I recently took a major life step: my wife and I bought our first home, a 1920s-era bungalow. Not quite a “fixer-upper,” it still needed some work, and I enthusiastically immersed myself in the task of putting a shine on the place. I ended up almost putting myself (and my dear wife) in the nut house.
Fed up with the smiling faces on home-repair television programs and the promises of blueprint-packed do-it-yourself manuals, I was about to resign myself to writing checks to every contractor in town. Then Mr. HandyPerson’s newsletter showed up at the Sun office.
I won’t say that he had all the answers (who does?), but with his blend of cranky commentary and careful advice, Mr. HandyPerson, a k a Mark A. Hetts, managed to put the situation in perspective: with a little know-how and the right tools, you can do some things yourself that make life a whole lot easier; but for heaven’s sake, stay away from the jobs you can’t handle.
Mr. HandyPerson’s message, however, goes way beyond that. He isn’t just good with tools, he’s good with words as well. Even if you live in an apartment and don’t own a single screwdriver, his soothing surliness can comfort you with the logic of a well-maintained existence.
Mark A. Hetts started his handyperson business in 1985 after fifteen years in the nonprofit sector. He was looking to simply his life and create the time and energy to care for a number of close friends who were ill with (and later died of) AIDS. Since 1992, he’s found an outlet for that healing energy through writing about the meaning of life as Mr. HandyPerson.
These essays are excerpted from the quarterly Mr. HandyPerson newsletter. Subscriptions are twenty dollars for the calendar year; midyear subscribers will receive back issues for the year. Checks can be made out and sent to Mark A. Hetts, 584 Castro Street, Suite 421, San Francisco, CA 94114.
— Andrew W. Snee
Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Home . . .
A house is a remarkable multipurpose system made to provide shelter from heat and cold, security from a wide range of wild animals both primeval and contemporary, privacy, refuge, an investment, a statement, a hobby. It combines into one package an arcane collection of materials and forces including things that explode, things that rust, things that burn, things that rot, things that crumble, things that break, and many, many things that can burn you, crush you, drown you, injure you in hundreds of ways, and make you sick. The basic house itself represents a virtual picnic for countless species of bugs, rodents, plants, and fungi. At any given moment you can assume that something is viewing your shelter as food, or that at the very least, the forces of nature are actively involved in trying to recycle your home despite your best efforts to invest it with an air of permanence.
Mr. HandyPerson, focused as he is on the problems and potential disasters in your home, can occasionally project a rather dark and frightening viewpoint on home maintenance and repair. In the face of the numerous cheery people on television advising us on all manner of home-repair and do-it-yourself projects, Mr. HandyPerson takes the stern and unpopular position that much of what goes wrong in your house is probably your own fault.
Mr. HandyPerson believes that when you chose to live in a completely unnatural environment built to resist time, the elements, gravity, and predators, by default you accepted the responsibility and joined the futile resistance against the forces of nature. Though the war with nature is absolutely hopeless, we may often win small battles and, through creativity and inventiveness, beguile ourselves for an entire lifetime into believing that we have won, or at least successfully postponed our ultimate defeat. Very cheerfully, Mr. Handy Person points out: (1) to begin with, we don’t live that long; (2) inanimate objects often decay at much slower rates than people; and (3) many things that break can be repaired temporarily. Mr. HandyPerson feels that his is the deeper optimism, based as it is on a clear understanding of the ultimate futility of the tasks before us.
Rejecting The Whole Package
Mr. HandyPerson is generally inclined to avoid fits of pique due to the excessive energy drain they inflict upon him. Once in a while, however, he gets his dander up about something and can’t resist firing off an indignant-consumer letter to some company he feels has crossed the line.
Recently, he felt compelled to write to Satco Products of Brentwood, New York. Satco sells a wide array of hardware, lamp parts, hinges, brackets, and so forth. Rather than selling these things in boxes or bags (or just unpackaged, for that matter), they shrink-wrap them onto a display card. The item that sent Mr. HandyPerson over the edge was a lamp harp that required more than ten minutes of unwrapping and picking off the pieces of plastic wrap that clung to the various parts. The card was not recyclable due to the remaining plastic wrap on it.
In the past, Mr. HandyPerson has encountered similarly packaged hinges and brackets from the same company that included small screws annoyingly stuck in the plastic wrap. He meant to write Satco then, but forgot. This time he wrote that, as a regular and substantial consumer of their products, he thought his suggestions should carry some weight, and that the good people at Satco should sit down in a room and try opening some of the damn packages themselves. While not directly threatening a boycott, he implied that it would be a cold day in hell before he bought another Satco product, unless they made the packaging more environmentally sound and consumer friendly. Mr. HandyPerson hopes not to be forced to utilize the vast resources of the Mr. HandyPerson Publishing Empire to bring this company to its senses, but he will if necessary.
Growling About Graffiti
If you, like Mr. Handy Person, are the occasional target of graffiti “art,” here are some helpful hints:
- Try to remove it or paint over it immediately. “Taggers” seem to have a competitive ethic; they tend to “mark” where someone else has marked earlier. If you watch “Nature” on PBS, you will no doubt comprehend the natural roots of this behavior. Cats and canines do it, too.
- Try to keep fresh paint close at hand in colors that match the exterior painted surfaces around your home, including utility poles and city trash cans if they are located nearby. Water-based paints are the easiest to work with and they make it easier to clean the brushes.
- If graffiti are sprayed on enameled metal or other impermeable surfaces (like terrazzo), furniture refinisher and fine steel wool or rags will remove paint or ink. Don’t breathe the refinisher, though, because it’s pretty toxic. Wear rubber gloves, too.
- If you pray to any particular gods, do so, asking that graffiti not show up on brick or stonework since there is almost no way — short of sandblasting — to remove paint from stone surfaces completely. A wire brush on soft stone, like sandstone, may help. A wire brush and furniture refinisher on harder surfaces will remove some, but not all, of the paint. Mr. HandyPerson hates the thought of painting natural stone- or brickwork, but in extreme cases it may be the only solution.
- When a tagger scrawls on your front steps, “Remove this and I will bomb your house,” he is just bluffing. Or at least the one who tagged Mr. HandyPerson’s front steps was. Hope yours is, too.
Nature Is Not The Only One Who Hates A Vacuum
Mr. HandyPerson has just recently pulled another perfectly serviceable Hoover carpet sweeper out of the trash, cleaned it up, and put on a six-dollar part, and now he has another vacuum to use as a “loaner” the next time he has to repair one for a client. He has a hard time understanding why anyone would throw out a working vacuum without first attempting to put in a clean bag or to replace the belt that powers the beater bar — two extremely basic and not at all intimidating tasks associated with responsible vacuum-cleaner ownership (and virtually the only problems Mr. HandyPerson has discovered in the six cleaners he has salvaged in the last four years).
What does this say about society? Is evolution reversing? Do we throw out a lamp when the bulb blows? (Actually, some people do. You find these things out when you crawl around in dumpsters like Mr. HandyPerson, looking for the still-useful castoffs of people who seem incapable of linear thought.)
It is disturbing to know that with all the great developing consciousness about recycling, many folks have not extended the concept beyond paper, bottles, and cans. Though throwing them away may provide some distorted boost to the economy in the short run, Mr. HandyPerson believes that vacuum cleaners are, in fact, a finite resource — like practically everything else. So here’s his admittedly unoriginal advice on vacuum cleaners: (1) as always, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; (2) if it is broken, try to fix it before throwing it away; (3) try not to break it in the first place by making it do things it’s not meant to do; (4) in analyzing a carpet-sweeper problem, start with the simplest solutions first (Is it plugged in? Is the bag bulging out or filled well over the “full” line? Is something stuck in the beater-bar compartment? Is the little rubber belt broken? Is the outlet into the bag clogged with pine needles and cat hair?); and (5) try actually reading the instructions when you get the thing in the first place. There is a reason why these things come with written operating instructions, and it’s not just because of high unemployment among technical writers.
P.S. Is Mr. HandyPerson the only one who finds a strange existential meaning in the exercise of pulling vacuums out of the trash?
What Are You Worth? . . . And Who Do You Think You Are?
As a person who has never been of high enough economic class to live in a place that was already fixed up, I learned (and was taught) to fix things myself. The use of tools was firmly implanted at an early age. I got into the handyperson business some years ago, by accident, when someone offered to pay me to help fix something I was fully prepared to fix for free as part of the social responsibility that accompanies possession of (and familiarity with) tools. As I was not in the habit of hiring people to fix things in my own home, it had never crossed my mind that a lot of other people did.
When you are self-employed, it is always difficult to determine how and what you should charge for your work. You must figure out what is reasonable, fair, and expected, and what will allow you to make a living as well. Very quickly you find out that there are many considerations that can conflict. What is reasonable may not be fair in some cases, and what is reasonable and fair may not be expected. And sometimes what is reasonable, fair, and expected does not allow you to make a decent living. Then when you start charging what you need to support yourself, you run into the fairness issue because you lose some clients who can’t afford you anymore.
You can look at what others doing similar work are charging, or you can speculate boldly about “what the market will bear.” Neither approach really offers much of a solution. The fact is, the work I do as a handyperson is worth wildly different amounts depending on the client, the particulars of the task involved, and many other factors. Say you have a sticky door that has been annoying and confounding you for some years, and you finally get me to fix it. Three years of frustration, two dropped bags of groceries, and bruised knees on several occasions might add up to, say, fifty dollars — and worth every penny to you. On the other hand, you might think, “Hey, he jiggled it around, tightened a couple of screws, and squirted some oil on something, and now he’s charging me fifty dollars?”
And then there is this business about saving lives. I do it all the time by fixing something before it kills someone, causes a floor to collapse, or starts a fire. Do I factor this into my hourly rates? Have I saved a marriage by finally fixing the worn drawer on his side of the dresser? I once fixed someone’s personal vibrator, which had a dangerously frayed electric cord, thereby saving her from a potentially shocking experience. She feels I probably saved her life. Do I charge more for this? Should I collect royalties on future use?
There are also those situations in which someone calls me up with a problem I know I can explain over the phone. Do I just do it, or do I say, “I’ll be right over,” and start the meter running? Do I talk to them for half an hour and then bill them? Being uncomfortable in the role of a scumbag, I just talk to them and don’t charge. But since I am not a charity (“I’m a business!” I keep telling myself), how do I pay myself for the time and information I’ve given?
For the most part, I haven’t taken on new clients in the last four or five years, and from time to time I have to communicate new rates to my regular clients. This is always a little embarrassing, so I use excuses like the hidden costs of doing business, inflation, and once even the cost of cat food. To my knowledge, no one has dumped me yet because of my rates, although I’m sure a few people call me less often than when I charged half as much. Usually what predicates the rate increase is some awareness that, yet again, I am another year older and deeper in debt. Should I take that out on my clients, or should I get into another line of work that pays better? I don’t know. Clearly, to those of my clients who refer to me as a “living national treasure” and a “hero” (I’m not making this up), I should stay in the business and charge what I must. But to those who think of me as the weird guy who comes over to fix things and won’t let them buy a new vacuum cleaner before he’s had a chance to tinker with the old Hoover, it may occasionally occur that there must be other weird people out there who would cost less and not be so opinionated.
Could be. But would they care as much about your old Hoover? Would you give them the keys to your house? Could you seriously ask them about where to hang your artworks or ply them for decorating tricks? These qualities have to be worth something. I just don’t know what, and nobody else does, either.
Strolling On The Shoulder Of The Information Superhighway
Mr. HandyPerson is not against high technology. Nor is he for it. He likes things that make his life easier without creating other problems of equal, but different, scope. He regards nearly all technical innovations with high skepticism until they meet that criterion. He is often underwhelmed by bells and whistles.
Case in point: cordless phones. They don’t work at his house, which is a half mile from a radio transmission tower, bordered by electric trolley lines, and situated at an intersection between two streets carrying a full complement of traffic equipped with car phones and CB radios. Of the three cordless varieties he tested (including a high-end Sony), all made phone calls sound interplanetary. Needs work. Interim solution: long telephone cords and letting the answering machine (which works) pick up calls when he’s in the shower or down in the garage.
Mr. HandyPerson is only slowly adjusting to the age of computers and desktop publishing, even though his newsletter is part of this new phenomenon. Mostly other people do the computer stuff, since Mr. HandyPerson never did learn how to type worth a damn. His 1950s-era IBM electric typewriter (noncorrecting) still works fine with no service (ever), and with practice he can grind out forty or fifty words a minute on it. He prefers writing on ruled legal pads, however, and is faster at it. In many ways, he is a curmudgeon and a Luddite, though he tries to remain somewhat open to new ideas. He doesn’t have a fax or “E-mail capability” since he likes to write and receive letters. He is comfortable with the speed and dependability of the U.S. Postal Service and does not necessarily answer the phone just because it’s ringing. He doesn’t have a beeper or a car phone; he likes to think and listen to music in the car. Sometimes he goes to wilderness areas specifically to be out of touch with the “communications network.” So far, he has not been struck down by lightning.
And truthfully, he is not totally at ease with the idea that his home may one day be an exit ramp off the “Information Superhighway” (or an on ramp, for that matter), and “interactive” television seems to him like overkill in a society where people have trouble conversing civilly with each other. He is not specifically against any of these things, but he is not fooled into thinking that they are the solution to anything. They are just happening, and maybe some good will result, or not. It is always dangerous to ignore the present realities, but it is even more dangerous, he thinks, to pretend that technology will fix things we are too confused or too hurt to fix between our separate hearts.
In Mr. HandyPerson’s mind, technology works when it allows us to focus more intently on our higher calling as humans: to love each other better. All else is fluff and blather. The information age is occurring within the context of appalling ignorance about what’s important in life. When that changes, Mr. HandyPerson will embrace the information age enthusiastically. In the meantime it remains, like cordless phones, on probation.
Wear Me Out, Wear Me Down
One day we wake up and realize we are much older and more craggy than we thought possible. In fact, we look a lot like our parents: we move slower, some parts have started to show serious wear and tear, and not everything works properly all the time.
Sometimes this process happens with our homes, too, when we realize that the room we just painted seven years ago has developed smudges, scratches, cracks, chips, and a general aura of decline.
For a decade or more in Mr. HandyPerson’s young adulthood, he never lived anywhere long enough to have to paint anything twice, but in some parts of his current home of nineteen years, he’s due for his third or fourth “remake.” He knows that, like the Golden Gate Bridge, it will never actually be “done.” This is pretty much true of all homes, if you stay in one place long enough.
Mr. HandyPerson has always used his home as a learning lab. He acquired many of his painting and repair skills in the past by living in appalling slums that required lots of work just to become livable. He learned to fix gas stoves and dishwashers when his broke down. His refrigerator has never failed to operate properly in its thirty-year life, so he knows nothing about refrigerator repair. He knows about termites because he found them munching on the building where he lives. He doesn’t know about composting because he doesn’t have a yard.
There is no advanced degree or school for handypersons. One gets more adept by a process that involves curiosity (how does that thing work? — let’s take it apart and see), poverty (fifty bucks to fix this vacuum?), and accidentally having the right tools and parts (or finding out where to get them after the fact).
Eventually one accumulates enough tools and know-how to become a little daring and try totally new challenges. Or go into business. Or write about it. The most important aspect of this gradual evolution is the ability to know when you don’t know something. This will keep you from, among other things, electrocuting yourself, poisoning yourself, causing structural damage to your home, or ruining something that might otherwise have been repairable. (If one is as incorrigible as Mr. HandyPerson, one will need to nearly electrocute oneself, mildly poison oneself, nearly break one’s neck, almost cause someone’s back porch to fall down, and completely destroy at least three small appliances to find one’s limits. Others may learn more quickly.)
It’s fun and useful to know how to fix things, and it’s helpful in giving us the feeling that we have some control over our lives and environment, even though mostly we don’t. Mr. HandyPerson thinks that fooling ourselves at least some of the time is a basic survival tool. The truth may well set us free, but the key to happiness in life is a healthy dose of self-delusion whenever necessary. And hand tools, of course.
