"Selbst Ist Die Frau" - The Do It Your Selfer!

Selbst ist die Frau...

A phrase that is often said in German when a woman does a man´s work in her own house i.e. electrical, tiling, carpentry, etc. Well, why not?.... men should not complain about that, right!? For me, it is simply playing with handy works around the house. I find it important for a woman to learn a few basic things on how to repair something in her household. It is my motto, if a man can do it, a woman can do it too! Not all, but maybe a few. And besides, it is economical when you can do a petty chore rather than calling a professional help.

An exciting chore....

I have been often confronted with such small jobs and I found it very exciting to be able to repair or do something by myself. My father was a construction supervisor of a huge construction conglomerate in the Philippines building bridges and roads in Riyadh. When I was small, I used to watched him while making furniture for our own use and then stenciled/painted them with designs. I knew then I would like to do that too. In my teenage years, I have been learning crafting as well as carpentry and still learning til now. I know how to cut the tiles and do the tiling myself. I also did some carpentry gigs when I didn´t know what to give on my husband´s birthday.

A simple electrical chore...

Today, I am sharing a diy work that I did yesterday. We are moving to a newly -built apartment and I would like to bring along 2 chandeliers given to me by my mom in-law. They are vintage lights that I didn´t want to leave just like that. We have 5 chandeliers in the house but I will leave the 3 behind. So while hubbz was busy doing his own house repairs, I made the un mounting of the lights.

The first one would have been easy that I didn´t even turn-off the fuse, simply disconnected the wires, and wrapped them with electrical tapes. I was confident that it was an easy task but the chain and the hook was too short that I was forced to loosen the chain. I was sweating a lot because I couldn´t take it off the hook on the ceiling. There was the cap that camouflaged the wires and I couldn´t remove it either. If I would have removed it, I will ruin the whole purpose of the cap hiding the wires. The chain was so hard that even the two pliers didn´t help. My other hand that was holding the whole chandelier was already tired of the weight... I imagined and wondered how I installed the light because I did it myself many years ago. Later on after about half hour, I was able to remove it from the the ceiling, what a relief!!!

Nope, I was not done yet....

And that was not all, I had to replace it with this light above. This one was easy because the hanging lamp was simple . I checked the bulb and it worked. End of the job upstairs.

The 2nd light waiting to be unmounted....

I am not done yet with the 2nd one in the guest bedroom. But I have removed the cap to see how I´d do the job.

It was tiring and I have to rest my right arm.... I´ve had an over-fatigue for holding the light upstairs...lolololol!

The third chandelier....

We have this 3rd chandelier in the master bedroom, but I think I will leave this behind because it is hard to clean and it accumulates lots of dust that every time I brush the crystals, they fall down because they used a thin wire for each row...hahaha.

A cleaning spray making life easier...?

There is a spray tho that should make life easier... but it is complicated too, which meant I had to remove the bed mattress and spread the cloth on the floor, spray the crystals and the dirt will just drip down. Just simple? No no no... you still have to see whether all the dust clinging are gone from the crystals and it is an annoying job because every time I clean each crystal, they fall off the floor. When we moved here, the three chandeliers, one hanging in the bedroom above and two in the living room were already on the ceiling when we moved here almost 3 decades ago.

We are not getting younger.....

Could you imagine cleaning all these crystals?.... I mean, I am a retiree and to think I could relax in my retirement years, I was wrong to think that way. When I still have my corporate job and Steemit was not around yet, I was even able to do blogging and did crafts as well as gardening. Nowadays, we wanted to change our lifestyle and have more quality times in the coming years. So we are moving to a new flat with no garden but since the balcony is bigger I´ll still be able to continue my container gardening.