Home Maintenance 101:

I’m Not Handy…But I Cleaned My A/C and Built a Giant Puzzle Board Anyway

If you had asked me twenty years ago about home maintenance for beginners, I would’ve laughed and given you my husband’s phone number. Turns out, being a homeowner means learning things like replacing air filters, cleaning A/C units, and accidentally becoming the kind of person who owns a drain snake.

Easy Home Maintenance Tasks Even I Can Do

I know how to cook. It’s all very basic but I haven’t poisoned anyone yet. I also know how to clean – don’t laugh, although admittedly I don’t do it regularly, just when the mood strikes and then I sit down and read until the feeling passes. I am also good for some basic yardwork and unclogging toilets or a drain. Let me tell you, that “snake tool” (i.e., Drain Snake) works wonders. It only costs five bucks, which is well worth a trip to Home Depot or Walmart to grab one.

I know where the air filters go but I can’t reach them with our four-foot step-ladder. However, Nik recently bought an 8-foot ladder so I suppose I could now be the one to change the air filters, provided I don’t lose my balance and fall. I also wanted to clean the front porch light lanterns. I was going to take some soap, water, and a green scrub sponge out to them, but Nik suggested we (i.e., he) unscrew them and bring them inside to wash in the sink. That turned out to be much easier.

Now I know that none of these activities are very impressive, but I have met adults who don’t know how to do this type of stuff. Yes, they’ve set the bar very low for me.

How We Cleaned Our A/C Unit (Without Breaking It)

It’s barely the beginning of spring but here in the Phoenix area, the temperatures have crept into the triple digits. My husband decided it was time to clean the coils on the A/C unit when temps were still in the 90s. I had never in my life cleaned my A/C unit. I assumed this was one of the jobs that people were paid to do because some sort of credentialling was required. Curious and not wanting Nik to do the job alone, I volunteered to help.

Step 1. Turn off power at the breaker.

Apparently, this is incredibly important if you don’t want to electrocute yourself. Or break your A/C unit.

Step 2. Remove outer panels.

This part was easy, although there were a lot of screws. Thankfully, we had Nik’s impact gun (which is essentially an electric screwdriver). Just don’t lose any of the millions (okay, dozens) of little screws. Our unit is essentially a square box. Thus, there are four side panels and one on the top. However, the top panel is connected to relatively short wires inside, so you have to make sure you don’t accidentally disconnect those. After removing the panels, you are left with a (nearly) empty box.

Step 3. Spray coil cleaner. Rinse.

We sprayed some coil cleaner (also available at your local Home Depot) on all the coils and rinsed them with the hose from both the inside and out. You need to be careful not to touch the coils directly because they have tiny fins made out of aluminum foil that will bend and tear very easily.

Step 4. Reassemble carefully.

When you’re finished cleaning the coils, you have to screw all the panels back on. I like to think I made the job a bit easier because the A/C unit is in a narrow walkway between a brick fence and our house and I was able to reach some areas more easily than Nik. If nothing else, I provided some comic relief…you know, once the coil fans were safely back behind their panels and he knew I wouldn’t accidentally break the foil fins.

Yard Work

I also recently joined Nik for some yard work and dragged our 14-year-old daughter along. At first she was afraid to try the hedge-trimmer (in case you don’t know, it’s like a mini chain saw). But once I explained that she wouldn’t be able to chop off her leg, she agreed to try it. After five minutes she reported that trimming the shrubs was quite satisfying because she was making the bushes even. She even said using the hedge trimmer was “really fun.” Yes, child, power tools are cool.

DIY Project: Building a Giant Puzzle Board

This next project was my favorite, but it probably isn’t something that most people need. I had bought a puzzle online based on a painting from one of my favorite artists (“The Kiss” by Mordillo at the Puzzle Warehouse). The only concern was that it was huge…as in 6,000 pieces and measuring 66 ½ x 46 ⅚ inches. Unfortunately, that was bigger than my dining room table. Luckily, I had a brilliant idea to make our very own puzzle board large enough to hold said puzzle. It would essentially be a very large piece of plywood with a raised frame made of a thin wooden board, which prevents the puzzle pieces from sliding off the edge.  After explaining my idea to my husband, we went to Home Depot for the material. We bought the largest piece of plywood and the thinnest frame we could find. First, we sanded each side of the plywood to avoid any future splinters. Then we painted each side with leftover paint we had lying around the house. One side is a grey blue, but we ran out of that so the other side is white. We painted the “frame” pieces white and screwed them into place. Unfortunately, the frame we found was a bit too thick, making the width of the board inside the frame half an inch too short to fit the entire puzzle.  So, we improvised and Nik removed the top of the border. Now I only have to worry about puzzle pieces sliding off one side instead of four.

Our puzzle arrived a couple days before our custom-made puzzle board was painted, dried, and assembled. It has been living on my kitchen table for the past 8 weeks because it has become a solo project. In the beginning, Nik and Zoe helped find the pieces and sort the other pieces into piles by color. Alas, soon Zoe declared the puzzle too big and overwhelming so it wasn’t fun. Every once in a while, they will meander over and pick up a piece or two before abandoning the project. At the time I’m writing this post, I think I’m about 90% done with the puzzle.

What I Still Don’t Know

At this point, I feel like I deserve a shirt that says “Certified Adult (Reluctantly)” (which you can get here). Or at least a few notches on my “I’m-an-Adult” card. Alas, while I am definitely not MacGyver, I’m at the very least an average-skilled home owner…I hope. This exercise now has me wondering…what other basic home maintenance skills am I missing? Drop your “everyone should know this” task in the comments – bonus points if it involves power tools or mild danger.