MM: How much do you DIY?

hoffse · June 2014

Well since our house contract got signed, I've lost my mind with decorating blogs this weekend

Just curious how much everybody on these boards DIYs? I come from a family of pretty obsessed DIYers... my H's family limits their DIYing to painting, but my H tends to have a very good/precise eye when it comes to smaller projects he attempts. I'm the big picture person, he's the detail person. I believe in filling holes with caulk. He believes in exact angles...

We're thinking that the very first thing we might do is try to refinish the floors by ourselves. As I mentioned in a previous post, we're pretty sure there is hardwood under at least half of the carpet. Our plans could change when we rip up the carpet - who knows what we'll find? But right now we're thinking that's going to be day 1. I'm pretty confident we can do the whole thing for well under $1,000 if we don't end up having to replace a ton of patches. The two rooms are a decent size, but it's not like we're trying to do the entire house.

How much do you DIY? How much has it saved you?

brij2006 · June 2014

We DIY pretty much everything. Our house was a foreclosure and we gutted a lot of the rooms, put in all new plumbing, all new electrical, refinished hardwoods, installed tile, and re-did 2 bathrooms. We spent around $10k total to do all of that stuff and make our home livable. However, FIL and my dad are both pretty handy. So with their help we were able to save a lot of money.

The only things we have paid to have done were new windows installed and new gutters. That's just because it ended up being about the same price as doing it ourselves.

hoffse · June 2014

@Brij, wow that's a ton a work! And a huge savings!

So I take it you price out projects as you do them? We might call around to see what it costs to have the refinish work done for us. I have to imagine it would be a lot cheaper for us to do it, but I suppose it's worth asking.

brij2006 · June 2014

We only got estimates for things we knew were too big of projects we weren't willing to take on. So for the windows we bought 17 new windows, some of them being large ones. We knew they would get done quicker with someone doing them than us doing a few each weekend.

For the most part if you have handy people in our life, you can do many things yourself. It just takes a lot more time and effort. We still have plenty of projects to do, and work on them on the weekends. It's definitely a process, but you can save a lot of money.

vlagrl29 · June 2014

Our house was bought brand new so we really didn't have to rehab anything. Some of the things we have done ourselves: paint rooms/bathrooms, re-caulk tile, make our own mosaic tile mirror for the hallway, DH is going to do as much as he can himself to finish off the basement starting this winter. DH is really a great handyman. He has fixed our dishwasher and washing machine by himself which saved us money. All he does is youtube whatever the problem is and learns how to fix it.

Some things are worth paying people for IMO like painting the entire outside of your house and putting in patios/decks. We know our limits

We did officially decide to hire a company to put up the wooden swing set for DD. DH and my dad are making the "patio" part of it today. Wens. the guy will come out and put it up. We are going to pay him $375 for 10 hours of work I'm sure at the very least. I was wrong about the instruction book being 19 pages….it's actually 90 pages. We think DH may have a slipped disk in his back and we don't want him to make it worse by trying to put it up himself.

HoneyBee973 · June 2014

So far we have redone the master bathroom, and are in the process of working on the 2nd one. It is taking a lot of time, bc DH works 6 days a week, but definitely saved us a pretty penny.

Our next project will be the kitchen. I am tempted to hire someone to do it. But I know DH rather do it him self.

CuriousKiddosMama · June 2014

We DIY a lot. I've painted, we have installed wood and tile floors. DH has installed new lights, plumbing fixtures, doors.
All that has saved us thousands. Our latest project was installing wood in the downstairs and the gameroom upstairs. I only got an estimate from lowes online but installation and everything for the downstairs would have cost us like 5k, the materials cost me under 2k for the whole project- I think it was more like $1600 actually.

Xstatic3333 · June 2014

We are putting a bid in on a house (eek!) that could use some cosmetic updates. Like you, if we get it, our first project will involve tearing out carpet. Most of the house is nice hardwoods, but for some crazy reason the mud room is carpeted. We'd like to rip it out and put tiles in that are easily mopped. We don't have much experience, but I've heard that learning by doing (after research) is key once you have your home.

JoanE2012 · June 2014

We don't do much DIY. We tend to pay the professionals and keep our sanity and time. When we bought our house last year, we had someone come in and refinish the floors. The entire house is hardwood floors except for the bathrooms and laundry room. It took the professionals about a week. If I remember correctly, 2 days for sanding, a day for staining and 3 days to put down 3 coats of polyurethane. It would've taken us a lot longer. It sounds like the sanding machine takes some getting used to, so that was another reason.....I would've been upset if we ruined the floors!

als1982 · June 2014

I'm getting ready to paint a flower box this afternoon, which is about the extent to which we DIY. I am a money-saving fool in other areas of my life (I don't buy anything that isn't on sale or that I don't have a coupon for, plus I always try to buy through a points portal, if at all possible), but for us the time spent and stress just isn't worth it.

hoffse · June 2014

Xstatic3333 said:

We are putting a bid in on a house (eek!) that could use some cosmetic updates. Like you, if we get it, our first project will involve tearing out carpet. Most of the house is nice hardwoods, but for some crazy reason the mud room is carpeted. We'd like to rip it out and put tiles in that are easily mopped. We don't have much experience, but I've heard that learning by doing (after research) is key once you have your home.

SIB

Congrats! That's so exciting!

Yeah tile isn't too bad. My dad's tiled and re-tiled his house at least 3 times. It's much harder getting tile out than putting it in. Just be sure to buy those spacers to keep the grout lines even, and either rent or buy a tile saw for the edges/corners. Tile saws make a huuuuuge difference. My dad has done a full round of tiling with just a circular saw, and he nearly set the house on fire with all the sparks it shot off. Tile saws keep water running the whole time, so the tile doesn't get hot from friction.

Wulfgar · June 2014

With us, we DIY the small things. We finally had a plumber come in and snake some of our lines that were very slow. He found things in the pipes that had to have been in the lines for over a decade.

One of our next major projects after getting a new roof is updating our attic into a living space. Since we have damaged ceilings from water leakage I want all of the old insulation removed so if we can get the ceilings done at the same time. I will hire someone who is a professional to do this since it will have to meet code. Most of the major electrical we will do the same with.

I am trying to talk MW into allowing us me to redo our wood floor in the living room. I am thinking just putting down a new coat of stain and some layers of polyurathane.

BlueBirdMB · June 2014

I wouldn't say I'm a huge DIYer, but compared to H and his family, I'm super good at it. His family doesn't even paint their own rooms. They literally do nothing themselves. H has learned a lot from my Dad and me. We don't do plumbing or anything more complicated than changing light fixtures as far as electrical. I'm pretty crafty and I sew, so we do all of that. We also do all the painting ourselves and we installed floors.

jessica490 · June 2014

brij2006 said:

We only got estimates for things we knew were too big of projects we weren't willing to take on. So for the windows we bought 17 new windows, some of them being large ones. We knew they would get done quicker with someone doing them than us doing a few each weekend.

For the most part if you have handy people in our life, you can do many things yourself. It just takes a lot more time and effort. We still have plenty of projects to do, and work on them on the weekends. It's definitely a process, but you can save a lot of money.

This is what we do. If we can learn to do the small projects from family/relatives then we start there or we just have them do it for us. If it's something huge like floors, cabinets, tearing down walls, then we would call someone for that.

formerlyGDaisy09 · June 2014

We DIY pretty much everything. (I'm PMing you a link to my blog).

We've hired a company to install our new roof this summer. if we were doing asphault shingles we were going to DIY, but since it's northern NewEngland, theres more value in a standing seam roof, and DIYing that just seemed like asking for a trip to the ER.

We're also going to hire a company to do the basic finishing of a room or two in the basement (framing and hanging drywall, installing floors, and electrical work, we'll do all the finishing/painting work ourselves.

maple2 · June 2014

DH and I usually explore the DIY option first and go with that if we think we are up to the task. I would like to DIY more, but DH works a ton and we have 2 kids. We will probably end up hiring people for bigger projects like exterior painting and roofing just because of the limited amount of time we have per week to devote to it. We also hired someone to do our floors because it is the entire downstairs and took about a week between the sanding, cleaning, coating, drying and re-coating. We moved all the furniture out and took the kids out of town.

Smaller projects, like curtains, painting, chicken coop, minor plumbing, etc. we do ourselves.

leah1012 · June 2014

Hi I'm mostly a lurker but I thought I would share. My Husband is super handy and we have completely renovated one small house together and are starting on a second. We love to DIY. I like to do lots of internet research before we start a project and he is just a dive and learn type of guy.

If you two work well together DIY is great. We have saved a ton of money and enjoy doing project together on our nights and weekends. My parents hire everything done because they don't find these project enjoyable and don't work well together on DIY things.

We almost doubled the value of the last house we lived in (from $20,000 to $37,000 it was tiny) and spent about $8,000. We plan on adding about $25,000 in value to our current house in 3 years with about $12,000 in materials. That will be all new flooring, a totally new kitchen, wiring, plumbing, insulation, drywall, expanding and total renovation of the bathroom, also a patio and fenced in yard.

The floors will tell you how many/what kind of projects to attempt to do together.

Sisugal · June 2014

We do demolition, clean up, framing, insulating, flooring installation, priming/painting, counter top installation, cabinet installation, light fixture installation, toilet and sink installation.
We hire out electrical, plumbing, floor refinishing, roofing, window/door installation, concrete work and dry wall (I HATE doing dry wall). We just finished a bathroom renovation - complete demo with plumbing moved (plumber) and it saved us about 6K with DIY.

short+sassy · June 2014

Congratulations! I hope everything goes well with your inspection.

I bought a foreclosed home and it needed a lot of work. My DH and I DIY as much as we can, but I have NO such skills (sigh) and he is only "average handy". We refinished our hardwood floors before we moved in. From what I read at the time, the consensus is refinishing hardwood floors is pretty advanced and generally not recommended for DIYers. Not saying you all aren't capable of it , just food for thought.

We hired someone to do it. The area was about 500 square feet and needed three patches. It was around $2,000. I also needed to rewire all the electrical lines outside the house. Definitely hired a licensed electrician for that. Other than basic stuff, I think electrical is almost always something that should NOT be DIY'ed.

I bought two sheds for our backyard...one for me, one for my tenants. My DH put them both up himself. We replaced the siding, installed insulation, and installed new windows. All of that we hired out. However, after we had the new siding, my husband painted the exterior of the house.

Earlier this year, I replaced the kitchen cabinets on the tenant side. I also repainted the whole interior. While those were both projects my DH could have done given enough time, it would have taken him a LOT of time. So we decided to hire that out since every day I don't have a tenant is lost revenue.

My backyard is huge, but was completely empty when I bought the house. We have and will be doing a ton of projects in the yard and are doing all of that DIY. We put in a large raised garden and a stone fire pit with matching seating (seating is still a work in progress. This fall we are building a deck.

Phew! It's been a long road and we are still not done. But it is just magical to slowly see the rundown house I bought slowly turned back into the beauty I knew she was .

MM: How much do you DIY?

Re: MM: How much do you DIY?

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