Save Money by learning & do things yourself

We Don't Farm Out as Much

Years ago unless we had the skill we farmed out many tasks around the house. Especially plumbing and electrical. Now days unless you have more money then you need, you do it yourself. And I think there are two reasons for this phenomenon. One there’s easy access to information on the subject matter. Like television for example we have cable and there are numerous channels at any give time talking about and showing in great detail how to fix all faucets of our society. Secondly I think people are taking pride in their accomplishments in doing things that don’t fall in the area of their profession. Like my family doctor at my last visit he told me he just constructed a wood patio on the back of his house. Me being a nosey person said why didn’t you farm it out? His response was, I just wanted to see if I could do it? And he did because he showed me a picture of it. I think at that moment he was more proud of doing that then being a doctor. That’s kind of cool when you think about it.

Our Family Works together

I used to be and slightly still are a person who when asked, will generally shy away from doing plumbing things. Recently I made an exception to that rule. Not too many months ago my lovely wife and I decided we were going to help refurbish her Mothers bathroom as a Christmas Present. She lives in a duplex that used to be army housing during WW2. These units had cement floors and exterior walls made of cement block and the blocks were filled with a strange mixture of cement and etc. I on a couple of occasions during the renovation had to drill into the wall and the stuff in the block cores was more difficult to drill thru then the block was. It was kind of a mixed color that mostly resembled black. No one that I met living there knew what this mixture was, but they also talked about how hard it was when they had to deal with it.

Nothing Was Square

This job was made especially difficult and frustrating for me because nothing was square or level; which in laymen’s terms means nothing you do is going to look right or fit properly.

Repaired the Stool

Are first order of business was to fix the stool which slightly dripped water from the lower area of the water tank. Someone had at some point repaired it and didn’t do it correctly and used putty to make it not leak. Over the years the putty decayed, like (one of my teeth recently) and wha la a tiny hairline leak was formed. We the doers were temporarily challenged, but with assistance from Lowe’s and a tiny sip of the grape all was corrected properly.

Replaced the Floor Tile

Next we chose to tackle replacing the tile on the floor; that’s when we really observed how crooked and wavey all the walls were. Since we couldn’t and wouldn’t fix the walls we did the next best thing we could. After installing the tile on the floor we glued a rubber type molding on the wall that overlapped on the floor one half of an inch. This nicely hid the irregular tile cut on the floor. It was nowhere perfect but it was in the ballpark and that was ok with us.

Caulked

Then we replaced the vanity and experienced a challenge connecting to the drainpipe in the wall. Luckily we found a pipe adaptor that connected to the new plastic pipe and then made it possible to connect to the metal pipe in the wall. We then caulked where perfection wasn't achieved and then cleaned up our mess and finger prints on the new mirror cabinet. I’m glad to report that no leak developed and her Mother at least in our presence was over whelmed with her new slightly used bathroom.

What my wife and I did was made in part possible by the helpful information we viewed on this Old House and programs like that.

Learn and Then Use

So may I boldly suggest you consider learning something, then use that knowledge to fix something yourself and then save a few coins in the process. The goodness you feel when your done will be your reward.


Don L. Terrill

photo by skidrd