Household Repairs?

**BobMc** · 11-11-2003, 11:03 PM

I know that many of us here own houses. With the owning of these houses come repairs to these houses.

My question is how far are you willing to go repairing the house before you call in the professionals? My reason for bringing this up is my recent near face searing (see "Ironic" thread).

I've been damn near electrocuted changing an oven burner, battered and bloody wrassling in a dishwasher, risked falling off the roof to service the swamp cooler, and just plain grossed out retrieving a child placed item out from a toilet.

Some things I've decided I won't mess with, electricity, gas, and sewage.

Do y'all have any home "improvement" horror stories? Tales to tell? Let me know, I'd like to learn from your mistakes.

BobMc

**Beaver** · 11-12-2003, 12:08 AM

Well this year I installed a heat pump with the help of a tin basher friend. I do my own framing/drywall/electrical/plumbing/concrete if necessary.

I built a house a few years ago. That was a real learing experience. I went at it with a couple years of laborer/carpenter jo boy experience. 'Lectricity is easy, I do electrical design for a living so it is no biggie to actually do the hands on. Plumbing - all you need to know is that shit runs downhill.

Having said that, I am having my brother renovate the can in my rental dump because I would rather go hunting on my days off. I make more at work per hour than it will cost me so it is not cost effective to do it myself.

I once picked up a big window cheap and decided to put it in a wall of my house. I started cutting the wall apart only to find that it had been renoved previously and they just cut the supporting studs and inserted some little windows. I then discovered that the bottom sill was completely rottted out. I had a gaping hole in my house for about 2 weeks. In that time a pack rat moved into a closet (I seem to have a lot of packrat encounters) Eventually my dog killed it. The same house was held up in one spot with a car jack when I moved in. It blew out as my GF (now wife) was walking up the stairs. The Stairs dropped about 4 inches and freked the shit out of her for a sec. I poured some concrete and put in a post or 3 and a couple beams. I also had a wire pinched between a joist and beam that would cause the lights to flicker when you stepped in the right (wrong) spot. I fixed that. When my water tank rusted out and blew out the pilot light and filled my basement with nat. gas I called a pro to do the gas fitting.

Anyone wanna buy a real nice house?

**Samwich** · 11-12-2003, 12:12 AM

Tip #1:

Don't let your kids 'help' you out with anything involving objects that are either sharp and heavy, sharp and light, or blunt and heavy. If they must help, let them sit in the corner playing with styrofoam.

When I was 11, my dad was redoing the backyard. He cut a big tree down, and was sawing it up. I asked to 'help.' He was holding the branch for me to cut with the huge bowsaw with 1 1/4" teeth, and i had never used a saw that big before... long story short, i did a fantastic job of cutting. Unfortunately, my dad wasn't looking for 'help' with cutting his finger almost all the way off. That's what he got, though.

Then the tough bastard wrapped a bag of ice and a washcloth around his finger and drove himself to the ER.

**Lumpy** · 11-12-2003, 12:45 AM

Hey Bob,
Would you recommend to anyone who can rebuild an aircooled VW to tear into a '03 300-series? If you don't feel good about it pay the small guy who know (or supposedly knows) to do it. At least we won't have to have a scalded or electrocuted Bob Mc then!!! Need ya whole my brutha!!!!

The days of wooden boats and iron men is long gone...we specialize now.

**Big E** · 11-12-2003, 07:13 AM

I'm not quite up to Beaver's level yet, but probably only because I haven't been confronted w/ any structural problems.

I have, however, completely gutted my kitchen, put in new wiring, drywall, cabinets, appliances (yeah, I'm with Beav, I'll let someone else do the gas hookup), lighting, floor. I'm still working on it, but I'm 90% done now, it looks great, and I figure that I saved probably on the order of $25k by doing all the labor myself. Lots of other smaller stuff, too.

I actually enjoy doing that sort of stuff, but if you don't know what you're doing or, worse, have no mechanical aptitude for things, call someone. Particularly w/ electricity. You can make a real mess plumbing, but electrons are a whole nother story.

**teledave** · 11-12-2003, 08:10 AM

Originally posted by Beaver
Having said that, I am having my brother renovate the can in my rental dump because I would rather go hunting on my days off. I make more at work per hour than it will cost me so it is not cost effective to do it myself.

Assuming that you know what you're doing this is a very pertinent point. Is it worth the value of your time off to be doing it yourself?

Edit: And will I ever be able to hit the keys my brain is telling my fingers to?

**Crinkle** · 11-12-2003, 08:38 AM

As a recent home owner I too am new to fixing up around the house. In the past I have done some work for contractor friends and I am familiar with most power tools. But now when something goes wrong, it is my house i am f'ing with.
My pilot light went out for god knows why the other day too. I have done it before, just not on a furnace this big before. All it takes is reading the instructions sometimes. I am a manual geek. If it has a instruction book, i can build it, fix it, and break it again. The last furnace that i had to light had a electric lighter, this one was a little more spooky cause i had to stick my hand in there and manually light it.
So far the only thing I have screwed up is, I forgot to drain and shut the water off for my sprinkler system and the pvc pipe broke from freezing and sprayed water all over, till the neighbor's little girl came over and told us "water is spraying all over the side of your house". Weird enough, the neighboor is the guy who sold me the house. So of course he drives by just shaking his head, I should have given him the finger.

**zion zig zag** · 11-12-2003, 08:47 AM

Funny you should mention swamp coolers. The first house I bought in utah had no AC, so I bought a swamp cooler. They wanted about $400 to install it so I figured , how hard can it be? Well, somewhere between cutting a hole in the roof with a circular saw and trying to run the plumbing and electricity I found out. It would have been well worth the money to have a prof. do it but, I was commited. I ended up finishing it but I never felt real good about it.

**iceman** · 11-12-2003, 08:48 AM

You should have given him the finger because you forgot to turn the water off?

Anyway, I'll go as far as changing a lightbulb, if it's more complicated than that I'm calling somebody who knows what they're doing.

**Mulletizer** · 11-12-2003, 08:50 AM

I totally intend to build my own home sometime in the next 5 years. To me it has to be one of the most rewarding things you can do, short of having kids (and I'll leave that for the next 10, maybe 15 years...). When I look at houses being built I just think "I could do that". My little sister just build a small school for a charity project in S America (at the age of 18) - if she can do it I sure as hell can!

As a dedicated no-hoper in the work department and an intended life-long skibum I figure this may seriously be the only way (apart from perhaps professional cougar trapping) to get my own home. And having my own home is the only real way of avoiding having to work...

**altagirl** · 11-12-2003, 08:53 AM

We did the sprinkler stupidity thing the first winter we lived here. Came home to a little geyser in the yard and realize I have no idea where the water shut off valve is (knew where the inside one was, but not the outside one). Called the water company and they said it would be out by the sidewalk in the grass - of course the grass had grown over it so you couldn't tell where the pvc pipe was, so I had to spend like an hour going along the whole strip of grass inch by inch before I found it so I could turn it off. Now we capped it so you can find it instantly. Won't be doing that again.

**road trip** · 11-12-2003, 08:53 AM

Regarding BobMc's furnace incident...

I used to work at a research clinic where we would see patients for reseach trials. One of the more common therapeutic areas that we dealt with was "chronic pain"... I probably saw 4 or 5 different patients over the course of a year and a half who have significant injuries as a result of having their furnace blow up in their face.

That said... me + furnace problems = calling repair guy!!

**half-fast** · 11-12-2003, 09:17 AM

I've done tons of home repairs-I've only hired pros for:

1. had a plumber install a new drain line, gas line for a washer/dryer hook up for tennants (I'd do gas myself now that I saw how he did it)

2. had an electrician (friend of mine) run a 220 line for a dryer

3. had a drain cleaner guy unclog a drain way out by the street in the sewer connection

4. had a furnace guy fix my non-firing furnace (turns out it was just a fuse)

if Robin Hartl from hometime would come to my house and fix stuff, I'd hire her all the time!

**Mcwop** · 11-12-2003, 10:14 AM

Some electric is very easy. Replacing an existing outlet, switch or light. Don't pay for these learn to do it yourself. The key is having a headlamp, switching circuit breaker off, knowing basic wiring, and a few inexpensive tools. Plenty of info on the net.

More complicated wiring is best left to a professional.

**Crinkle** · 11-12-2003, 10:55 AM

Originally posted by iceman
You should have given him the finger because you forgot to turn the water off?

Yeah cause I felt like a tool. He asked me the day before if i had drained it. I was lazy and it was freezing rain out, so I figured it could wait. I take my own stupidity out on others.

**meatdrink9** · 11-12-2003, 11:14 AM

You name it, I've done it. I'm on my second home remodel right now. I've got more tools than you can imagine. At first I was a total JONG, but now I feel like I can tackle any home remodel job and usually do. I just finished the rough-in plumbing for a master bathroom (working on the project in the evenings for a few days saved me over $2000).

My first project in my first house was to cut a door way through a wall. I bought a reciprocating saw and went crazy. About halfway through the project blue flames and sparks shot through the wall and eventually knocked out all the power to the house. I had cut through a live electrical line.

Luckily GT came down and showed me a thing or two about electrical and we were up and running in no time. Now I do tons of electrical work. We still own the house in UT and it pays us monthly while others buy it for us.

Home remodeling is very rewarding. As someone who works at a computer all day it's nice to do some manual labor and when you're done with the job you can stand back and take a look at something big versus a nicely designed piece of paper. Remodeling homes pays very well also. If you buy a "handymans dream" and put a years worth of work into it you'll be surprised just how much you can make. I'll bet if I wanted to sell the house I'm currently in once the remodel is done I would make more on it than I would at work in the same time frame while working far less hours and having a blast.

I'll be remodeling homes until the day I die.

**Big E** · 11-12-2003, 11:47 AM

Originally posted by meatdrink9
Home remodeling is very rewarding. As someone who works at a computer all day it's nice to do some manual labor and when you're done with the job you can stand back and take a look at something big versus a nicely designed piece of paper.

Bingo! Same reason I'm constantly fiddling with cars.

**snowsprite** · 11-12-2003, 04:25 PM

Bob, this is deja vu!

My husband and I do a lot of our own projects. We refinished the bathroom in our old house and it came out so beautifully that I think it was one of the prime selling points and why we secured a buyer in just a few days. That said, I won't touch the bathroom in our new house w/ a 10-foot pole. It was grueling work, and we gave up so many weekends for it! Well, okay...I will do some of the prep work like breaking up the tub & toilet (I love demolition...just hand me the sledge hammer and I'll go to town!). But I would like to leave the finish work to the pros.

We just put in a parquet floor in our condo at Killington and it looks beautiful. It only took us about 5 hours too. We can tend to get kind of crabby w/ each other when we work though, and that's another downside. But you get a great feeling when you stand back together and admire your finished project once you're past all the sweat, aggravation, and grumpiness.
Sprite