Have you thought about building a new house for yourselves? All new everything means you will have 10 - 12 years free of significant maintenance.

Chisue- that was always a dream that my husband and his father wanted to do together. They didn't get the chance unfortunately, his father had him at 50 years old and wasn't able in his 70 ' s to take on such a project. We move cross-country for my husband's job every few years so we haven't wanted to take on building our home from scratch, but you never know maybe someday.

I'm a DYI as much as possible. I replaced my hot water heater but still had to call a plumber for the soldering. I'm not one with the blow torch. But I did everything else

I've done drywall, faucets, electrical outlets, dishwasher, disposal, ceramic tile, hard wood floor. I'll try almost anything.

Years ago I could do some things to my car, but this new one is all computer & I'm not messing with it. I even had to take it to the dealership because Facebook wouldn't stay connected on the navigation/entertainment screen. It has a built in wifi hotspot & the screen has apps just like my phone. I love it, when it works.

Pawprint- it's nice to know there is someone else out there DIYing too! It's hard to do projects, but feels good. My husband and I just completed a large project 2 weeks ago, we felt so excited to have a breather....then the air conditioner leaked through the ceiling from the attic this weekend. I was about to call someone as it was "raining" in our bedroom, then my husband said the MAGIC words let's do this ourselves! I actually was happy!!

My husband has always been a very handy guy. He can do just about anything he puts his mind to. His problem is time, he is still working. He has been doing a ton of work on the house since the flood. He was off work for a while and spent just about every second from dawn till midnight in there working. He is a good mechanic too especially on Harleys, the older ones and we own several. He can do minor things on the vehicles but he prefers not to these days. At his age he is willing to do a lot of stuff but the body is not lol. I too used to do a lot of DIY. I at one time could tear down my Harley engine work on it and put it back together. I have done a lot of crafts but never much wood working that is his favorite hobby. I think it's the best way to learn first hand how to do things no matter what it is. Your list is impressive keep up the good work!

I do the painting and the gardening, but that's it.

sabbath7- We're your son. LOL

We are definitely DIY'ers. DH can fix/do most anything. Two years ago we had to have an electrician come in and on several occasions we have had auto work done. About 10 years ago we had to have HVAC work. Recently we had trees removed. In 40 years that is pretty much the extent of calling in professionals. If we can do it ourselves, we do. I can't imagine paying someone to change the oil in our cars or groom our pets. DH is currently putting in new construction windows. These are not replacement windows as they are larger and have to be built in. We've never called a plumber, roofer, painter but the day may come. We're getting tired. :)

I don't do any repair or building work. My motto is "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well, and that means hiring someone who knows what they're doing".

I know there are basic projects - oil changes, painting, or landscaping (if no real plumbing or electrical work is required) - that are easy enough to do and are within the reach of people who don't work in the trades. Other folks, sometimes with more enthusiasm than sense, bite off projects they're untrained for. People like this will convince themselves they can do a competent job with something they know nothing about. Too often, it's not the case.

I have too much respect for experienced tradesmen (and tradeswomen, of course) to pretend to think that I, as a complete neophyte, could do anything approaching what their skill and experience allows them to do.

I can afford to pay others to do what may be even simple tasks and don't hesitate to do so. It keeps my calendar and my conscience clear.

I can do almost anything. I can do almost any and all house and many car repairs. I draw the line, and refuse to do anything electrical. I have a master electrician who does the work for free. Brothers are great like that.

The extent of my do it yourself projects is changing a light bulb. I provide a nice living for skilled professionals.

caflowerluver, it sounds like your husband is NOT like the typical engineer because he had some training in his youth. Many staff level engineers I know (remember I'm in your area) THINK they know or can figure out just about anything and too often it's not the case. Knowledge and understanding without experience isn't enough. Pseudo knowledge and understanding is even worse.

DIY work is often a red flag for a prospective home buyer because too often the DIYer has done work without getting permits and having inspections so who knows what's there. Here in California, any un-permitted work done that the seller is aware of needs to be disclosed to prospective buyers. What path have you gone down over the years with that, have you gotten permits for the work that required it?

What I forgot to say? My son is fighting with me right now. I want to hire someone to work on one of the cars and he knows we could do it. I keep saying nothing wrong with hiring a professional when you can afford it. He won't budge. He's of the same mind as caflower, no one cares as much as you do and won't do it as well. I'm just getting tired of working and would love to farm some out!

We do all our own work not just to save lots of money, but also to do it right and to do quality work.

Exactly! While doing renovations, the amount of shoddy workmanship we've seen by numerous different contractors has had us shaking our heads. DH is very particular and likes things done properly.

rob333 - there's nothing wrong with farming out some of the work when you get to the point of being tired! :)

My husband is an experienced tradesman, a subcontractor. He's a certified welder. We poured our colored concrete driveway, it's 213' long. He's rebuilt the electronic circuit board in our garage door opener, replaced a capacitor in a compressor. Rebuilt car and truck engines.

I'll do some stuff myself and of course the gardening. But when I moved in my little house needed a lot of work- a new roof, electrical work, eventually siding. I hired all that done. I did relatively small jobs- put in window guards and security doors, changed out a thermostat, put vinyl flooring in the kitchen, painted inside rooms.

We DIY almost everything. Like caflowerluver, we're usually unhappy with the quality of the work when contractors are hired. That said, we did hire a very good mason to re-point our home and have a great electrician that works with us. We've permitted and had the necessary inspections for our projects. Though we could have afforded to hire for some of the projects, the satisfaction of completing the job yourself is so wonderful. We'll DIY as long as our health and desire allow.

I am a DIYer. As long as that takes in getting dressed, I qualify. Beyond that...?

Usually I'll consider anything that doesn't require a permit, more than one person, or heavy lifting. And there must be some forgiveness for errors.

The biggest project was refinishing the wood floors. That was a fail, but I am up for a retry in a few years.

The biggest successful project was a ground level deck (< 100sf, not attached to house or exit).

Mostly I paint, stain, trim, plant, install pavers, tile, scrape ceilings, repair drywall (with mixed results), replace plumbing and electrical fixtures and outlets/switches. I replaced one door in the garage. It sticks in the summer. :-( The storm door I installed works fine.

I tried replacing carpet remnants, but that was a fail too. I plan to replace that with wood flooring eventually anyway.

I plan to upgrade stairs and rails, and possibly reface and build kitchen cabinets. Possibly fix sprinklers and install sod. I just take things slowly and do a lot of research prior.

If I hired a pro for everything I needed to do, I would easily spend way more than the house is worth, even though it has quadrupled in value since I've lived here. If the project is important or expensive with high possibility of failure, I'll hire it out (bathroom remodel, fence install, big above ground deck, water heater install, door replacement, fireplace install, window install, new carpet, new roof/gutters, sprinkler install).

I'm so jealous of you all that can DIY!!!!! My skills don't go beyond mowing and painting, that easy sort of stuff. The fella that was the owner of this house before we bought it, fancied himself as a real DIYer but my BIL that's trained to service electrical work always has to show me the scary electrical jobs that are in this house. I think he's fixed them all now! I'm surprised this house didn't burn down!

My husband did not inherit the family gene for DIY like his bothers and his dad had, unfortunately. Of the two of us, I'm am by far the handiest of the two! My husband's gift is computer repair, he has me beat on that one!

When permits were required we got them, though I know a lot of our neighbors who hired 'experts' didn't get them.

Robert and I are both pretty able to take care of most simple repairs and projects and enjoy it a great deal. My father absolutely insisted that I, his only daughter, knew how to do all kinds of things around the car and home, probably more so than my three brothers.

When I was initially on my own, he gave me a well equipped tool box, which I still have! My first husband was pretty incompetent, I must say. Robert is extremely useful, lol! Dad would have loved him.

We can afford to hire professionals, but would be embarrassed to do so for many things, especially those projects that will be done better by us. The best thing is that we make a terrific team and always have fun fiddling with, repairing, or remodeling our home.

However, my knees and his back are shot so this winter we will be hiring someone to retile our kitchen, laundry room, pantry, and powder room.

I re-did the entire kitchen in our house, including moving walls,
re-configuring the windows, new cabinets, heated tile floor, new
appliances, moving the plumbing and installing new electrical circuits
-- basically everything but the granite countertops.

Later in a rental unit we bought, a tenant moved out we discovered a leaky drain had ruined the plywood floor and subfloor. So it went from this:

Other than those two professionals, everything was DIY, even templating and installing the granite.

A number of years ago, I did all of our auto servicing and about 80% of diagnostics of aliments. Larger projects such as re-coring a radiator, or an engine overhaul went to a shop. However, by being able to diagnose and recognize a variety of problems, I have been able to detect a number of charlatans or people who simply did not know how stuff works. I have encountered a few very sneaky problems in electrical circuits. Of late, my hearing is bad, I'm getting old, and there's microprocessors controlling automobiles. I can't justify the cost of electronic gear such as an oscilloscope to properly test functions, so I have changed to letting factory trained technicians service my car. The local dealer offers very reasonable prices for oil changes, etc. get the bigger jobs like A/C repair.

I am a home owner. That means that I become a DIY or pay a bag of money. The big jobs gets contracted out, but all maintenance I do. For example, the pilot light on my gas furnace began to go out. I saw an ad in the paper for a low cost inspection. I asked the guy in to see what he would find and his recommendation. He did not find much and decided that I had a cracked heat exchanger although he could not see it without taking the furnace apart. I thanked him for his time and sent him on his way. I thought about the problem a bit more and then disassembled the gas kine that fed the pilot light. Inside a fitting, I found a limit meter orifice that was nearly closed by deposits. The orifice was cleaned, parts put back together, pilot flame adjusted and the furnace is still running fine today. That repair was 20 years ago.

That reminds me. I need to check on the relay the operates the fan. Its contacts could be nearing end of life. Typically, this class of relay is good for about 25,000 operations. (The company that I worked for designs and builds similar relays.)

Its time to get a high efficiency furnace. That'll be a job for the local installer.

For no reason at all, woodpeckers have taken a liking to the woodwork on the front of my house. Its redwood. We've lived here for 40 yrs without such a problem and now we have it. Another DIY. I need to find a solution other than shooting the bird with a pellet gun or slingshot. tA first. it was a pair of Downy woodpeckers that wanted to build a winter home. Some painted aluminum cladding seemed to work, but then a day ago, a hairy woodpecker showed up and continued the same activity. He may have been just trying to get my attention to refill the bird feeder with sunflower seeds. he gets a little testy if he's hungry. (The hairy woodpecker is larger than the Downy.)

The wood is in need of staining again. A good substantial stain job tends to fill the wood pores. I thought I could save that job to next year, but maybe not. There's only about 2 weeks left this year that will be good for staining and painting. Its a DIY or pay to have it done. An ad came in the mail today for 2 day painting/staining service. That's tempting. They have lift lift elevators. I've got a ladder.

I grew up in a family of DIYers. Dh did not. I'll be honest, I enjoy not having constant projects to work on. I do some things myself like painting the rooms that I can easily paint, or landscaping. My dh told told me when I was 8-9 months pregnant with my first child that he was not going to allow the neighbors to see his pregnant wife change the oil in her vehicle. I have never attempted to change the oil again since that discussion. Lol!

jemdandy, I've heard that pinwheels (the child's toy) can deter woodpeckers. Thanks for the pilot light tip.

"If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well, and that means hiring someone who knows what they're doing".

I'm always saying it can't be hard, I'll do that myself. And always I end up having to call someone to correct all that I did - or haven't finished. Of course I learn a little from each experience! ha

Nahh, not me. I have money and no time, so I hire people to do what I need done. I'd rather spend what little time I have doing what I like, not fixing something to make it work.

My husband and I have both DIY'd multiple projects in/around our house:

-Removed wall and ceiling paper from EVERY room in our house.

-Replumbed two bathrooms, including new fixtures, new floors/walls/ceilings, sweating pipes, paint, tile.

-Remodeled a kitchen, including installation of new flooring, windows, countertops, cabinets, radiator.

-Replumbed the entire radiator/heating system in our house, including moving radiators to logical positions.

-Replaced lath/plaster (failing) with drywall in five rooms, including taping/mudding/priming/painting.

-Removed a second-story deck from the rear of our house, leaving the first-floor deck in place.

-Bricked up two exterior doors to create window openings, and installed windows.

-Added new front railings on our porch (welded).

-Removed and replaced our entire roof. This included rebuilding parapet walls. More bricklaying.

-Tuckpointed the entire exterior of our house.

-Removed all carpet and refinished the hardwood floors underneath.

-Reconfigured every closet in the house.

-Installed all new light fixtures.

-Repainted one of our sports cars in our garage - building the paintbooth ourselves.

-Rebuilt several engines for the cars. Installed a V8 in place of an original inline 4 in one of them, including cutting holes through fenders and building a new exhaust system (more welding).

-Leveled the back yard and created a new patio.

-Installed a 6' privacy fence around our back yard.

-Installed new garage doors.

Of these - I have done all the welding (including the engine exhaust system), all the bricklaying, all of the painting, all of the wallpaper/ceiling paper removal, all of the floor refinishing, and dug every single fence post-hole with a manual post-hole digger to a depth of 30" (code).

I've done half of the roofing, half of the engine rebuilds, half of the closet reconfigurations, and half of the kitchen cabinet/countertop installation.

Imstillchloecat, you are AWESOME!

Here is the kitchen DH did on the Finished Kitchen Blog. Can't believe it has been 10 years. Click on the link in the blog to see more pictures. The last picture is the old kitchen that went back to 1971. Hated it but lived with it for 20 years.

My Remodeled Kitchen

Caflowerluver- your kitchen looks great! Thank you for sharing. I love your cabinets and the appliances you choose are very nice.

Bobcville- your kitchen looks great too! You did a nice job on your rental property. Thank you for sharing.

Thanks. The kitchen cost somewhere around $2000 total. The work in the apartment also involved redoing the entire bathroom, installing a washer/dryer in the hall closet, in addition to the electrical upgrade and the new heat pump, but I think the total came in around $9000. Which is less than the highest bid for the heat pump, and perhaps 1/10 of what it would have cost the have all the work done by "professionals".

Someone above wrote: "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well, and that means hiring someone who knows what they're doing". I would say "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well, and that by the time you learn enough to tell whether a supposed professional actually knows what they are doing and would 'do it well', you may as well do it yourself."

Bobcville- I agree! My husband has taken on many projects that he researched extensively. He did them well and to code. A couple of years ago my car had a serious issue. We went to several Auto shops and they all said you need a new engine which they estimated to be $5000. My husband spent at least 40 hours researching what could be the problem. After all the research he told me that he had a hunch and asked if I was willing to pay $1700 to do a repair based on his hunch, this repair required heavy duty equipment that he didn't have so we needed a shop to do it. I said ABSOLUTELY. It fixed the car!!! Research is invaluable.

Bobcville- I have one more quick story that perfectly illustrates your opinion. We moved into a new home which had wiring for a chandelier ( in pictures when the house was for sale we could see a chandelier hooked up) it also had canned lights. My husband couldn't locate a switch (there were several that did not turn anything on) that worked when he hooked the chandelier we purchased up. He then asked me to call an Electrician as he felt the issue may require tools and knowledge that he didn't have. When the Electrician came he looked and did tests and informed me that it could only be hooked up with the can lights all on the same switch. This would cancel out the whole purpose of the chandelier to be used as mood lighting. I thanked the Electrician and paid him $300 for his visit, he wanted an additional $400 to do the work. I told my husband that evening that I believed in him and to start researching. Needless to say after exhaustive research paired with unorthodox research methods (flashlights and mirrors taped to poles sent up through the holes where he removed the cans) the chandelier is hooked up to its own switch and done to code. Sometimes we have a vested interest into spending lot's of time researching and figuring things out ourselves!!

All that being said if a person can't research and do things safely to code they should leave it to a knowledgeable professional. I wouldn't recommend most people take on Electrical work, my husband had previously done some Electrical work and knew that he could safely figure it out.

sabbath7 - Congratulations to you and your husband for taking the time and making the effort to do it yourself. Some things may seem intimidating at first but with all the great information on the web, most people could do at least the simple jobs. When I started on home repair projects 40 years ago, there wasn't any internet to look things up and watch videos. We went to the library to do the research. Later we bought a lot of the home repair books from Ortho. We still have them. They are a good source of information.

Geez, probably easier for me to list the things I haven't (or won't try) to DIY than the ones I have.

The first house we purchased was built in 53, had a service main hanging so low in the backyard, you could reach it. The whole house had a circuit breaker in the dining room that had a grand total of 4 switches.

Put in a new service main, new breaker and entirely rewired the house to be properly grounded and up to code (yes, we pulled permits)

Original drain pipes were orangeburg pipe which had basically disintegrated and had to be replaced (with permits)

Refinished all the hardwood floors, drywall, texture, painting.

Bought it for 63K, sold it for 85K 2 years later during the Great Recession after spending about 2500 to update it.

Had a dad who insisted I learn how to do at the very least basic auto repair before I could drive. While I'm glad he made me learn, working on cars has never been an interest of mine and I am more than happy to pay someone else to do it now but I have in the past replaced a fuel pump, rebuilt a transmission, as well as basic maintenance such as rotating tires, new brake pads, oil change, etc.

Current house remodel- I did framing, insulation, hanging drywall, taping, mudding, texturing, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, cabinet finishing, counter installation, trim work, painting, new roof, cabinetry, flooring.

I was raised with such a "need something done, do it yourself" mentality that I don't even consider many things as a "DIY project."

If a friend mentions that they painted their bedroom the previous weekend, that doesn't trigger "DIY" in my head because I can't even fathom paying someone to paint a wall.

I'm glad I was raised with a DIY mentality, and I'm equally happy that I can now afford to choose whether to DIY or pay someone else.

I know enough to recognize shoddy work and I have enough money to pay others to do what I, quite frankly, no longer wish to do...like plumbing or concrete work!!