DDTY: Don’t Do This Yourself

May 6, 2025July 22, 2025 RilalyLeave a comment

2020 was a huge year in the DIY (Do-it-Yourself) industry. We spent so much time inside, isolated, that we spent record amounts on DIY tools and accessories to accommodate what we thought might be our new reality. We spent so much time inside, isolated, that people who rarely used a tool were now purchasing power tools. Faucets, kitchen cabinets, and toilets were flying off the shelves. Home Depot saw a 20% increase in net sales, and Lowe’s saw a 24.2% increase. We spent record amounts on DIY tools and accessories to accommodate what we thought might be our new reality.

I thought it might be a revolution in individual empowerment, but the number one answer given to pollsters on this subject was “[I] finally having the time for it.” Translation, I always knew how to do this stuff, I just never had time for it before. The numbers reflect that, as DIY industry numbers have plummeted since 2020 back to normal, but those of us who didn’t know what we were doing before COVID, but learned it within, took our first bite of that apple and found the flavor empowering. We found fixing things ourselves less intimidating after seeing an oaf with a mustache on YouTube explain that insulating our attic and changing our garbage disposal can be accomplished in ten easy steps.

Bob Peters didn’t know anything about plumbing, HVACs, appliances, or anything else in his home that required fixing. Anytime he had a problem, he just called an expert. Mr. Peters would’ve loved to fix his belongings in the beginning, but he never learned how to do it. His dad was probably less informed and less experienced in fixing things that he was, and Bob spent the first twenty years of his adulthood living in apartments. After purchasing his own home, Bob knew he was physically capable of fixing his fixables, but two minutes after opening these things up, he felt overwhelmed by the idea that an idiot like him could do it.

“One huge part of intelligence,” Bob often joked to friends and family who encouraged him to fix these things himself, “is knowing your limitations.”

Bob Peters wasn’t an idiot. He worked hard, and his hard-earned expertise, in his arena, was valued and well-compensated. He didn’t have the time or the wherewithal to Do-It-Yourself (DIY). During COVID, the individuals weren’t as overwhelmed as the certified, licensed experts. The wait times were insane.

“I understand your frustration, but if you knew what we were up against, you would understand.” The resultant desperation led Bob to discover the oafs with mustaches on YouTube. These oafs were licensed plumbers, certified HVAC guys, and former and current employees at the companies that manufactured the appliances Bob owned. They were experts in their field hoping to make some side money in the YouTube universe. They taught Bob that he no longer needed Mike the plumber, Leo the HVAC guy, and Craig the fix-it-guy to fix everything in his home. He could do some of this himself. The idea that an unlicensed, uncertified individual could fix the small things in his home “by following these steps” was a revelation to Bob Peters, and the only question left for him was how far do I take this?

We’re not licensed plumbers, yet we can fix some of the majors, and most of the minors, in a little under an hour with the assistance of the ideal YouTuber. Bob even found that messing with electricity isn’t as scary as he thought it was. He maintained a healthy respect for electricity, but that healthy respect was a healthy fear prior to an oaf with a mustache informing him that as long as he followed “these necessary steps,” the electrical world wasn’t as foreign and scary as he thought it was.

The problem for Bob was that as healthy as his home, and now his car, were now through DIY maintenance, he could never maintain his own health. “How far do I take this?” he asked himself when he experienced yet another setback, a level of pain that suggested he was going to have to endure yet another emergency room visit.

Bob’s life devolved to seemingly endless trips to doctor’s offices, rushes to emergency rooms, and some hospital stays. The routine was so demoralizing, painful, and tedious that in the midst of Nurse Nancy attending to him yet again, he said, “I just have this feeling that this is my life now.”

Those employed in health-related institutions gain knowledge, wisdom, and a level of expertise from books, professors, and personal experience, but they are methodical sorts who can leave a fella waiting, in pain, for thirty-to-forty minutes. I know what you’re thinking, a thirty-to-forty wait isn’t such a bad thing in the grand scheme of things, but when you’re in excruciating pain, each click of the minute hand feels endless. These doctors and nurses further complicated Bob’s life with all of their monitoring. They suggest that they need to keep us, sometimes overnight, to monitor the effects of our medicinal and procedural treatments. Bob Peters just got sick of the whole shebang, and when he experienced yet another flair up, he wondered “How far can I take this DIY stuff?”

He’d been through the process of having a catheter inserted into his nether region so many times that he joked, “I could probably do this myself at this point” to Nurse Nancy the last time she helped him through the painful procedure. He repeated that joke, in his head, as he waited in the hospital room that last visit, as they monitored his levels. He then repeated that joke to his friends and family when they asked how his last visit went, and he ended up repeating that joke so often that when he experienced another flair up, he began seriously contemplating it. Even though his friends said, “You’re not seriously considering this are you?” He said no, and he meant it, but now that he was in need yet again, and he thought about going through all the typical procedures again, he began seriously considering it.

The beauty of YouTube is that they list for us the bullet points of most DIY projects. Most viewers at home were so uninformed we didn’t even know there were bullet points and finding them proved an empowering revelation. The one caveat that experts list for anyone considering YouTube-style DIY fixes is that oafs with mustaches often don’t cover variables well.

Bob came to our attention after experiencing just such a variable. He consulted a YouTube video that instructed him how he could insert a catheter from the comfort of his own home. The oaf with a mustache covered the basics, the principles behind it, and a number of caveats and variables, but he neglected to cover whatever led to Bob experiencing what he called “a warm rush of liquid” that occurred shortly after he inserted the catheter.

“I didn’t hear a pop,” Bob told Nurse Nancy, “But that warm rush of liquid concerned me, and I’ve been urinating blood since. And, it ain’t stopping.” Although he managed to drive himself to the emergency room, Bob characterized his pain as a ten on the pain scale. “I always characterize the pain I feel as a ten, don’t we all, but the pain I’m experiencing right now gives me new perspective. I’m going to go ahead and edit all those previous pains as sevens now.”

Fearing the worst, Bob suggested that Nurse Nancy have the doctor, “Check to see if I punctured one of my testicles.” Those in charge of making preliminary guesses, guessed that Bob didn’t do anything as drastic as that, and he probably scratched something or popped a boil of some sort, but they knew that without further analysis, the possibilities were endless.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the details of this furthered analysis, but suffice it to say that Bob found an answer to the question, “How far do we take this?” As a relatively new advocate for Doing-It-Yourself, Bob probably sounded like an evangelist on feelings of empowerment inherent in being able to fix your own fixables. Even after his episode, he would stand behind the DIY sword and shield, but he would encourage those of us who ask ourselves “How far do we take this?” to ask one crucial question: “What’s the penalty for error?”

Bob would probably add that even in the age of oafs with mustaches on YouTube, AI, and the resultant sense of individual empowerment inherent in fixing it yourself that there is still, at this point in human history, as of yet devoid of superhumans melding with AI, a need to avoid traveling in areas we don’t belong. As much as the not-easily-intimidated crowd hate to admit it, there is still a need for knowledge and expertise in certain arenas. There is still a need for professional analysis, waiting on those with firsthand knowledge, experience, aptitude, and all of that monitoring for the effects of all of the above. What’s the penalty for incorrectly installing a garbage disposal? What are the penalties for making errors in trying to fix an HVAC, their electricity, or their plumbing? “Go ahead and pay attention to all those ‘Don’t try this at home’ disclaimers that oafs with mustaches list on their YouTube videos before they start in,” Bob might add, “because some drains are more intricate, delicate, and indispensable than others.”

DIY Garbage Disposal Installation: It Ain’t Easy

June 10, 2024June 18, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

“I done got my ying yang broke,” I would call out to my apartment managers. “Send Scully!”

“Why do you pay rent to an apartment complex?” my friends would ask me over the course of twenty years. “You’re just throwing money down a well.” This! This is one of the many reasons why, something breaks, call Scully. We don’t have to mow, shovel snow, or know how to fix things with Scully around the corner, and we’ll never know what we don’t know, unless we make the leap to home ownership. When I made that leap, I realized if my dad ever taught me anything about home maintenance, I forgot all of it in those twenty plus years I just called Scully.

And it’s possible that my dad did teach me some things, but I was so bored by it that I didn’t pay attention, or if I did, I forgot all about everything he said as soon as the thing was fixed. I’m still so bored by it, twelve years into the leap, that I forget everything I learn soon after fixing it. If you’re one of us, and you’re tired of paying the Scullies of the world to fix it for you, YouTube is your friend. If you don’t already know this, YouTube is loaded with Do-It-Yourselfers (DIY) who will show you how to fix everything from a leaky roof to your poopeé (as opposed to your pooper, which, to my knowledge, still requires professional consultation).

One of the reasons I recommend YouTube, is that one of the alternatives is the company’s step-by-step instruction manual. My favorite thing to do with a product’s instructional manual is to crumple it up and try to sink it in the nearest waste barrel from what I deem a three-point range. My crumpling process can garner unwanted attention, as I passionately express the bottled up rage these vague, incoherent little pamphlets have caused me over the years. I can do this now, because the Do-It-Yourselfer videos provide so much more clarity.

These DIY videos don’t just instruct us how to fix our appliances and make better homes and gardens, they show us. They show us the difference. “This is a bolt,” they say to explain that which a product’s manual assume we already know, “and this is the difference between a bolt and a washer.” If they don’t say such things, you can see the difference. They’ll hold the bolts and screws in their hands, so you can see the differences in sizes before you start screwing on and screwing up. They’ll also suggest that you might want to consider borrowing your neighbors’ tools before you start, because the “tools” the companies provide are often so basic that they’ll only make your job harder.

One warning before you start searching for these videos, almost every DIY guy will begin their video with, “[This] is pretty easy, IF you know what you’re doing.” Okay, but if we knew what we were doing, we wouldn’t have clicked on your video. For those of us who don’t know what we’re doing, they’ll add, “And I’ll show you how in one-hundred and twelve simple steps.” My guess is that most DIY guys have either done this over hundred and thirteen times, or they had some handyman job where they did it frequently. We do want this level of expertise, of course, but some of the times their knowledge and expertise leads them to take some knowledge for granted.

If you’re anything like me, and you’ve spent most of your life calling Scully, I’m not going to kid you, fixing most household items properly is hard, or at least they were/are for me. My apartment dwelling friends say, “Just submit your name to that ambitious, industrious kid’s weekslong wait list. It’s worth the wait, and the labor fees, to have someone else fix it properly for you.”

Another annoying refrain from DIY guys is the “Anyone can do this from the comfort of their own home.” Anyone can change a garbage disposal? Have you ever lifted one of those things? Try it. Walk into a hardware store and lift one, just for giggles. I can lift a garbage disposal, and I could probably curl it over 100 times, average weight 13.4 lbs., but –and this is a huge but— the angle of the extremely tight kitchen cabinet, beneath my old-world kitchen sink, is such that I can’t put my shoulder into it. For me, holding a 13.4 lb. garbage disposal is all forearm, and although I didn’t have to lift it over 100 times, it felt like it, because of all the holding, positioning, and twisting the task requires.

To connect a new garbage disposal, we need to lift one from a very difficult angle, position it perfectly, and twist it into a groove. “EASY? You think this is easy? DIYers around the world, do me a favor, drop the word E word from your vocabulary. As David Bowie once sang, It Ain’t Easy, at least not universally.” Some of you are probably laughing at me right now, because you think it is easy. All right, well, let’s gauge the relative term easy through another relative term, experience. How much experience have you had doing this? How much experience do you have doing that? Yeah, I can do that, and I’ve done that so often that I consider it easy. So, there’s that.

The first step, for those of us with no experience changing a garbage disposal, is to make sure your old garbage disposal is completely done. That’s right, it might not be broken, it might just be jammed. First click the overload button to reset the unit. If that doesn’t work, make sure the disposal is plugged in and the switch is working. (If you have no experience with garbage disposals, it will benefit you to run through this basic checklist before you go out and purchase a new one.) If all that checks out, find what they call an Allen wrench. Put it into the flywheel turning hole at the bottom of the garbage disposal and turn it. Turn it two to three times. If it’s a jam, you might experience a tough turn at some point. If you make it through the tough turn, and it turns with greater ease, you’ll know it was just a jam. Turn it on. If it doesn’t work initially, repeat the process (I had to do this three times on one occasion.) If that doesn’t work, your disposal might need replacing.

Taking an old garbage disposal unit out can be accomplished by most. I’m not going to drop the E word here, but if I can do it, I have to imagine there are ten-year-olds out there, who’ve never heard the term garbage disposal, that can remove one. Follow the DIY guy’s instructions by unscrewing all of the this and thats, disconnect the tubes, and then twist the old garbage disposal out. (Note: Be careful that you don’t crack any PVC pipes.) It’s at this point, right here, when my fellow apartment dwellers say that they would just hire some ambitious, industrious kid to do the rest. I would’ve laughed hard at that ten years ago, but I nod solemnly now. “It’s probably for the best,” I now say, “because putting a new disposal on is hard. Don’t listen to the DIYers and their E words. Not everyone can do this.”

To install a new garbage disposal, you have to position it just so, and twist. It sounds easy, but as I said that heavy thing becomes heavier through all the trial and errors. If it weren’t so heavy, it might be easy, but it’s hard to hold up there for as long as those of us who don’t know what we’re doing to slip it into the waiting groove perfectly for that final twist. If your cabinet is as tight as mine, you might try eleven to thirteen angles before you realize that there is only one angle that will work. You might look at the top of the unit, five to seven times, and try to line it up. It Ain’t Easy.

It’s frustrating, and yet it’s so frustratingly simple that it will become so frustrating that you might reach a point where you consider it impossible. If you reach that point, it’s time to take a break. If age has taught me anything it’s that it’s okay to take breaks, and in some cases, it’s almost mandatory. We’re conditioned by parents, employers, and other authority figures to think in terms of time constraints. Time constraints also define competency and mastery of a project, “I had some problems, sure, but I got it all done in under an hour.” It’s all true, but it’s also true that if you’re as frustrated as I was, you reach a point of diminishing returns. What are you going to accomplish beyond exhausting every profane word you’ve learned from high school? If you continue, trying to achieve a respectable time frame, you’re probably going to be easily satisfied with a half-ass job just to get ‘er done, then after you calm down, you’ll go back and do it correctly.

To clear the mind and approach the project from a new perspective, I suggest taking two breaks. Watch an episode of your favorite comedy in the first one. It doesn’t matter if it’s a movie, show, or podcast. You need to get yourself laughing. In the second break, one that occurs after another thirty minutes of frustration, try punching a punching bag for thirteen minutes. After thirteen minutes of picturing that DIY guy’s face on your punching bag, coupled with attaching some offensive terms to his “Easy” assessments, you should be able to approach this project with a clear mind.

If you take nothing from what I’ve written thus far, remember these two words: The Plug. All garbage disposals come with a plug. The manufacturers add a plug on every the garbage disposal, because some under-the-sink systems (sink, garbage disposal unit, and dishwasher) have the garbage disposal connect to a dishwasher. Some kitchen systems allow dishwashers to connect to the waterline independently. You will need to determine which system you have before installing the garbage disposal. Before removing the old garbage disposal take note of how your under-the-sink system is set up. If the dishwasher connects to the garbage disposal, and you didn’t know anything about the plug, your dishwasher will flood.

The DIY guy I watched probably covered this, but some of them fellers talk so much that they remind me of my eighth grade teacher. My eyes glaze over, I miss critical information, and I dismiss some of their instructions as blather. Regardless how I missed the information, I knew nothing about the plug, so I installed the garbage disposal with it still attached. When our dishwasher began flooding, we ripped that appliance apart and cleaned every single element on it. We were so confused, until I retraced my steps and realized that all of our dishwasher problems started soon after I installed the new garbage disposal. I turned to my DIY guys, and surprise, surprise, they taught me about The Plug.

If you failed to remove The Plug the first time through, it turns out that you have to undo everything you’ve done. All that frustration that led you to the most comprehensive spiritual experience you’ve ever had, that included forsaking your creator and welcoming him back into your life, was for naught. If you forgot to remove the plug, you’ll have to take the garbage disposal off, grab a screwdriver, and hammer the (expletive deleted) plug out. That sentence was so easy to write, and it was probably just as easy to read. Take it off and put it on again, it’s easy, a trained marsupial could probably do it after they’ve already done it. The reality of removing the garbage disposal, watching the DIY video guy again, taking two breaks, punching him in the mouth for thirteen more minutes, and watching my favorite comedy was as exhausting as the first time through.

The first thing I think, soon after I’m done, is some people love this. They love getting their hands dirty, doing it themselves, and they love it so much that they invent new projects for the ostensible purpose of updating, modernizing, and renovating. “I think my ceiling fan needs some updating.” Your old one still works. “I know, but it’s so old world.” You can see it on their face, and in the songs they sing while doing it, they love this stuff, and I just sit back shaking my head, asking myself: ‘Why? For God’s sakes why?’

“I’m smart, not like everyone thinks, like dumb. I’m smart and I want respect.” I’m not as dumb as I look. I can do things, other things that other people can’t. Some of the things I do are considered hard, very hard to some, but I can accomplish them with ease. I might occasionally, and accidentally, betray some level of arrogance with a look, some sort of unintended feel, or a couple of words, but whenever I start to get all full of myself, all I have to do is try to fix something in my home that everyone considers so easy to realize that I’m not half as smart as I thought I’d be at this age.