Author Topic: Doing all my own work  (Read 3022 times)

rachekc

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Doing all my own work
« on: March 09, 2017, 03:03:31 PM »
Any work or repairs that need to be done around the house I do myself, small or large.  My philosophy is if someone else can do it, why can't I. 

Just last week our vacuum cleaner stopped working and my wife was on Amazon looking to spend $300 for a new vacuum.  I told her to let me look at it first, turned out to be a bad switch which was replaced for $15.  Sometimes it pays to be an engineer. :)

I have recently been able to use my skills to help friends do repairs on their houses, and make a little bit of money while at it.

I have to confess I did pay a contractor to do repairs on a house I was selling.  Everything I paid him to do was pointed out by the inspector as incorrect and I ended up fixing all of it before I could sell the house. Lesson learned.

cheapass

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Re: Doing all my own work
« Reply #1 on: March 09, 2017, 03:07:26 PM »
Any work or repairs that need to be done around the house I do myself, small or large.  My philosophy is if someone else can do it, why can't I. 

Just last week our vacuum cleaner stopped working and my wife was on Amazon looking to spend $300 for a new vacuum.  I told her to let me look at it first, turned out to be a bad switch which was replaced for $15.  Sometimes it pays to be an engineer. :)

I have recently been able to use my skills to help friends do repairs on their houses, and make a little bit of money while at it.

I have to confess I did pay a contractor to do repairs on a house I was selling.  Everything I paid him to do was pointed out by the inspector as incorrect and I ended up fixing all of it before I could sell the house. Lesson learned.

I try to do everything myself too, including hanging TV's, running media cables in the walls, installing in-ceiling speakers, general repairs, etc.

The one thing I WILL NOT DO is drywall. I did a few patches and retextured and they probably are unnoticeable to an outsider but I still know exactly where they are. Bugs the hell out of me.

WSUCoug1994

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Re: Doing all my own work
« Reply #2 on: March 09, 2017, 06:22:24 PM »
You have the right attitude.  My dad was kind enough to teach me a lot about cars, houses, etc. and he always said - try it yourself worst case scenario you have to pay someone to do it like you would have in the beginning.  I have never had to have someone come "fix" something I couldn't get completed.  Well that is a lie - I once couldn't figure out what went wrong with my furnace after replacing a number of parts - turned out I didn't have the right diagnostic tool and "the guy" was in and out in 10 minutes and $300 later.  lol.

I get a lot of pleasure working with my hands as I am desk jockey at work.

hoping2retire35

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Re: Doing all my own work
« Reply #3 on: March 16, 2017, 07:37:06 PM »
Same here. Only increases the badassity!

MatthewK

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Re: Doing all my own work
« Reply #4 on: March 20, 2017, 05:50:48 AM »
Yes great thought, and if it doesn't work out you can always call the pros. I had a leaky toilet awhile back and come to find out it'd been leaking for quite sometime and rotted the floor. I called probably 4 different companies and they took forever to get back with me so I said screw it, fired up youtube and got to it . Fortunately it was just a half bath so I could take my time but I ended up ripping out the entire floor, replaced and re plumbed. Pretty damn proud of myself and saved at least $500. Oh and 5 months later no leaks and looks great!!

MightyAl

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Re: Doing all my own work
« Reply #5 on: March 20, 2017, 06:21:47 AM »
I just did a repair on our vacuum cleaner.  After removing what looked like a rug from the brush bar I found that the belt from the motor to the clutch had broken.  I found that I could purchase the clutch complete with belts for $28 or just the belts and rebuild the clutch for $4.  I figured my time was worth $24/ hour and just bought the belts.  She is up and running and hopefully we get another 8 years out of it.

I also just finished screening in our porch.  It was already covered and I just framed it in but it was something I had never done.  I was going to go down and dirty and then my wife said it had to be nice to match the rest of the house.  It does look fantastic and I am glad that I put the extra work into it as the changes added a ton of labor and only about $1k in materials.

Clean Shaven

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Re: Doing all my own work
« Reply #6 on: March 20, 2017, 07:51:34 AM »
I repaired the furnace this weekend with the help of Google and a multimeter. Wasn't firing up, no gas. Per info I found online, measured for voltage at the valve and found none. Per online info, that pointed to the control board.

As luck would have it, we had to replace the other furnace last year when the secondary heat exchanger failed. I gutted the old one for parts before they took it away, since both furnaces were the same brand and age. (Yes, we have two furnaces. Face punchy.) The control board I saved was the same as in the now - problematic furnace. Swapped over all the connections to the other board, and... It fired up and is running perfectly!

I was pretty pleased with that.

RelaxedGal

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Re: Doing all my own work
« Reply #7 on: April 17, 2020, 07:02:10 AM »
I just did a repair on our vacuum cleaner.  After removing what looked like a rug from the brush bar I found that the belt from the motor to the clutch had broken.  I found that I could purchase the clutch complete with belts for $28 or just the belts and rebuild the clutch for $4.  I figured my time was worth $24/ hour and just bought the belts.  She is up and running and hopefully we get another 8 years out of it.

I snagged a free Dyson vacuum from the side of the road.  It was picking up more dirt than our 10 year old Dyson but wicked loud, I eventually figured out that the problem with our non-freebie Dyson as the clutch just like MightyAl.  I bought belts and a new beater bar off Amazon, THEN watched the first half of the rebuild video on Amazon.  Nope.  I am not that badass.  Decided to swap the clutch from the freebie to the newer non-freebie.  Um, sticker on the newer one's clutch said it was from 2010, older but better clutch from 2004.  Decided that if I was going to disassemble this far I was only doing it once and bought a clutch off Amazon.  BOOM, so much better.

I still have dreams of rebuilding the 2010 clutch with the belts I bought, and putting that in the freebie. 

MasterStache

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Re: Doing all my own work
« Reply #8 on: April 17, 2020, 11:42:33 AM »
Those are invaluable skills OP. I got started the same way about a decade ago and it transformed into doing all the work (with exception of a couple major projects) on our fixer upper. I RE'd a few years ago and have been doing small side jobs for friends, family, neighbors and my spouses co-workers. A lot of folks are ecstatic to just have someone they can rely on for doing things around the house.

Exflyboy

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Re: Doing all my own work
« Reply #9 on: April 17, 2020, 02:55:56 PM »
Since we're bragging..:)

Doubled the size of our house and sunk every nail, dug trenches, framing, plumbing, dryway, HVAC, electrical. Only thing we didn't do was the concrete foundations or build kitchen cabinets.. We were DONE by then..:)

Never sent a car to a mechanic for any reason except for tire changes/alignments.

Same with farm implements/tractor.

Built two airplanes. One with instrument capability.

If it needs welding, machining, fixing then I do it.

Doing hands on stuff was a nice balance to my engineering career which was nothing but computer work, calculations and managing people.