A lesson in time management

Or a penny wise and 5 hours foolish. I'm all about DIY (do it yourself), I like to fix things, like to solve problems and like to not spend money if I don't have to. As a sole proprietor it's easy to get the time management thing out of whack, I don't punch a time clock, don't have a franklin planner, I just put out the fires when they show up. Also I'm very task oriented, if I start a task and don't finish it, it makes me nuts. Nor am I a good delegator, why take the time to explain a task to someone else when I can do it my way in half the time. These things do not add up to smart time, they amount to stupid time.

I'd noticed the handle slipping on the shower faucet a while back, I kept having to remove the handle, tighten the screw and put the handle back on. This was once a week or more. I had a plumber come by and give me an estimate, he said that it would run $450......... are you fucking kidding me? $450? No I think not. I'm a guy, I can do it, so I let it go. The problem got worse and this morning, despite the fact that I'm up to my ass in alligators, I brilliantly decided to deal with this task. And I had two choices, I could either:

A) Call a plumber, pay the money and go about doing what I do or I could do what I did.

B) Go online and watch 3 or 4 DIY youtube videos on replacing a Moen shower faucet cartridge. 1 half hour. Find all the tools I needed except the cartridge extractor. 1 half hour Go to home depot for the extractor thingy. $20 and 1 half hour. Run home, pull the cartridge. 45 minutes Take the cartridge back to home depot to find a replacement. $25 and 45 minutes. Run home, put the replacement back in. But drop the retaining clip behind the wall, without which the water can not be turned back on.. 1 hour plus. Go to home depot to find a retaining clip. 45 minutes. They don't have one, so I have to find a plumbing parts place, drive across town and buy the last two. 2 hours and $10. Run home, bend the first retaining clip. Look for more videos on why I'm such a dumbass on youtube. Call 3 plumbers to find one who can come today in case I screw up the last clip and in one last attempt, get the thing to work. 1 hour and a half easy. Write about it on my blog. 1 half hour. Now my goal of shipping my paintings ground is shot because today was the day. It will cost me another $200 to ship these frigging boxes which I'm too cheap to pay someone to make.

And for the record, I installed the damn thing upside down, hot is cold and cold is hot.

Next time, I'm going with A.