The other day, I was thinking about how important a good handyman is for my mental health. I used to fix things myself, but spending all my free time doing home repair was withdrawing from the limited bank account of my personal sanity. Having the house broken open for months while I picked away at it after work and on weekends was bad for morale, too. And doing the work myself was sometimes dispiriting rather than empowering—If someone else makes a mistake, even if I'm paying them, I can for whatever reason tolerate that with less frustration than when I screw up myself. Accepting that I am lucky enough to have a surplus of money that I can exchange for time and serenity was a big step for me. My conclusion was that cultivating a relationship with a good handyman is of as much value for me as any other long term service relationship: doctor, therapist, waitress, barista, etc. So, even though I'm not married and not having relationship angst per se, this article makes sense to me through that reinterpretation.
It does come down to mindset. I do my yard work, 1 acre, mowing, edging, trimming, leaf blowing, raking, etc. My entire mindset when I do it is, "It's exercise". I do car repairs and own 2 classic cars. My mindset is "It's yoga!" There's the fun of figuring out how to solve problems I haven't, I work with computers all day and I get to work with my hand. My family gets to see me do things and it's very important for them to know they can do things and solve problems by themselves, I sometimes involve them so it's not me alone but a family thing. The mindset is very important. allow yourself to make mistakes, have fun with it. It's never been this easy! First go to youtube, watch a few videos, read a book or blog and get to work. What I find that makes it frustrating for a lot of people is not having the proper tools, extra hands if needed and knowledge.
If it’s your gardens or your toy car it’s a different experience than if it’s your family bathroom or family car. There is time pressure and angst at not having your daily use things in working order
If it is your family bathroom or car, if you have worked on it before, chances are that you can deal with a problem on the spot thanks to the skills you learned and the tools you got for the occasion. No need to wait for the handyman.
And if it is a problem you can't solve, you may also have better understanding, which makes explaining the situation to a professional easier.
The entire premise here is that's not the case. The repair/remodel drags out because you're doing it in your spare time, and mistakes and setbacks are a drag on your motivation. Meanwhile you and your family aren't able to use your main bathroom (or whatever), and that stresses you out, makes you feel guilty that progress isn't happening faster.
I get this, and will call a handyman for some jobs, but I try to do repairs and "upgrades" myself when the work seems manageable to me.
I guess it depends on where you live, but getting an electrician around here takes so much time and effort, not to mention money, you could by half way through to training for a journeyman degree by the time he shows up.
Perhaps a downside of becoming halfway proficient as a handyman is all the people asking for your help. But you can see it as an upside as well, if they are friends and you enjoy helping them out.
Also the tools you might not have for that particular repair typically cost as much or less than the service call would cost. Except once you have the tools and know how the next service call is free whereas if you got someone to do it for you, you’ll have to pay just as much the next time around.
Heh, I tend to agree with this. Unfortunately reality always seems to disagree. No matter how simple the job, _something_ new will go wrong that requires multiple trips to home depo, putting it back together & ordeing parts off amazon, or bodging together some sort of fix that's kinda trash but gets the stupid thing working again today.
If there was a physical "undo" button, I could get behind this philosophy; however I notice neither a compiler to point out small mistakes nor an undo to help out with big mistakes. Having transformed some small plumbing things from easy to fix to really expensive to fix, I'm happy to know I live in a society with some degree of specialization. The plumber mightn't know they need to have good error handling policies, but they use my company's products, and we all go home happy. (This is also why I'm not in ops, except the odd heroic fire-fighting exercise; when I'm bored I like to change things to increase my knowledge of how it all works; I need worried and steady co-workers to keep things running).
> If there was a physical "undo" button, I could get behind this philosophy
I had two reactions to this -
The first is that's part of why I like working on low-stakes physical projects - especially when I'm working in my garden, I'm almost aggressively improvisational, just trying to use whatever's on hand to do the job and fixing things as I go. Because the garden is mine and just an absolute hobby, I get to play around, and the feeling of satisfaction I get from cobbling something together to solve a problem easily matches delivering a carefully-done plan.
The second is that undo button makes us sloppy. I noticed this the first time I went into management - the hardest part of the job was I had no idea if I'd done something right and no way to do it again if I didn't. It's made me sloppy a few other places as well, where I've found myself staring at something and thinking "well shit, there's no undo here, is there?" I think spending some time with some things that have stakes and can't be undone is healthy, and I think programming somehow makes us both sloppier and more risk-averse by its almost unbounded undo-ability.
Parenting was where I learned how to live with the lack of an undo. One gets used to it, but I find cyberspace much easier: I can try 1000 things in a few days and come out with a solution that seemed maybe impossible up front. Although one does get many chances to hone the interactions with kids, mistakes are not zero cost :) and once the parent and kid really master something, the kid grows a bit and the old solution reaches the end of its validity.
I would emphasize both that the undo-ability is very freeing and that the compiler/tests guardrails let one focus on the novel part rather than the routine part.
> My family gets to see me do things and it's very important for them to know they can do things and solve problems by themselves
Completely agree! The number of people I know who I think would struggle to know whether to hold the plastic or metal end of a screwdriver is depressing to me. I want my kids to grow up with a basic knowledge of mechanics, mechanisms, repairs/maintenance, and experience the world as things that can mostly be understood (and created) rather than things that are conceived and made by others and merely consumed by "normal people".
It also has saved a fair amount of money over the years, but the mindset is more important to show my family than the dollars.
When I need to work on something around my house that's new to me, I'll spend a little time watching videos of other people doing the thing. That gives me enough of an idea of how involved the work is.
If it's not going to be a quick or easy fix, I then do the calculation of whether or not I want to trade time that I would normally spend on myself or my family for the project. These days there aren't many things that meet that bar. I guess I would frame it as "spend your time wisely because you are rapidly running out of it".
My dad died a few years ago and I've never once wished he had spent more time working on stuff around the house. We would occasionally get in the car and drive somewhere inconsequential talking the entire time. That's what I wish I had more of. All the other stuff I can get from YouTube.
Some of my fondest memories are of my Dad and I working on things together. One of the things I most valued about him was his willingness to dive in and learn how things worked, and sometimes even fix them. To each their own, I suppose.
A car ride is one of the absolute best places to have a conversation. No interruptions, nobody shows up, just enough scenery changing to keep you looking around, but not in view long enough to keep you distracted.
I lived in a pretty small, rural area and my dad loved to drive. Everything he saw could trigger some kind of story. Plus there were random stops for ice cream which was awesome.
With my kids (who are in college now), there's no way they are going to sit around while I try to fix the sink. If I want to spend time with them, I have to give some consideration to their preferences.
This is so important to me. I find its an enormous value of mine to make sure that my kid knows what can be fixed, even if not how to fix it. So many people don't even know its possible to fix many things, so they don't learn, they don't try (and of course they give professionals a huge amounts of money for things that require 30 mins and a $2 part)
Definitely comes down to mindset. And circumstances. And, as you note - having adequate tools for the job. (Not necessarily the ideal tools, but enough to get the job done without it turning into a grind.)
Working on my tractor in the summer, when it mostly sits idle anyway? A pleasure, I can tinker with it a few hours every now and then and bring it all back into working order before I need it. It almost feels like meditation, being focused on fixing a very real problem rather than optimizing some abstract piece of code.
If it is in the middle of winter, freezing inside the shed and I NEED it to be working by next morning in order to clear the snow, thus enabling the kids to get to school and my wife and I to work?
Not quite as enjoyable.
But, as you say - with the proper mindset and a can-do attitude, it is incredible what tasks you can figure out how to do by studying the problem, asking for a little help, looking stuff up on the 'net.
Experience? That is recognizing the tasks you had better leave to someone else. :)
Oh man, I got to "rejetting carbs" and had the momentary urge to toss a chair out a window and then dive out after it. Kudos if you'll do your own carb work, that's where I draw the line.
Unless you've got a burning desire to perform stupidly fiddly restorations on old lawnmowers there really isn't. You couldn't pay me to own a gas powered tractor, and EV conversion kits are starting to get good enough that dicking around with anything smaller than a dragster is less like a reasonable hobby and more like a weird fetish at this point. Full disclosure: I've got a holly 4 barrel sitting in a box waiting to go on my 62 fairlane this fall. I may be a glutton for punishment.
Yep, folks will come at this kind of things their own ways, and that’s all good.
I likewise care for an acre, and fix as much as I reasonably can — from the small to the large. I once avoided a “dominos” problem when a built-in fridge died, which they no longer made parts for, and was a different size than today’s so the cabinetry would need redone, which would make the rest of the kitchen look worn, which would make the wood floors look worn (all in all, I was facing lots of zeros).
Then I thought for a while and decided to test all the capacitors on the PCB (in place, which required buying a tester). About $150.08 and two days later the fridge was working (the eight cents was for the bad cap).
That said, I know my limits and call in the “pros” for jobs I don’t relish or wouldn’t trust my own work (e.g. car brakes).
Knowing how to repair things doesn’t mean one always has to.
> I do my yard work, 1 acre, mowing, edging, trimming, leaf blowing, raking, etc
I truthfully can't imagine caring about how my yard looks that much. It will get mowed when it gets too long but otherwise I let whatever wants to grow, grow, and spend maybe an hour tops on it every couple of weeks. My family would much rather do things with me than see me toil away on a green hellscape.
Oh man, agreed. When I a teenager, my family moved to a house that had 3 acres of grass. At our previous house (1/2 acre), we just had a standard push mower, and that was fine. Now we had to buy a small tractor. I remember being tasked to mow those 3 acres when my dad deemed me old enough, but he would always scold me if I did it too quickly, because he thought it wasn't safe to run it at its top speed on our hilly yard, plus he believed the tractor cut poorly if you went to fast.
Overall it was just a huge waste of time and money for everyone involved. At least the tractor had a plow attachment that was useful for clearing the driveway of snow in the winter, so it wasn't a single-task purchase. Then again, if we had a smaller plot of land, the driveway would have been short enough to handle with shovels, so...
As an adult, now we have a house out in a mountainous area where there's snow on the ground for as long as 5 or 6 months out of the year. Grass doesn't really survive there, so most of the land is just dirt or whatever strange weeds/plants will grow on it on their own. Much easier to deal with.
Grass is literally a hellscape for pollinators and the only thing that spends time on most lawns is a mower. I don’t understand it either.
“My family gets to see me swear at my old cars that get 10mpg that I insist on owning and somehow justify by imagining they’re learning anything beyond another datapoint as to why we shouldn’t all own and maintain lifeless landscapes and pollution machines that only serve to stroke our fragile egos”
I don’t have any grass of my own but just enjoyed a patch above the Dufferin terasse in Quebec City.
For others interested in alternative options to maintaining an otherwise lifeless lawn Re:wild is an organization dedicated to finding solutions to bring pollinators and biodiversity back to our cities and neighborhoods.
I love to put a good sound system in my car or tweak the suspension, but when it comes to something boring, repetitive and messy like an oil change I outsource to my local garage. I'll take my laptop with me to work in the lobby, my hourly rate is higher than theirs so I even make a little profit.
It takes me about 30mins - 45 minutes to do my oil change, it takes me 20 minutes to go the dealership, another 20 to go home and about an hour wait. So I often save about an hour of my time doing it. There's nothing mess about it, I have an overall I put on when working on cars, about $40 from amazon. I put on gloves, and pre lay paper wipes where the oil might drip. Once I'm done, I take the gloves off, clean up, toss in trash, done. The only extra is that I just have to collect the oil and once a year go dispose it when the city collects hazardous materials which costs me about an hour of work. About 10 oil changes a year and I'm saving 10 hrs. When I do physical work is the time that I take to step out of the computer and think about code.
I've done my own oil changes a few times in the past, but I don't bother anymore, and just have a mechanic deal with it. They're faster at it than I am, and I don't have to drive out somewhere special to dispose of the old oil. It ends up being cheaper to have someone else do it, too. I also don't drive all that much, so I don't have to worry about timeliness here; I can just have them do the oil change when I bring the car in for some other servicing.
I get that you want to do it yourself, and that you've made different value judgments over the various aspects of doing it yourself vs. having someone else do it. But understand that others of us have also made different value judgments, and our situations aren't always the same.
I use the 25k mile synthetic oil. Changing your oil lets in dust and so I only do it when I must, no more often. Even if your use conventional oil, 3k miles is way too often with modern oils (the oil change companies love to say 3k miles as they make a lot of money)
Being European I do my oil change once a year and since the oil disposal location is on the same street as my local garage, I need to drive there anyway so no time lost there. And as I'm working and making money in the lobby while waiting for my car to be ready, I count that as a zero loss.
You might not find it messy, but I do. I don't like doing it. And it costs me the same amount of time and money if I have my mechanic do it, so that is why I outsource it.
I dunno, it takes me about 15 minutes of actual work to change my oil, vs driving to and from the shop and waiting. It’s like a 10x time difference, and I’m still probably doing it with more care than Jiffy Lube.
If I count the time it takes me to properly dispose of the oil it takes me the same amount of time.
And I luckily have a mechanic that I fully trust with my car. They are specialised in my make and model. Even have the correct socket for the oil plug, which I do not have.
Impressive that in addition to doing the work, you also can take the oil somewhere it can be disposed of safely and properly within that 15-minute time frame.
I have about 10 5-quart jugs stashed away in my garage, I’ll eventually bring them to the auto parts store when I already need to go there for something. It’d be silly to make a dedicated trip each time.
In some jurisdictions, like in Norway, for instance, if you are a craftsman working on your own property, you are (supposed) to pay VAT on the added value your work brings to the property.
I expect very few people to report this to the authorities, unless, of course, you are going to do something which is significant enough to require you to apply for a building permit.
You earn gross income with your labor, on which you pay tax. The net is used to pay Jiffy Lube, which pays employer taxes on the mechanic’s labor, and passes that cost onto you, the customer. If you do your own labor for yourself, pay neither.
My take is... if you do something because you enjoy it, go for it. We all have hobbies and stuff we like doing. If instead you do something because it saves you money, do some math first to check if your time isn't more valuable. I might be, it might not be, but think about it and only then make the call.
I got a lawn guy to do about the 1/2 acre that I keep mowed. At the time, I was traveling a lot and there are certain times of the year when you just can't let things go. This year I hired his crew for a couple because the state of my property had just gotten overwhelming so they did a lot of cutting, weedwhacking, etc. It's still very far from pristine suburban--I basically live in the country--but it got me to the point where I could spend a reasonable amount of time to get things under control. (I'm also basically spending the summer to get a bunch of interior stuff in my house done as well.)
Agree - I have a great handyman who also lets me "help". I can do the grunt work (carrying heavy stuff from the truck, demoing stuff, etc) saving him time, and he can do the stuff he's experienced at (he can eyeball a measurement and do a perfect cut much faster and better than I ever could) saving me time. Plus I get to learn how to do stuff. I get to be involved so I feel ownership, I get much better work done than if I did it myself, and I learn so that I can start to take on more projects myself.
I think this is awesome and I think I need to find a handyman like that.
PS: I am sure this isn't the case, but I am having this funny image in my head of a handyman giving you "work" so you don't mess with his stuff, like a parent gives their kids some mock work when they are too small to actually help.
PPS: Don't do this with your kids for too long - they can figure out at a pretty young age if they are just playing or actually helping.
Ha! When we were putting in the flooring in the kitchen, I kept interrupting him "optimizing" the layout and he snapped at me like one of his workers. He immediately apologized since I was paying him, but I told him that he was supposed to yell at me because he is the boss when it comes to building stuff. He knows what he's doing and I'm just trying to learn. We have a great relationship and I know when to back off and let the expert just do the right thing.
As someone who does more than the average person’s share of DIY, I agree for another reason: when I do want to do a project, I want to do the kind of project that pleases me. I’m experienced enough to know I hate drywall work, and I don’t really want to do plumbing on drains or concrete, so, I always have pros do that. But, I’m pretty happy to hack through some trim carpentry and electrical any day.
I feel seen. I can't stand drywall work - although I'll do a patch'n'texture that's too small to hire out if i absolutely have to. The folks who do drywall for a living are magicians that can knock out the job 5x faster than me, and 20x better. I'll pay all day.
Electrical on the other hand I find to be a blast. It's more a hobby than a chore, although there are some things I won't touch, like running conduit for lv or installing a sizable solar system. The pros are just so good at it.
Cars too - I'll change every fluid, do brake jobs, install short shift kits, dashcams, even got a windows VM running so I could use old software to read OBD-I codes on my old car. But timing or a top-end rebuild.. I leave that to the pros.
I think there's something to be said for doing like 80% of the things yourself even when you can afford more. It's so gratifying to do even a simple job and when it's done, it's done. It's so unlike most of our day-to-day that's full of multi-month efforts that depend on other people.
I disagree, and in particular your point about "frustration", I find the opposite to be true for me.
If I hire someone to do something, and they do a bad job, I have to beg them to come out and fix it, if they even will at all. And they're the only one with the knowledge and experience and tools to do the repair, so I feel frustrated that I'm unable to resolve it, its going to be like that forever.
If I do something myself, now I've learned how to do it, and buying any necessary tools and equipment to do it was probably cheaper than hiring someone to do it. And if I do a bad job, I console myself that I could fix it if I cared enough, even if I never get around to it. At some point it'll annoy me enough that I will fix it, or it won't and I won't care. Personally, I find this to be much better for my mental health.
> buying any necessary tools and equipment to do it was probably cheaper than hiring someone to do it
This has really driven my decisions a lot. I've found that pretty much any set of tools I could need for common home repair costs less than 2 hours of labor that someone would charge me.
Sure, my time acquiring these tools and using them isn't worthless, but I personally enjoy doing it and find that to have value in and of itself. (Certainly that's not true of everyone.)
There are some cases where I just don't want to deal with it, though. For example, I needed a new railing put on my deck a few months ago. I know I'm not great at woodworking, and honing those skills doesn't really interest me all that much; someone else would do a much nicer job of it than I would. I didn't want to have to buy some more tools that I don't really have good storage space for. My compromise was to hire a handyman I trust to build the railing, but I decided I would stain it myself.
For me, it also costs less than the 2 hours I have to spend contacting them, letting them into my house, deciding what I actually want (instead of just winging it), etc.
The tools keep costing less and less, as they're used over and over for projects. I haven't bought a new tool in a long time. Perhaps the exception is the specialized little tools needed to work on my bicycles. But even there, I can either fix it myself during my off time, or fit a time into my schedule to take my bike somewhere and then get it back.
There's work that I don't do. We all choose our battles.
> buying any necessary tools and equipment to do it was probably cheaper than hiring someone to do it
I do this, but I sometimes think it was a mistake in the end. There are often tools and materials I didn’t consider that I needed to pay for. I recently built a 24’ fence. I think I saved a tiny amount of money but I can see every little flaw. It also took me several months and probably would have been a day or two for a pro.
I agree with the person you are responding to and your snarky remark bothers me to no end. No one will care more about your house and problems than you do so they will often do a more sloppy job and the only thing that saves their face is their experience of doing their job more often than you do.
There's always more things that needs to be done than time you have.
In practice you always need to prioritize between
1. what will you spend your time to learn and do it good
2.what will you spend your money to make others do it worse(coin flip, it may be good)
For me it's about giving myself the permission to "give up" and let someone else handle it. Like you, I realized that being surrounded by broken things and incomplete projects was causing me a lot of constant low-level stress. As a person who prides themselves on being self-reliant, it's hard to pay for something that I know I could do it myself, even when the cost is insignificant. It helps to remind myself there are other things to optimize for, like saving time and preserving mental sanity.
I always tell people, the most valuable thing you can buy with money is time. I can clean my house, but I am fortunate enough now that I can pay someone else to do it. I don't sit around and do nothing in that time, I enjoy my life or do other tasks. I never feel bad exchanging money for time.
The issue I often find is that by the time I pay taxes on my own salary, their salary, their insurance and overhead, I lose more time hiring it out unless my wages are at least 3-4x theirs.
The real hack to DIY is you eliminate taxes and insurance, other than sales tax. It's one of the few ways to actually keep almost all the value you generate.
Indeed. For me to end up with the same amount of money after paying a company $100 rather than doing something myself, I have to go out and make an extra $167. That company probably then pays the actual worker something between $25 and $50, so I have to have a quite high multiple (plus the opportunity to just go work a small amount extra for pay) to make the trade make economic sense.
> For me to end up with the same amount of money after paying a company $100 rather than doing something myself, I have to go out and make an extra $167. That company probably then pays the actual worker something between $25 and $50
For some types of services, once you've found a person who does good work, you can privately ask them if they'd like to cut out the middleman: they get a pay raise and you pay less. This is particularly relevant for online services that find a professional for you.
I'm not talking about paying people under the table. I'm talking about cutting out whatever agencies or referral services are adding a substantial portion of the overall cost.
> The middleman being the IRS?
Only to the extent the money may get taxed 2-3 times on its way to the actual person doing the work (which may or may not be the case in any particular instance). (For instance, sales tax and multiple levels of income taxes.)
All of which is strong argument in favor of replacing all income tax with land tax.
The idea starts to make a lot of sense once you look at its framing. This includes the argument you make above (why can't you hire help out of pre-tax income, like any other business can?) and more on the legitimacy of taxation.
>why can't you hire help out of pre-tax income, like any other business can
Leaving aside the obvious fact that your personal activities are not a business[0], you can indeed hire help out of pre-tax income -- in the U.S. no one pays income tax on their gross income, only their taxable income. By the time common tax credits are factored in, a married couple with children may easily have $30-40K of gross income each year not subject to income tax.
Many, if not most, homeowners do not need to go out and work extra hours to pay someone to do work to repair their property, any more than they need to work extra hours to pay for food and clothing, so looking only at the marginal tax rate is misleading (as in the example above of earning an extra $167 to have $100 after tax).
Further, work you pay for that improves the property (as opposed to repairs) is added to the tax basis of the property, reducing future taxable income when the property is sold. Along with the potential to exclude up to $250K/$500K (single/married) of gain[1] from selling the property is a huge source of pre-tax income.
[0]and even businesses can only deduct expenses for people they hire for services that are related to generating a profit.
The decision to work extra in order to pay to outsource a task vs doing it yourself (as was framed above) is exactly the type of economic decision where the full marginal tax rate applies.
The idea that trading money for time is only worth it if you can spend that time making an equivalent amount of money, implies that the only value of time is as a resource for making money.
On its face, that doesn't seem to stand up to scrutiny.
Is this the basis of the so-called "human-centred economy" that seems to be gaining attention?
When I first heard of it, it seemed like it literally described the very same economic model we're accustomed to. But now that you mention this, there does seem to be an underscore of "just 2 guyz who are having a good time", without proper accounting of the exchange of value, thereby making it difficult to prove that a taxable event occurred.
- the enjoyment of creating or building something decent (if you enjoy it)
- the enjoyment of learning for its own sake
- the knowledge that the next time you do this task, you'll
be more efficient at it
- the knowledge of how the process works, so you know it was done right, and can fix it if it breaks
There's a variety of others. I agree that if it's a task you don't enjoy or don't rely on, then outsourcing it often a great idea.
Some things greatly reward a DIY attitude. Like knowing how to wrench on your bike when you're on a trip far in the wilderness and something goes wrong. You can even help out others!
Completely agree, but you're ignoring that not everyone gets the same enjoyment out of everything.
For example, I enjoy doing electrical work, but hate plumbing. I'll do the former, but hire someone to do the latter.
Last year we bought a house that had a bunch of windows with missing screens. I ended up making new frames for all but one of those windows. The last one I didn't get to with the time constraints I had, and I've been procrastinating for the past year because it's a repetitive, fiddly job that doesn't really give me any joy. I'm sure I'll get around to the final screen eventually, but not every DIY project gives enjoyment for everyone.
Your comment literally makes no sense. I pay someone to clean my house so I can spend more time building things and learning things. Do you enjoy having less time to do all the things you mentioned?
You clearly don't like cleaning - cool beans. But let's say you made that argument about fixing your bike, that's what my response was about. People value things differently, some people might value and even enjoy cleaning more than you do. Some people might find fixing a fence (or hacking an ardiuno gadget, etc) to be like torture, to each their own. We're allowed to like different things.
I took time to underline the fact that if you don't like the task, you ought to outsource it. Not sure how I could have been clearer.
Also: your tone comes off as dismissive and snarky.
A good handyman is an incredible asset. I've had periods where I had one available, but they are very hard to find, and like most professions, hard to keep as someone else will often outbid you (or offer full time employement in these cases). I could keep one busy for weeks right now, if not longer...
I too lean towards DIY but have had to learn to make the hard decision on projects. "Will I realistically get this done in O(days|weeks)?" "Do we actually have any weekends free in the next ~month?" This usually leaves enough low-pressure jobs for me to do on my own, while maintaining domestic harmony by paying someone to do the rest.
I don't bother learning these things because I'm never going to get enough practice to get good at it, and my time is already accounted for. There is nothing in my schedule I would eliminate to make space for learning such things. Let everyone do what they're good at.
I got good at them growing up because I had a family. When someone was going a project they called the family and a dozen people showed up. We were never good, but we all knew enough to get the job done and teach each other a little more - after a few years we had a reasonable grasp of nearly everything because we had done it.
I miss living near them. I no longer have a network I can call for help on projects and so the things I can get done are very limited.
You can also rely on them to share tools. When you're on your own, does it make sense to buy the numerous tools that you only use once in a blue moon? Now I have to decide if I want to buy or rent them. Well if I'm going to go that trouble I can just pay someone to do it too.
You can rent some tools. If nothing else I often justify a good tool because if I hired someone the pro would have the good tools. Typically the first time I do a job myself I lose money on tools - but the next time I have that tool and so I save a lot. Of course over the years I have a good idea what tools I'm likely to use.
If it gives you joy do it. I find no intrinsic joy in plumbing, electrical work, and so on; it's a chore to me. The payoff in seeing the job done often pales beside the trouble I have to go to complete it. With more skill, the balance tips in favor of doing it yourself. I'm at that point at other things. I can prepare a good meal faster than you can order it.
Its so funny I feel the exact opposite. I love doing work around the house as it saves money and also brings me immense satisfaction. I work in software so all of my toil is on ethereal products, if the company goes under all of my work is lost for eternity(well unless the internet archive keeps it alive). But with upkeep on a house I am making my physical environment better and the effects will survive a long time. I replaced all 100 or so electrical outlets in my house and when I was doing this I was thinking of who initially installed these and in the future, perhaps in 30-40 years(or longer!) who will update my work.
As for yardwork I could easily hire a gardner but I enjoy being outside and physical activity and sunlight(vitamin D) are great for you. Plus you save money and have the satisfaction that you made your physical world a better more attractive space.
That being said a house that needs alot of upkeep as everything is extremely out of date would be(for me) very stressful and time consuming, so everything is relative.
I absolutely agree, but I am having hard time finding such a person... The one who show up and who will do things right... The thought of trying to find a person like that, are multiple failures, just makes it easier to do it myself, even if I will hate spending time on it.
I recommend asking around in your social circle of other homeowners. If you know someone who deals with houses a lot, like a realtor, ask them for recommendations. I got my handyman rec from my realtor, and he's fantastic.
I think that it all depends on where the motivation comes from. If it's just to save money, that's nice, but the need to do it disappears when you have enough to spare.
For me, I tend to want to fix things more the more my job is boring and I'm not able to work on new things or improve existing ones. I'll then take some satisfaction on actually being able to affect change, even if it is in my own environment. It can be a bit therapeutic.
I will, however, delegate some work when I don't have the tools or the means to do it efficiently. I had an alternator failure. I could replace it myself, I know how. But the car in question has it in a pretty difficult to access location. It is doable but would probably take me the whole day (if not more) with just a jack and stands. So I sent it to the mechanic.
And yes, if you are falling behind on your repairs or if you have to spend most of your free time to do it, it's not worth it, you need more hands. Also, if you actually don't have free time and you would use that time to earn more money.
> If someone else makes a mistake, even if I'm paying them, I can for whatever reason tolerate that with less frustration than when I screw up myself.
By contrast, I take the position that I can fuck up just about anything myself for free, and if I'm paying somebody, they'd better do it right and do it right the first time.
Or alternatively doing less at a time. Can you replace the vanity without doing the floor, then when that is done do the shower, then the toilet/floor. (in most bathrooms the toilet is the only think that needs to sit on the floor, the rest you can shim and then hide the seam in some trim). I try to break all my projects down into things I can do in a day - often not possible, but when it is I'm more likely to get them done.
Handyman here. I think maybe you just explained a thing that's confused and confounded me for decades now. That innate difference between myself and my clients that I never really grasped: I can live with screwing something up myself because I can always go back and get it right the 2nd time. I absolutely cannot abide paying someone else good money to produce anything other than stellar results, and I loathe paying anyone to do anything I know I can do myself.
Sometimes I feel the same way. Other times I get frustrated because I'm paying a lot of money for things I know I can do myself for much less - and because I'm spending that money there I don't even have it to buy the toys I want to use up that time paying someone else gave me.
There is a balance here and it is different for different people.
I am super fortunate that my spouse likes to do the home projects as well. She is artistic, and I am mechanical. We solve problems together....when I don't know how to do something electrical or plumbing, and she has no idea at all, I can explain to her what the problem is, and either she gets it enough to point me in the right direction or in the process of explaining the problem I get the solution.
When she is agonizing over some color scheme (which in most cases doesn't interest me much) she will explain what she wants to achieve, and I can ask "stupid" questions that lead her to the answer...or in the odd case I make a suggestion and the lightbulb pops on.
It seems to me the mental health professionals do the same thing.
Together we have tackled installing over a 1000 sqft of hardwood flooring, removing popcorn ceilings (yuk), re-engineering built in cabinetry to accommodate an 82" TV, gutting and rebuilding 3 bathrooms, re-upholstering a livingroom suite that has no right angles (all curves), running a 90ft PEX pipe through a ceiling crawl space after receive a quote from a plumber for $8000 (took a day of our time).
The problem I have with "professionals" is that they all tell me a different story of what I need, and the "other guy" is always dead wrong.
I need a new roof and am getting quotes from multiple vendors....Just today I had calls with a couple of the vendors and they told me opposite stories of what "I need". One told me I need to replace all the wall flashings (which is very difficult and expensive given the siding must come off), and the other said don't touch it if its not leaking. Who to believe?
At the end of each project we are amazed at our accomplishment (note youtube helps). It certainly took 5x longer than a professional might take, but the end result was unique, we could change direction mid project, and in the end I know it is not crap work from some guy who left a leak in the wall. I believe the elation we achieved (and compliments from the neighbors), far exceeds the sweat equity that we put into the projects.
