Finding the Beauty in Broken

As occasionally misguided DIYers, Tom and I have certainly had our share of DIYs Gone Wrong.  It’s a bit like filming Girls Gone Wild in that the next day both are filled with shame and embarrassment.

One of the first disasters we ever encountered was just a few months into dating.  My beloved Honda Accord had a squeaky window, and Tom – determined to prove his manliness, I guess – decided he would fix it to me.  I walked into my garage and there he was – with the door taken completely apart. He said, “Don’t worry, Lins!  It’s okay.  I know how to put it back together.”

Indeed, he did know how to put the door back together.  But, once he did, my squeaky window refused to roll down.  Several hundred dollars later, I appreciated his confidence but decided to leave that kind of thing to the professionals.

Over the last 12 years, we’ve had a few more DIY struggles.  As I’m thinking back, I realize that 99% of them revolve around Tom trying to fix something that has broken on one of our cars.  That’s a sign, y’all.  Don’t let Tom near your car.  Or your car’s windows.

Or even your home’s windows.

A few years ago, the glazing around the windows on the back of our house was damaged in a pretty bad hailstorm.  It didn’t hurt the actual window in any way, but the snap-in glazing was chipped and cracked on every lower level window.

At least it was on the back of our house, right?  The people on the other side of the street had their front windows damaged due to the direction the hail was hurled from the sky.  We definitely got lucky!

We honestly left it that way for a few years.  Our backyard is pretty much nothing but grass and a wooden playscape, so it’s not like anyone but us ever sees that trim.  But, I recently overhauled our concrete slab patio (you’ll see it tomorrow!), and I thought I should replace the cracked glazing while I was at it.  I found a video on YouTube that showed how easy of a DIY it was and we bought some glazing at Home Depot.

Tom decided that he would be the one to replace the glazing.  Per the video, he set to work with a flat head screwdriver and started popping out the old glazing strips.  Three of the sides came out easily, but the bottom edge – the edge that had the most hail damage – was a little harder to get out.  I guess the hail had beaten it down into the window frame, and Tom had a hard time getting the little pieces out.

“I really should stop,” he told me.  “I’m going to pick at this a little too much, and then…”

BAM!

You can see where he was picking at it, right?  Luckily it’s tempered glass since it’s right by our back door, so it spider webbed all the way through but didn’t fall out in shards.

Tom started calling glass and window companies right away, and we were seriously given the run around by like 5 different companies.  They would either not show up when they said they would, not return a phone call or they would return a phone call and acted like we were asking the world of them to give them our business.  The one company who would actually give us an estimate quoted $400.

Yeah, so Tom is going to attempt to DIY this again.  He found a glass company that will cut our glass for about $80 and give him the adhesives and supplies he needs to replace it himself.

The jury is still out on whether this is a good idea or not…

As we wait for him to have time to replace it, I can at least enjoy the beauty in broken.  The beauty of the broken glass pattern itself.  The beauty in Tom’s panic (and my uncharacteristic calm) in realizing that the broken window will be present in the shots I take for the Summer Home Tour – and the beauty of letting go when realizing that it doesn’t actually matter.  The beauty of having the skills to even attempt to replace something like this.  The beauty of knowing that Tom is always determined to fix anything in our lives that is broken.

What DIY disasters have you had?  And were you able to find beauty in the broken?