Such as painting cedar shingles without letting them dry or painting them with latex with out primer or without pressure washing them. Results a lifetime of painting every year not every 7 years and every year looking at your walls of shame that peel off without anyone touching them. Now how much will that cost you over the life of the home, even if you DIY every year it was so much cheaper to pay a painting contractor the first time.

Prices will never be cheaper than they are this year our prices are down %60 from 2 years ago my suggestion is before you DIY find out first how much a pro charges and get 3 estimate! You have the power to get your price.

I was in the paint store yesterday and a lady ask the store manger what product to buy to take oil paint off her hardwood floors and he said paint stripper and she said but that will take the finish of the floor and they will need to be redone and he said yes that’s correct that’s the only way. I talked to her a little more to find out she hired a painting company and they did a great job and cleaning up everything. So after watching them she thought I can easily do what they did and save money right? WRONG now I’m looking at her and she’s ready to cry and I’m not so heartless as to tell her she should have hired a pro.

People 50% of the work I do is to fix the owners mistakes and yes that makes it much more expensive.

When you fall of a ladder and can never walk again how much money do you think you cost yourself then?

Contractors risk their lives everyday and they make things look easy and they make calculated risk and that is what you pay them for.

I too fancy myself a bit of a handy fellow, but I also ALWAYS weigh the opportunity cost of me doing the job vs a pro.

Here is the calculator I run all my projects through:

DIY Calculator: x=difficulty | y=my time | z=cost for pro to do job — If x+y>z I pay the pro | If x+y<z I do it myself.

Disconnecting the old unit was easy, installing the new one was only a little more difficult. But the issue came when we test ran it. Water was flowing from the plumbing attachments under the sink, and not just the joints we attached, but all of the joints and seals.

We took apart the joints, reassembled them using various methods to improve the seals, but each time the water flow increased, until it was spraying out under the sink. We worked on it for 18 hours, determined that the leaks wouldn’t get the best of us. We relented only when the kitchen floor was covered in water.

Next day I called a plumber in. He told me we could have spent another 18 hours trying to seal the leaks and it wouldn’t have worked because the copper pipes were past their useful life. After 90 minutes and a $200 plus bill, he replaced all of the piping under the sink.

It wasn’t that doing the job cost additional money as a result of our efforts, the piping needed to be replaced, but we spent entirely too much of our own time working on a problem that couln’t be fixed.

I mentioned, beforehand, that perhaps he should just call an exterminator but….

So I’m laying in bed and suddenly there is dust everywhere and a hole in my wall….

Funny post

“I’ve always thought that personal finance management is all about making your money work for you the best way that it can. Paying other people to do things that you are capable of doing yourself violates this basic principal.”

Just because I can do something doesn’t necessarily mean that I should. One of the benefits of being responsible with your money is that it gives you options. There are a great many things that I’m capable of doing, but choose not to because I would prefer to use that time doing other things — writing for this site, spending time with my family, etc.

I realize that I might be taking you a bit too literally here, but I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, so I just wanted to make that point.

I’m pretty sure we’re saving money (we have friends we can borrow many tools from, and my partner is big on research and paying attention to detail) but it takes so long I’m not sure it’s worth it. Time is another matter. I think in a lot of cases I would rather pay someone else to do it just to not spend all our vacation time replumbing the bathroom or fixing the garage roof.

We both were raised by dedicated DIYers and have great faith in our ability to learn to do pretty much anything – but everything takes 3x as long if you’re just in the process of learning how to do it.

Case in point – the brake job I recently paid a ton of money for. I later found that the parts used were not what I wanted. This is the compromised position I spoke of – I took a hit financially and the job wasn’t done to my satisfaction. I have my ignorance to thank for it. I’ve never done a brake job before, thus I was a little timid to do so. This experience showed me just how much my limitations can cost – both in money and frustration. The next time I need new brakes, I will be doing it myself. Period.

I’ve always thought that personal finance management is all about making your money work for you the best way that it can. Paying other people to do things that you are capable of doing yourself violates this basic principal. There always going to be limitations to what each of us are able or willing to do, but if you make an effort to reduce those limitations the rewards will be yours to reap.

I think I know my limits pretty well when it comes to DIY jobs. If the job has the potential for a bad outcome (like me being electrocuted, or damaging our house) I usually tend to farm it out. Small jobs, i’m fine with doing.

I don’t think even I would try to sand our laminate floors though.

I don’t have any disasters to speak of but there have been a few times when I wish I would have hired someone just because the time involved was so much.