Ha, my boss gives me this one. “But I’m different,” he says when I tell him about side project stuff like working on my house. I try to tell him… everyone my age I know is like that. They fix their own car/house/electronics and also do some kind of side work. You know how much a contractor costs? Between friends and family, I could be a contractor tomorrow, but not because I want to be. It’s out of necessity. I would love to pay someone else to install floors or do plumbing.
But yeah… all the evidence in front of his face doesn’t hold a candle to whatever Fox News tells him.
650$ to replace a 20$ shower handle cartridge. 500$ to spray down your AC 400$ to replace a 30$ capacitor in your AC 150$ to turn off your sprinkler system valve and blow air through it for a few minutes.
Yeah… I basically do 100% of our home maintenance myself. It’s literally cents on the dollar compared to hiring it out.
And the flip side of that; paying a craftsman to do the job is 1000% better for everyone involved!
Better for the craftsman. I’m helping someone else stay employed.
Better for my house/car. Let’s be honest, I learn by trial and error.
Better for me. Outside of more basic maintenance, I don’t want to buy all those specialty tools… like that thing you use to pull a shower handle cartridge out.
It’s better for the economy. Putting money in the craftsman’s pocket contributes to the general churn of the economy, and he is more inclined to buy local where I am more likely to end up at a franchise. It’s a little thing I call Trickle Up Economics™.
I’m happy to do the straightforward jobs that if I mess up I’m just inconvenienced. Changing the kitchen faucet? If that gets stalled halfway, I’m doing dishes in the bathroom sink for a bit. (TBH I wish I was 3 inches narrower because my undersink area has a divider between the doors and it was an uncomfortably close fit, including moving 1 boob through the space at a time, not fun).
Electrical? I’ll swap out GFCI outlets but if that doesn’t fix the problem I’m calling a professional.
Painting? Sure, good excuse to get a nice step ladder.
Anything I get stumped on or which takes more equipment than I can fit in my closet (chimney sweep, carpet replacement) gets hired out.
Am considering doing the flooring in my laundry closet, will probably hire it out because I don’t want to deal with moving big stuff.
Am very glad we can afford to do these things instead of deferring maintenance. Am also very glad we were lucky enough to be able to buy a condo when we did. Our mortgage+hoa fee today is 2/3 what rent on our old place is today, and we build equity. And this is a 15-year mortgage, which makes the rent comparison even worse.
Those prices sound… inflated. In our area, service is something like $100/hour for all of that, plus the cost of parts. So I’d expect it to be:
- shower handle - $150-200
- AC clean service - $150 - in my area, there’s a promo $75 AC clean service
- AC repair - $200-300 - extra cost for diagnosis and whatnot; probably done in 2 visits
- sprinkler system - $150 - though why would you pay for it? It takes like 30s to shut off the valve, and you don’t need to blow air through it (I never do)
That said, I still do most of that myself. I hire out the dangerous work (gas lines, electrical breaker box, safety components on car, etc), but I’ll do most of the rest myself, such as:
- oil changes - costs me like $35-40 each time ($25-30 for synthetic motor oil, $5 for OEM oil filters bought in bulk, $10 for air filter from auto parts store); that’s about half the price of oil change places for synthetic
- fixed combination meter in car (Prius) - $100 eBay service and 2-3 hours of work (remove whole dashboard; would’ve cost $1k+ at the shop)
- replace sprinkler heads - $5-10 per head, and about 10 min of work (dig around it, unscrew head, screw new head on, re-pack)
And so on. It’s usually faster for me to DIY since I don’t need to call, change my schedule, etc, I just order the parts and do it when I have time, with a YouTube video showing me what to do. It probably takes me about 2-3x as long as a pro, but generally speaking, that time would be spent with me setting up the appointment, talking with the contractor, etc.
