In our household, we have a running joke about how I’m the “handyman” and Mr. Doughmaker is as good, if not better, at cooking as myself. It works very well for us to fill the roles that align best with our skills rather than our genders. I grew up working hard for my family’s landscaping business and I don’t shy away from a hands-on project.
Getting Our Hands Dirty
When we first bought our house, I was excited about all of the DIY projects I saw: like the 1960’s-era bathroom complete with plastic wall tiles and black vinyl flooring with rainbow speckles throughout. I could envision the cute, cottage bathroom it could someday become. Mr. Doughmaker, on the other hand, had his doubts.
That was our first project and it took two years to complete. We were fortunate that our home had two full baths so we survived just fine on one while we both remodeled. Based on our knowledge of remodeling today we assume the cost of our effort would have cost around $6,000. We managed to remove all the plastic tiles, replaced them with bead board on the bathroom walls and with subway tiles in the bath tub, painted the other shower walls with a bath-refinishing product, replaced the flooring with porcelain tile, and updated the lighting and vanity, all for about $2,000.
Yes: it took longer than we anticipated but the money we saved was well worth it with the added bonus of learning new skills which we’ve now used to update our second bathroom as well as many other household updates. Many of the new skills I learned like installing tile, building my own vanity, and fixes for plumbing issues were learned by watching YouTube videos. If you’ve got a house issue, you can bet someone has made a “how-to” on it.
Other household fixes I’ve found solutions for on YouTube include a noisy dryer, endless mower repairs, and replacing light fixtures. For me it’s rewarding to see the money we’ve saved when we could have called a contractor for these rather “small” tasks.
When Calling A Contractor Is Unavoidable
We’ve certainly used contractors for the larger projects when necessary but we usually attempt to fix it ourselves. One recent example of this was when we returned from vacation two weeks ago to find that our well line had broken and we were losing water into our lawn. We immediately contacted our favorite plumber who identified the problem and said we should hire a landscaper to dig the 14-foot by 2-foot by 5-foot hole we would need to access the well line. We did call a landscaper and got a quote for $2,000 to dig the hole with a back-hoe.
We decided to attempt it with shovels ourselves (after being cleared to dig by 811) and we were so glad we did. What we quickly realized was that our home, which was built in 1938, had a maze of pipes running over and across our well line. If we had brought in a back-hoe to do the digging, we very likely would have hit some of those costing ourselves many more thousands. Instead, I picked up the phone and called on some strong young men to do a days worth of work alongside us. We paid them $20/hour for a total of $240. The plumber was impressed with our handiwork and was able to replace the well line for $500. So all in, we spent $740 rather than $2,500.
If you find a contractor you like, tip them well. When you have an issue arise, they are more likely to show up quickly and work with you on a solution. Over the years, we’ve accumulated our “go-to” list of contractors alleviating that aspect of repairs.
