Replacing a faucet for instance is a no-brainer. All you need to do is turn off the water, disconnect the cold and warm ducts, remove the faucet, and install a new one in the reverse order. A piece of cake, right? Well not exactly… especially if you lack practice.
In theory, most of the little things that need fixing, look relatively easy to accomplish. But if you don’t have the experience, a simple little job can turn into a hellish affair.
Recently we purchased a relatively large TV set and we thought that it would look good hanging above our fireplace. All we needed to do was to assemble a metal bracket, set it on the wall and hang the television on it. It looked pretty easy…
But these large flat screens are relatively heavy and need to be anchored securely on the wall before you can sit back and enjoy a flick.
All I needed to do was to find the studs located behind the sheetrock and securely screw the frame onto them. But the studs loitering at the back of the wall happened to be difficult to pinpoint and my new Zircon L50 StudSensor was of no great help. It kept giving me erratic indications and the edges of the studs kept moving to new places at each new attempt.
I am pretty sure that a professional would have located the studs within minutes, but as a person who does it once in a blue moon, I failed miserably. After puncturing the wall with probably a dozen holes, I was finally able to hang the frame. Alleluia, praise YouTube!
Moral of the story:
Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice. – Anton Chekhov
If you want to be proficient at whatever you do (pétanque included), practice, practice, and practice again. Everything becomes easy after you have performed the same task a hundred times.
But the problem is, how many TV sets am I going to hang a wall in the coming years? Should I continue to practice, just in case?
Alain