DIY Home Repairs (Travis Lange)

When things break, it can be scary. Not necessarily because the break is dangerous to your well being, but because the break is dangerous to your wallet. Here we will look at some tasks that may look daunting at first, but can actually be done by you!

Take this clogged drain for example. Watering is going into the sink and pooling up. This gets worse over time until it seems like it takes ages for the water to completely drain out of the sink.

Or this stained ceiling. You may be thinking, "Oh my gosh! I need to replace the whole thing!" That is not necessarily the case. Some simple primer may do the trick!

And this dried up lawn. It may seem as if you need to hire a whole gardening crew to bring it back to life, but a little bit of hard work on your end and the lawn will be green as new.

These may seem like some scary home repairs, but if you read the blog posts, I think you will find that they aren't so scary after all.

One of the most frustrating things is to brush you teeth in the morning, rinse, look down, and find a sink filled with water. You may be thinking, "What the heck! This sink is supposed to drain!" Don't worry, you don't need to call the plumber. This fix may be easier than you think.

All you might need is a pair of these needle nose pliers! Just remove the drain cover, stick it down the drain, and start pulling up the gunk. You should then find that water will start draining again! However, if that doesn't do the trick, we may have to call in the cavalry (a.k.a. the plunger).

Put the plunger over top of the drain, and push it up and down repeatedly. This should hopefully loosen up any loose gunk that may still be clogging the drain. You may need to use the needle nose pliers again to pull up some of the loosened stuff. That or fill the sink with water in an attempt to push the gunk down.

Hopefully this article has resulted in an unclogged sink! If none of these steps worked, you may want to contact a professional. Unless you know what your doing, taking apart pipes may result in a bigger, messier situation that you originally started with.

Finding a stain on your ceiling is always a concern. It most likely means some kind of leak or moisture build up. First, you have to find the cause of the leak or moisture build up and fix it. Once that situation gets resolved, we want to make the ceiling look pretty again.

First thing to do is get some stain covering primer. Spray primer is recommended as it tends to work better on the ceiling than a brush. Then spray the ceiling, and let the primer dry. If the dried primer matches the color of the ceiling, the job is done. Otherwise, you may need to repaint your entire ceiling to get a matching color.

The dreaded dried lawn. This can look like quite an intimidating task, but some gentle care may coax it back to life. First off, make sure you aren't just coming off winter. If so, the grass most likely isn't dead as it naturally turns brown in the winter. It will turn green again when summer rolls around.

However, if you grass is fried, you may need to put a little work in. You will most likely want to plant some new grass seed and put down some fertilizer. You may also want to invest in a sprinkler system so the new grass can grow and doesn't get fried again. As it starts to grow back, try to keep people from walking on it as its roots are small and not as durable.

Now just sit back, relax, and let the grass do its thing.