Ozga's Blog

Building a new home from the ground is exciting for anyone but theres more to it. What if I told you one of the main reasons I wanted to build a house was because it was newer and had less chance of needing house projects done. This sad statement was a reality for me, until six years passed and we needed to move again. Now I am in a home that was built in 1926 and a 2012 addition. I certainly will need to do housework projects for when things break now! That is what I felt like when I finally admit that I was terrible at projects around the house. My father in law built his own home and I can barely get a screw to go in straight! So genius hour was a perfect opportunity for me to try and improve on something that I feared...handyman stuff. The genius hour project can be summed up in a few words...buy the right tools. I learned this from my father in law and brother in law. They both told me to stop bing cheap and buy the right equipment to do projects around the home. The process...

The most important thing I learned about this process is "always buy the right tools." My father in law always tells me to buy the tools instead of borrowing because I will use them again. I didn't think this was going to be the case until I started this genius hour project. In the past I would try and figure out a cheaper or free solution to a home project, but now that I am a regular at Home Depot I buy the tools instead with future uses in mind. If you asked my wife what it is like watching me try and fix things around the home she would respond with, "It is painful to watch Dan fix things around the house, he has little experience and gets frustrated very easily." Knowing that is how my biggest fan feels about me doing things around the home motivated me to improve. My plan was to use technology (YouTube and DIY sites) as learning tools and other DIYers as a support group to bounce ideas and ask for help. Another important thing I have learned thr...

When we moved into our new house we we requested all the TV mounts stay, but as always when dealing with people...they were gone upon moving in. So I decided to capitalize on this shortcoming and buy a new mount and install it myself. Why you ask? Because I am a rookie handyman!  So...I went where we all go to buy a TV mount, Amazon. Found one with over 20,000 reviews and purchased it. When it arrived I put it in a closet for 3 weeks and forgot about it until I needed something to do for this blog post.  Found the box with the stud finder...insert joke now about being a stud! Just kidding. Used the stud finder and marked up the wall as to where the ends of each stud were. Drilled the holes and thought wow this is going smooth so far. How wrong I was...my house had studs that were not 16 inches apart (this is a standard distance), but 17 inches apart. This is the moment that my kids heard some choice words from me and I had to calm myself down. I realized in the ...