Yep, DIY can be a boon. I’m finally building cabinets for my office to finish it. So far I’ve spent $500 for oak, $300 for a planer from the pawn shop, $150 for a pocket hole jig and screws, $150 for a new second router, $150 for water based stain and finish, $100 for drawer slides, $100 for new cabinet making router bits, and I’m not done yet. Still drawers to go and need more materials. Then at Menards I saw a cheap cabinet on sale for $99. Of course mine will support a car and quality is not cheap. Kinda like when I tried growing potatoes in the garden. When I got all done and had a sack full after the growing season, I noticed they were on sale at the grocery store for 99 cents for 10 pounds. Never grew them again.
But its not the money, its the experience. Like mountain climbing.
Your story reminds me of a weekend I spent saving $200. One winter a galvanized water pipe split under my house and I was sure that I could take care of it myself when the plumber estimated the repair at $200 and wouldn’t get to it for a week. I went at the job early Saturday morning working in the cold mud and after cutting the leaking section I began twisting one end to remove it and caused a joint further back in the line to break. Section by section every time I attempted to twist a piece of pipe loose a distant joint would break. I took a cold shower that night and got up Sunday morning and bought enough CPVC pipe to replace all the hot water pipes under the house and finished late that night. Monday I realized that if I had worked all day Saturday and Sunday at the shop doing work that was there to be done I could have made $500+ dollars.
Can’t use PVC for water here either, also can’t use the cheaper copper either you have to use the thicker grade. However the recently approved PEX which is cheap and very easy to run.
If I had knotty pine cabinets that were still in good shape , I would feel no need to replace them.
What is wrong with furniture from the Eisenhower administration? I’m from the FDR administration.
How well you do financially is more a function of what you spend than what you make. The more money you make, the more you are taxed, they have not figured out how to tax what you save.
With OPEC cutting production to drive up the price of oil, you’d think people would think ahead and stick with fuel efficient cars.
As far as liberal arts education goes, we just started a Medical Scholars program where I work, because we think it’s pretty important to teach ethics to future doctors. Our pre-med honors students love the program, because many of them see the importance of learning about philosophy, art, and history.
But @bing, now you got all these cool tools to build another quality cabinet! Or a table, or paneling in the foyer or, or, or… That’s another upside in my book!
You may have gotten away with that $200 repair if a plumber did it… Or you may have had that $200 bill run to $1000 because the plumber busted everything you busted trying to fix the pipe. You just don’t know. Now you have a brand new water line. Hopefully you used C-PVC as that is rated for hot water while PVC should only be used with cold.
BTW, I prefer PEX with Shark Bite O-ring fittings. A bit more cost but they make the connections very easy.
Yes, I recall using CPVC and it has been legal heare for quite a while. My repair was done more than 25 years ago. And PEX is code legal here now. I see plumbers hauling it on their trucks.Fifty years ago when galvanized pipe and hard copper were the only alternatives a plumber was something of an artististic engineer to cut and join the pipes to fit. And for sure with galvanized pipe repairs a plumber needed to be quite talented, where even I can install PVC to function and look acceptable.
I’m one of those that goes to a shop to have stuff done to the car and calls someone to work on the house.
Sure, I MIGHT have been able to replace my water heater last month, if it would have been a simple replacement, with a buddy or two to help. BUT, the pipes coming out of the floor were too close together to allow a simple drop-in replacement.
Which is why I was glad I called someone to do the work for me. The guy was waiting on me to get home at 4:30pm, with a trip out to Lowe’s to get the water heater I wanted(a tall 40gal was cheaper, and just as narrow as the 30gal I was going to get), we headed back to my house to install it. The installer had to run back out to Lowe’s to get some more material due to the placement of the new water heater(it basically turned into a custom fitting job), but was back quick enough to keep working. After all was said and done, he left my house about 8:30pm.
I doubt, even with help, I could have had that done in that amount of time, even if it was a drop in replacement, let alone the custom work that was needed.
I’m a DIYer. I replaced my water heater in January in Minnesota a few years ago. I got lucky. There was no snow on the ground so I was able to pull the trailer with my lawn mower to my walk-out basement with not problem. And load up the old one to pull it around front the same way. No stairs or nuttin’ to worry about. Just used a hand cart. Now I’m in a race with the weather but looks like I’ll lose. Oh, I brought it home from Menards in my car/trailer.
I had lowes put in a new water heater, 8 year warranty, extra 4 years warranty for $75, Plus $65 for city inspection,they did a good job, took away the old water heater, happy with the cost vs do it myself. @bing so funny to me you do not call it a hot water heater, as many do, if the water is hot, why do you need to heat it? ie no such thing as a hot water heater. Now to keep it car related,
Well he sat down and wrote another verse to the song
And he sent it to me,
And after reading it,
I realized that my friend had written the perfect
Country & western song
And I felt obliged to include it on this album
The last verse goes like this here:
Well, I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison
And I went to pick her up in the rain
But before I could get to the station in my pickup truck
She got run ned over by a damned old train
One consideration for me in whether to do a job myself or hire it done is how I want to allocate my time. Time is a valuable resource. In my own situation, when I was first hired in 1965 at the university where I served my entire career, teaching was to be the most important part of our job. However, by the time I retired in 2011, being published became of utmost importance if one was to keep one’s job. New faculty were given lighter teaching loads than what I was assigned. When I brought this to the attention of.my department head, I was told that the newly hired faculty were doing research. I then showed my department head my list of publications and asked about the publications of the new faculty. I was then informed that new faculty needed time to start their research agendas. As a matter of personal pride, I kept up my research, but I also kept my reputation as a teacher. To me, this became a.higher priority than doing repairs to the car or to the house. For me, it is a matter of time investment. Now that I am retired, I have found too many things to do that I still don’t have time for car maintenance or house repairs. In fact, I may try to find a job so I can retire from retirement.
