Celebrating Failure

1. Recently, my wife and I have been doing home renovations. The toughest project during our renovations have been doing the bathroom. We have run into many problems and failures throughout the process. The first failure I had was not being able to turn off the water due to a broken shut off valve. I didn’t know it was broken and I thought I turned off the water to the sink and then took off the supply line. Water started spraying everywhere! I ended up having to shut off all the water to the house and replace the shut off valve. Once we got the shut off valve replaced and the old vanity out we turned the water back on. I didn’t know you had to put the P trap back on but I found out! My wife was in our other bathroom washing her face and I walked by the bathroom and I heard water hitting the floor. I walked into a flooded bathroom and the water ended up in our bedroom. This was our biggest failure. The next failure I ran across was after I took out the old sink and realized the tile stopped at the vanity and didn’t go underneath so I had a big hole where the vanity once was so I had to either finish the tile or re do the flooring entirely. My wife decided we would put new flooring down. Once we decided on the flooring we had to figure out how to make the hole even with the rest of the floor. Luckily, we had old flooring left over from our recent laundry room renovation, which worked perfectly. The next failure we came across was finding flooring that matched. We bought two boxes of washed oak dove flooring from Lowe’s without realizing one was much lighter than the other. The employee at Lowe’s said that’s how those boxes were. Some were light some were dark. We returned the dark one in hopes of getting another light box but they were all out and weren’t going to get a shipment for a week. When the shipment came in someone bought all the boxes before we could buy one so I had to search all over town for the right box. After I got the correct boxes I had to take up the flooring I had already laid to get all the same colors. Once I got to the toilet I approached another failure. I couldn’t cut the flooring around the toilet and make it look nice so I had to remove the toilet and place the flooring underneath. Currently in this project the failures I am working on are getting the trim on the walls and putting in the new vanity. I didn’t prepare so my drill is being charged.

2. From this experience I have learned many handyman skills such has how to lay flooring, basic plumbing, and how to replace a toilet. I also learned that I should be prepared to do this better. Having my drill die would have never happened if I was more prepared. I have learned how to do things myself and the joy you get from completing something even if it is something small.

3. I think failure is necessary to grow as a person. It is much easier to learn from failure or a mistake than it is to learn from something that goes perfectly. It is definitely embarrassing to fail but it is more embarrassing to not try something you aren’t sure you can do. Normally, when I encounter failure I get really down on myself then I try to do better the next time.  This class has helped me with failure because it has shown me everyone fails but what matters is how you react to it and if you give up after you fail. Also, this class has made me do things that aren’t in my comfort zone, which I am thankful for.