I bought this house quite a few years ago. It's an older house, and I knew it needed some work when I got it. But it's the house I wanted, and I liked the idea of owning my own home, fixing things around the house, mowing the lawn, painting, buying the right furniture, and having people over. I'm not the handiest guy when it comes to tools, but I can swing a hammer and lay down a pretty smooth coat of paint. But I'll never touch the plumbing or the electrical. I'll climb on the roof and replace a vent and put in new flashing, but I won't touch anything electrical at all - nothing more than flipping a breaker.
After a few years of the lights not staying at a consistent brightness, some of the outlets working only part of the time and others not at all, and tripping the circuit every time I made toast and coffee at the same time, I decided it was time to call a pro.
I did my homework, got some personal recommendations, and called a good electrician. He came, evaluated the whole house, making a clicking noise with his tongue every time he found something wrong. He clicked a lot. He had to borrow some extra paper from me for his clipboard to get all the notes down. This was not going to be a quick and easy fix. Sure enough, when he read his novel of disaster to me, I was facing lots of time, several trips, and the delay of my plans to retire by about 18 months.
We scheduled the first of many visits. This time, he was just going to replace the breaker box and rerun the wiring to the box so that it didn't look so much like Einstein's hairdo. He fixed it all in a few hours, gave me the bill, and then I think he started checking Craig's List on his smartphone for a new boat that he would soon be able to afford.
The next time he came back, I took him down to the basement where the breaker box was and showed him how good the wiring was and how much better the box handled the electrical loads of daily life. And then I thanked him for coming, and escorted him out the front door. He seemed a bit puzzled as he walked back to his van.
He called back to set another appointment, which we made. When he showed up, I took him back down to the basement and showed him again how well the panel was doing, and then excused him. He said something about getting to the rest of the house as I closed the door behind him.
We repeated this three more times - showing him the panel with him making some comments about the other electrical needs throughout the house, while I was quite satisfied to show the electrician how good my panel looked and then show him out the door. He's welcome to come back anytime he wants to admire the good work he did in that one part of the house.
I'm pretty proud of myself as a homeowner. (You should see my electrical panel!)
Does this seem strange to you? Are you a bit confused about how I treat my electrician? You shouldn't be. This is how we let Jesus into our lives all the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment