Dear Previous Owner of The Czar’s Royal Dacha,

Whatever it is you are doing right now, stop it. Just stop. You are an idiot and have no idea what you are doing.

To be fair, the Czar has prepared a list of examples of your blazing incompetence, and hopes that you take a moment to look these over so that you begin to understand your vast stupidity at home repair.

• In 2000, we noticed that the lights over the bar were flickering. The Czar correctly surmised this was (a) dangerous and (b) a wiring problem. Removing the faceplate from the light switch, the Czar found that you used lamp cord to form a connection to an existing hot circuit. By the way, you also connected the ground wire to the hot lead, but failed miserably in your attempt to deliver a 120 volt shock to the Czar. Luckily, the Czar was able to repair this himself in about five minutes using (take note for future reference) copper electrical wire.
• This inspired the Czar to take the cover off the electrical panel, and found that there were two breakers within that had melted. Rather than replace them, you simply pulled out the connected wires and backstabbed them into two other breakers. So that explains why the lights dimmed whenever we used the printer. No worry: the Czar fixed that for about $20 and fifteen minutes because unlike you he had that vast sum of time and money to do it right.
• Our air conditioner guy could not even explain why we were not getting any cold air from the outdoor unit during the summer. He simply shook his head and said he fixed whatever it was you did.
• When we took down your horrific masonite plywood all over the walls in the basement to put up proper greenboard, our drywaller found that the stud walls you built all around the basement were not connected together in any way, but simply leaned against each other like a house of cards.
• So it should have been no surprise to us that when the garage door opener failed, the old unit simply dropped from the garage ceiling, narrowly missing the repair technician. He studied the wreckage on the ground and found that the garage door opener had somehow been faithfully pulling the door up and down for years even through it had not been attached to anything, but simply laid on top of the garage joists.
• Oh yes, one more thing: those basement walls you leaned against each other were also supporting your suspended ceiling. This way, when our carpenter straightened them and screwed them into the foundation of the house, the suspended ceiling collapsed. Since we were going to rip out your handiwork anyway, this was not upsetting to the Czar. Thought we’d mention it just to be thorough, though.
• Thanks for using whatever homemade wallpaper paste you slathered all over the house. We know the properly made commercial-grade stuff is so expensive at a couple of bucks a vat, so you opted to use some home chemistry set to manufacture your own adhesive. Our painter had the hardest time scraping that crap off the walls in 2002, and it still periodically bubbles through the paint and has to be sanded down and touched up. He wasn’t sure what the hell you used, but the Soviet Union could have built apartment flats out of it. Also, why does it turn black when exposed to air?
• Last summer, we rebuilt the deck. The carpenter laughed hysterically and wondered why it had not collapsed. He gives you credit: supporting the cross-members with gravel was a gamble that paid off for you, rather than using proper cementitious supports. Oh, and he advises that next time, you actually screw the members to the frame rather than lay them across and let gravity hold the deck in place.
• Imagine our surprise when the bathtub faucet snapped off recently and a massive deluge of water burst out of the wall into the tub, filled with weird black chunks. Thankfully, all the water was contained in the tub and turning off the shower stopped the flow of water. But imagine our lack of surprise when the plumber told us last night that the reason the faucet snapped off was because (a) you attempted to install your own faucet and damaged the copper piping so (b) you replaced it with a section of gas pipe. Gas pipe is carbonized steel, of course, and rusted away. He was amazed it lasted this long. He was very nice, and sweated on an inexpensive copper replacement that should give us a lifetime of service…provided, of course, you don’t get anywhere near it.

What interests us about your handiwork was why you bothered. Readers of this open letter will be reassured to know the house’s foundation, structure, roofing, siding, and all the important, original stuff is great. The home is very well constructed. But your efforts to repair and improve it suggest to us that you spent every dollar buying the house, and therefore refused to spend another cent living in it. We cannot wait for your next surprise to explode through the wall, as there is nothing more delightful than seeing a repair guy bust into hysterics, take a photo of it for his colleagues, and mutter “Don’t that beat all.”

And this brings us to our advice. We do not know whatever advice you took from your broken-English grandfather on how they did things under the Ottomans, or whatever yellowed Time-Life home repair books you negotiated out of a yard sale, or whatever edited PBS home repair show you enjoyed on Betamax, but you cannot attempt to emulate that stuff yourself. The Czar believes that many home repairs and improvements can be done by the home owner, and that expensive craftsmen are not always required. But for God’s sake, spend the buck fifty to do something right, would you? At least once? Get something right? For us?

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.