DIY as smoothly as I can ride rollerblades, I envy you a little. While I don't prefer doing this type of work, it really is helpful and I can imagine, leads to such rewarding results.
After we got the first cat door installed, the second cat door was a breeze. Applied knowledge for the win.
A bit of background as to why we installed them: these cat doors allow our kitties to freely enter and exit our studio spaces. Now we can keep our studio doors closed for better sound isolation while still giving our cats the access they need.
Before these cat doors, we kept our studios open because the kitties would cry if they couldn't get in or out. The noise bleed from his studio to mine (he's a full-time Twitch streamer) kept showing up on my recordings, so I stopped streaming and recording content as much because... well, I am a stickler for noise. If it didn't sound good to me, I didn't want to subject that to anyone else!
This might mean more vlogs in my home office and more streaming again, too. The real reason why I requested this even though it was stressful to boot.
This was our first 'home' project! We're thinking of adding cat ladder steps on our walls so the kitty have perches and can explore climbing more things besides their cat towers. What was your first DIY project? I'd like to hear what it was and how it went. It probably took us 6 hours to get the two cat doors installed, given we had to go to Home Depot twice and had several errors before we got it right.
That's all I have for today!
Thanks for being here.
Sincerely,
Nadine ♥