Do It Yourself? – Not Gonna Happen…..

anymore…

no way…

When my husband and I first got married, we bought a fixer upper duplex.  Thank goodness we were young and enthusiastic.  We figured we’d do the ‘renovating’, since we had no money, and rent out one side and become millionaires.  I cannot even begin to tell you in how many ways we were short-sighted!

 

We bought ourselves the Home Depot ‘DIY Bible’, which covered everything from how to replace a door to how to lay carpet and paint a room.  It gave estimates on the amount of time the project would take and the degree of difficulty.  Which is hysterical…

These estimates may be accurate if you are working on new construction with a group of professional contractors.  But if you are working on any home older than 25 years of age and doing it yourself, we figured out that you need to triple the amount of time it said it would take.  And the project would come out wonky.  Super.

Like the time we decided to lay carpet ourselves by renting a carpet knee kicker and using a box cutter to get the carpet to fit in the corners.  Oh, you can just imagine how beautifully that turned out!  Besides the unraveling in the corners, there were bubbles rising under the carpet, which were super-attractive, not to mention tripping hazards that could put us at risk for lawsuits from prospective tenants…

You know, with all of the projects that we did ourselves, it was pretty rare that I felt truly satisfied with the end result.  No matter the amount of time and effort that went into it.  It just never came out the way I had envisioned it.

I think that we needed to get our hands dirty and get overwhelmed in a couple DIY projects to truly appreciate the expertise and time and talent that goes into getting the job done right.  And it helps you understand why you’re forking over a good amount of cash to have someone else take care of it for you.  Believe me…you’ll be eager to open your wallet!

If you do plan on tackling things yourself, get your DIY projects done before you have children, if you have the choice or foresight!  It’s so hard to embrace the chaos that it involves with a little one underfoot.  That’s plenty of chaos already!  There’s a lot less stress when working amongst rubble if you don’t have to worry about tiny feet being pierced by old rusty nails.

If you have children and need to get some work done, either hire someone to do it properly or if you can live with it as is for a while, if it’s not causing any harm to anyone, leave it alone until later in life, when you can afford to hire someone or have the time and wherewithal to do it yourself…

Just make sure that you know that a DIY project NEVER comes out like the glossy photo on the brochure, in the magazine, etc promises it will!  It will definitely not be as easy and will not take the amount of time that is suggested!