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The crazy thing about home improvement stuff is oftentimes you save a shitload by diy'ing it. I've saved about $162/hour on various home projects when compared

The crazy thing about home improvement stuff is oftentimes you save a shitload by diy'ing it. I've saved about $162/hour on various home projects when compared to quotes I've been given. Considering I'm a relative noob when it comes to this stuff I've gotta imagine they're charging much higher hourly rates than this. This $162/hour is way more than what my salary as an hourly wage would be and it's also tax free to boot.

idunnoman1222 2y ago
You need to have all the tools it takes a lifetime to collect all the tools unless you are a contractor
- lesuorac 2y ago
  Depends on the task I guess. You could pay 100+ for a plumber to snake a drain or just buy a snake yourself and do it for <50 in parts and the next time it's free. Perhaps for some tasks you buy so many tools it's the same price but the second you need to use them again it's a steep discount. Or you could ask a neighbor.
- weaksauce 2y ago
  the tools are durable and will last a very long time unless you're buying poorly made items and treating them poorly. you can save a few hundred dollars by buying a 15 dollar capacitor off amazon and a 11 in one multi purpose screw driver to fix your ac unit that doesn't startup. (very common fix for a very common issue) all you need is knowledge and a few bucks in parts and tools.
  - shell_game 2y ago
    Buying a 15 capacitor off Amazon for my AC condenser saved me $500 last summer.
  - idunnoman1222 2y ago
    Actually, just have a multimeter and you can test your capacitor
mlyle 2y ago
There's an incredibly high overhead on getting work as a contractor, billing for it, etc. There's a whole lot of unbillable hours you need to amortize. (At the same time, people DIYing tend to underestimate their real opportunity costs). The best outcome is that you end up liking tinkering and have pride in your work. That's a very high discount to the real cost.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bcrosby95 2y ago
  I totally understand the high overhead aspect, but I assume knowing what you're doing is supposed to help immensely with that. Pride in work is a big thing. As someone who works at a desk, some manual labor on the weekend is a nice change of pace. It's also not pointless exercise. And in my experience the best way to get something done right is to get free advice from the pros and do it yourself. Because the people the pros hire to do it won't care as much as you.
shiroiushi 2y ago
The problem I see with people doing these cost analyses for home or car DIY repairs is that they always compare two simple things: 1) the out-of-pocket cost of the professional job vs 2) the hourly cost of the DIY job, plus parts and materials. They completely forget to account for the cost of their their time in scenario 1. Having your car or house fixed by someone else isn't that easy. Unless you have a personal butler, it's not like you just tell some person "fix this" in 5 minutes or less and walk away, then pay them when it's over. If it's a car repair, you have to transport your car to the repair place, then either sit there while they fix it or find some alternate transportation, then you have to come back after it's done. If it's a 1-hour job, how much time will you waste just traveling to and from the repair shop, plus potentially waiting around for it to be done? You probably could have done it yourself in less time. For a house repair, you don't have to travel there, but you probably want to stay at home while the work is being done unless the house is empty, or you really trust the contractors and sub-contractors. So in either scenario, there's a lot of your own time that's not being accounted for. And this all assumes that the professional will actually do the job correctly, and you won't have to deal with issues from them doing it poorly. This could easily end up taking FAR more time than the original job. And in my experience, the so-called "professionals" frequently do a shoddy job or are completely incompetent (so now you need to spend a lot of time trying to figure out who to hire so you don't get screwed). So in my view, if you mostly know how to do something yourself, it doesn't need a whole team of people to do, doesn't require expensive specialty equipment, and isn't highly dangerous, it's quite likely a better deal to just DIY.
- mindslight 2y ago
  I'm also coming from a DIY-first perspective and agree with your point. But I've also come to see there's actual value in only spending your own time just prepping/waiting/managing rather than having to physically and mentally exert yourself during that time. It's probably a result of getting older, plus having too much on my DIY plate that the context switches are becoming a killer. Still yes, the biggest issue I have is most times I hire someone to do something, it often goes sideways and I have to get deeply involved anyway. This effect seems to be even worse for white collar work, where "professionals" tend to push cookie cutter solutions without much interactive analysis.

idunnoman1222 2y ago

You need to have all the tools it takes a lifetime to collect all the tools unless you are a contractor

lesuorac 2y ago
Depends on the task I guess. You could pay 100+ for a plumber to snake a drain or just buy a snake yourself and do it for <50 in parts and the next time it's free. Perhaps for some tasks you buy so many tools it's the same price but the second you need to use them again it's a steep discount. Or you could ask a neighbor.
weaksauce 2y ago
the tools are durable and will last a very long time unless you're buying poorly made items and treating them poorly. you can save a few hundred dollars by buying a 15 dollar capacitor off amazon and a 11 in one multi purpose screw driver to fix your ac unit that doesn't startup. (very common fix for a very common issue) all you need is knowledge and a few bucks in parts and tools.
- shell_game 2y ago
  Buying a 15 capacitor off Amazon for my AC condenser saved me $500 last summer.
- idunnoman1222 2y ago
  Actually, just have a multimeter and you can test your capacitor

mlyle 2y ago

There's an incredibly high overhead on getting work as a contractor, billing for it, etc. There's a whole lot of unbillable hours you need to amortize. (At the same time, people DIYing tend to underestimate their real opportunity costs). The best outcome is that you end up liking tinkering and have pride in your work. That's a very high discount to the real cost.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bcrosby95 2y ago
I totally understand the high overhead aspect, but I assume knowing what you're doing is supposed to help immensely with that. Pride in work is a big thing. As someone who works at a desk, some manual labor on the weekend is a nice change of pace. It's also not pointless exercise. And in my experience the best way to get something done right is to get free advice from the pros and do it yourself. Because the people the pros hire to do it won't care as much as you.

shiroiushi 2y ago

The problem I see with people doing these cost analyses for home or car DIY repairs is that they always compare two simple things: 1) the out-of-pocket cost of the professional job vs 2) the hourly cost of the DIY job, plus parts and materials. They completely forget to account for the cost of their their time in scenario 1. Having your car or house fixed by someone else isn't that easy. Unless you have a personal butler, it's not like you just tell some person "fix this" in 5 minutes or less and walk away, then pay them when it's over. If it's a car repair, you have to transport your car to the repair place, then either sit there while they fix it or find some alternate transportation, then you have to come back after it's done. If it's a 1-hour job, how much time will you waste just traveling to and from the repair shop, plus potentially waiting around for it to be done? You probably could have done it yourself in less time. For a house repair, you don't have to travel there, but you probably want to stay at home while the work is being done unless the house is empty, or you really trust the contractors and sub-contractors. So in either scenario, there's a lot of your own time that's not being accounted for. And this all assumes that the professional will actually do the job correctly, and you won't have to deal with issues from them doing it poorly. This could easily end up taking FAR more time than the original job. And in my experience, the so-called "professionals" frequently do a shoddy job or are completely incompetent (so now you need to spend a lot of time trying to figure out who to hire so you don't get screwed). So in my view, if you mostly know how to do something yourself, it doesn't need a whole team of people to do, doesn't require expensive specialty equipment, and isn't highly dangerous, it's quite likely a better deal to just DIY.

mindslight 2y ago
I'm also coming from a DIY-first perspective and agree with your point. But I've also come to see there's actual value in only spending your own time just prepping/waiting/managing rather than having to physically and mentally exert yourself during that time. It's probably a result of getting older, plus having too much on my DIY plate that the context switches are becoming a killer. Still yes, the biggest issue I have is most times I hire someone to do something, it often goes sideways and I have to get deeply involved anyway. This effect seems to be even worse for white collar work, where "professionals" tend to push cookie cutter solutions without much interactive analysis.