Simple repairs...

In My Humble Opinion
21

I think you’re probably right about home repairs. People would rather hire it out. It’s not a function of ability (maybe a little self-confidence). A wise man once pointed out something that I knew but never quantified. If you take your paycheck and pay all your bills the remaining amount is discretionary. You can either put it in the bank or spend it. If you look at the discretionary amount as what you actually earn (get to keep) then it should be broken down by the number of hours worked each weak. For example: if you have $100 of discretionary money and worked 40 hrs week then you’re getting $2.50/hr. If you buy someone else’s labor then you are paying them with your labor at that amount. If you have a new roof put on and the labor is $3000 then divide that by $2.50/hr. You’d have to work 1,200 hrs to afford it. Put another way, you would need to work 30 weeks (at 40 hrs per week) to earn the discretionary money to pay the roofer. I could do it in a weekend with 1 or 2 friends. Actually, I did my garage roof in about a day with little help.

Good try on the test. I bet if you tinkered a little with the car over time you would have figured it out first thing. When my engine died it simply shut off like a switch. There was no sputtering or anything unusual. At the same time my dash lights went out but I still had other electrical functions. I suspected that either a fuel pump fuse or engine management fuse blew. All I needed to fix it was a flashlight. Today’s cars often have 2 sets of fuse boxes. Since it was the engine I checked that fuse panel first. Each panel comes with a fuse puller so I pulled the fuses one at a time until I found a bad one. Sometimes cars come with spare fuses but not in this case so it was a matter of using a fuse I didn’t need drive the car. I think I used the air conditioner fuse. I was back on the road in less than 10 minutes. And yes, I now have a complete set of spare fuses.

I’ve repaired many a car on the side of the road with just a few simple tools. Obviously there are no guarantees but it always pays to try. I fixed a stranger’s car once by diagnosing the problem with a screwdriver (screwdriver jammed in plug wire and left near a ground to see if it would spark). We went down to the parts store and bought a $15 part and a $10 worth of tools. Back on the road in an hour (electronic ignition module). They were 2 older couples who were from out of town so it would have really sucked if they had to have the car towed to a service station (on a Sunday).

22

Beats me and kick it. (What? My high school didn’t have an shop class. Snigger on your own time.)

23

Nah. That’s pretty detailed woodwork, and takes a lot of time even if you have the tools and skills. We could build cabinets, but we probably won’t when we build, just because I don’t think it’s worth the time. I’m just talking about screwing the already made boxes to the walls. People pay other people huge money for this, and it is not a difficult thing to do, and requires very few tools and little strength, and doesn’t take long.

24

And there’s getting those damned plumbing holes in the right place, first time out. :slight_smile:

25

Again, not a huge deal, and if you’re off a bit you literally have to climb under the sink to see your mistake. :slight_smile:

26

I don’t know how much it costs to have the oil changed where you live, but I can get my dealer to do it for about $30, all in. It’s not worth my time and effort to save what, ten dollars? Fifteen?

Oil filters, same thing. Their markup is miniscule.

Some things are far, far too expensive to not learn yourself; I find it amazing that a healthy adult would hire someone to paint the inside of their house. But changing the oil in my car? I’ll part with ten or fifteen dollars to have someone do that for me.

27

You didn’t say what year make or model car, but if it was my car, I suspect that I would be in Rebok mode if such a failure occured.
The engine control system is on a high speed data network, the dash lights are on a low speed data network. For them to both fail at the exact same time indicates a major CAN bus failure. Either that or the one of the main fuses (the 50 and 60 Amp ones that you don’t carry spares for) has failed.
I would of course check the fuses in the 4 readily accessible fuse boxes, but I would not hold my breath. If I had the tools, I would also check the main (great big) fuses. To do so would require more tools than is listed above. I would also disconnect the battery to reboot the car, but again, I would not be holding my breath.

28

I could either do, or attempt, most of the things listed here. For the 15 years I was flatting (perhaps 10 houses, dozens of flatmates), I was pretty much the only person who both knew where the fusebox was and how to change the fuses in it.
When the thermostat blew on my hot water tank, I got the plumber to show me some of the basic things I could do myself - like stopping the inflow and outflow at the tank, changing the temperature etc. Washers are easy, so is replacing a plug.
I puzzled out how to install the garden watering system from the basic parts list on the cover.
When I had a motorbike, I did all my own tuning and maintenance (very Zen it was, too) and learned the hard way to never, ever, polish the seat.

But I grew up with parents who took the time to teach me a lot of skills, and who would puzzle things out for themselves. There are heaps of people who grow up thinking they ‘can’t do that’ and need to get an expert.

29

In these lean times, I’ll pinch pennies tight enough to make gaunt Abe look like he’s strung out on heroin. What’s it take, really? All of about 20 minutes?

If you can justify paying extra to have someone else do it, more power to you. I used to frequent Firestone for that type of service and was very happy with it. But, sometimes it makes sense to save the $15-$30 and do the easy stuff ourselves.

Painting the interior of your house isn’t all that difficult either, but it is time-consuming and exhausting. I can see why someone would hire out for that, but it’s not really necessary if you’re just doing a room at a time.

I have repaired large holes resulting from a foot through a wall (husband: accidental) and a fist through a wall (angry teen: purposeful). I’ve got to say my second job looked a lot better than my first. I laugh in the face of nail and screw holes. I lurves me some spackle.

30

It’s not the cost of the oil change that makes it worth your while, it’s the opportunity to look for and catch minor issues before they aren’t minor. Is something wet/leaking? Is a rubber boot on the axle ripped? ($15 repair vs a $350 one) Is that rust?

The gateway event for me was going from doing an oil change to changing the brakepads on a car with disk brakes. Yeah, they’ll do it for you for $100, but it’s a dead easy thing to do.

I nearly generally almost never have someone else do something for me. I had a professional tear into the axle of my classic car, but only because I wanted an experienced eye looking at it. This weekend my wife and I finished up a kitty condo (5’ tall, 3 levels, the cats love it, cost: time, leftover carpet scraps and about $15 in hardware) I swapped out the kitchen sink, dispose-all, and faucet, and I helped a cow-orker weld stabilizer jacks on is travel trailer.

I bought a welder from Harbor Freight for $80 (on sale from $215) and had never used it before…the guy needed the welding done and had some experience running a welder…end result: I got to play around with something I didn’t know and he got a fix for free.

I’ve lost track of the things I’ve picked up over time. My general rule of thumb is this: If the specialized tool to do the job costs less than half the cost of the repair, I’ll go ahead and buy the tool and do the job. If it costs more than the repair (e.g. car alignment), I’ll farm it out.

Modern cars don’t scare me, simply because they do so much to help you diagnose a problem. $35 will get you a code reader that’ll tell you what’s wrong.

31

Changing the oil is also how I found a torn transaxle boot. The new split-boot repair kits makes it sooooo easy to fix instead of tearing the car apart to put on a one-piece boot. Also found one while changing brake pads.

Oddly, I’ve never changed the oil filter in my Saturn SL-1. I can’t see it from above which means it’s underneath the intake manifold in the back. I’ve always had it changed on my lunch hour. Now that I’m unemployed I will have to get under there and see what’s what. Hopefully it isn’t like my old Escort. I loved that engine except the oil filter would always weld itself to the block. I always ended up driving a screwdriver threw it for leverage because I couldn’t get any of the gripping devices over the filter.

32

I’ll send you my favorite necklace for a repair. My husband has needle-nose pliers, but they’re “man-sized”…not “jewelry-sized”. It really makes a difference when you’re working on fine stuff!

33

I really want a welder but I rarely have anything to weld so I take it to a buddy. I’ve tried aluminum welding at the teaching forums at the Oshkosh air show and found it a little intimidating but I’d love to have a small welder for around the house. Great, now I’m trying to think of something to weld.

Before you abandon a project consider making your own tools. I made a wrench for a timing belt replacement that was a fraction of the cost of the official tool. All I did was by a cheap set of offset wrenches and grind down the end of one of them. I ended up with a whole set of wrenches in the deal.

Good point but aren’t they a lot more expensive than $35? I don’t want something that flashes morse code at me. I want to see an actual number.

34

I once fixed an ailing muffler with an empty peach can and some muffler tape. It held for YEARS!

35

I’ve also learned that once you have confidence in your skills, there’s rarely something that’s hard or impossible to get at. If that bolt’s behind the alternator and A/C compressor, it’s easier to remove the accessory belt, three bolts for the alternator, four bolts for the A/C compressor (which then folds up and out of the way without cracking the A/C lines.) Then that bolt you couldn’t get to is out in broad daylight…as are the other 6, which were difficult but not impossible to get at.

That and wobbly extensions, a set of these: http://tinyurl.com/649trl will save your LIFE.

The secret to Harbor freight is to google for the 20% off coupon (it’s out there, it’s got no expiration date, and I haven’t had it turned down yet), then wait for stuff on sale. A $200 horizontal bandsaw was $160 on sale, and $130 after discounts.

Oh, and Harbor Freight sells crap. Absolute, cheap, bottom line crap. However, it’s crap that’s fully functional for the average do it yourselfer. That bandsaw has been onve of the better tools I’ve owned, once I put a decent blade on it. It’s cut aluminum billet, steel, PVC, and wood and just goes and goes and goes.

Spend the money on a Great set of hand tools…but know when an $80 welder is probably all you’ll need. (plus, if you find it doesn’t do what you need, consider it a gateway to another hobby and buy a real welder…heck, it’s just $80.

edit: that $35 code reader is a Harbor Freight deal and gives a real number, plus the ability to reset codes when you’re done. It won’t get model specific stuff, but it’ll get the important stuff (emissions, fuel, spark, etc.)

36

I’m pretty handy - I can do almost anything described in this thread. I built, wired, and plumbed my own house. The only things I didn’t do myself were the excavation and drilling the well. I considered buying a used excavator, but at $10K, it was only a few thousand cheaper than having it done by a pro, and one repair on those can cost thousands. I also considered buying a portable well drilling rig for ~3K, but those only go down a few hundred feet. I ended up with a professionally drilled 600’ deep well, costing $11k.

End result, I have a $170K house for which I spent ~$100K, including $40K for the land, and I have the tools and the knowledge to fix almost anything.

My wife and brother-in-law helped me build the house. Neither of them were handy at all before the project. Now they have enough self-confidence to try to fix damn near anything. All but the most clumsy and/or dumb people out there are capable of much more than they think they are. Most people have just never had anyone show them how to do things, and don’t have the confidence to try it themselves.

The simple repair I’ll add to this thread: Replacing the fuse in electronic equipment. They hide the fuse inside (usually near where the cord comes in). It makes no sense to toss a TV costing several hundred dollars, when a $.50 fuse is the only thing wrong with it. Just find the fuse, pop it out and check to see if the wire inside is burned off. If it is, go to radioshack and get a replacement, pop it in, and you may save several hundred dollars. Note: opening the equipment voids the warranty, and you should unplug the equipment and let it sit for a while before doing opening it (to let capacitors lose their charge).

37

This should be taught in school because every mechanic learns it the hard way. I’ve learned many hard lessons after the fact. Sometimes I beat the system with a little forethought. I remember a starter replacement that required the rack & pinion to be removed. After looking at it I pulled the motor mount and jacked up the engine to make a path for it.

I took that a step further and added a complete set of locking extensions and locking universal joints for 3/8 and ¼ inch sockets.

Thanks, I will procure a code reader this way.

38

Um, ok, find us amazing.

We painted half the house (the old back half we’re planning to rip out anyway in 5-10 years. The front half the house and the upstairs, we got a professional. Here’s why…

  1. It’s a 100 year old, unrendered terrace house - so paint over brick, with wall cracks. The painter used 10kgs (yes, that’s right, kgs, not pounds) of concrete just to repair the walls to get them in a paintable condition.

  2. The upstairs walls, while rendered, were severely water damaged from the inside. That job became as much about reconstruction work as it was actually painting. (Yeah, and we had a roof guy in to replace lead flashings and so forth - 12 foot ceilings and a two story house with a roof space means that I am so so so not working at that height, without vomiting, I have height issues to start with.) Again, he used many bags of plaster.

  3. The walls were pink, but not house paint pink, I think the teenager in there used craft paint of some sort. It was a puzzle even to the professional, he ended up stripping it back to the plaster (plaster over brick walls up there) and replastering some of it. Oh, and lots of it was paint over several layers of wallpaper, some of it going back to the Victorian era - no kidding. That was nightmarish, see below.

  4. I had about 6 weeks to get floors put in, walls painted, electricals redone and many other things because I wanted to spend my money repairing my new house and because my old property that I had been renting had been sold, so I was on a time line.

That said, the parts of the house we painted have turned out ok. And we did to all the initial prep work (saving HUGE amounts of money) for the parts of the house we had professionally done. We stripped back the painted over wall paper, and washed the walls and did some of the other prep work.

In our case, we did the work ourselves on the part of the house that we don’t expect to be there forever, because we are rank amatuers, this is our first home that we own, and our sum total between us of house repair experience was “call the landlord.” Or change the lightbulb. We learned an awful lot, Google was our friend, as well as long distance phone calls to handy relatives. The bit we did doesn’t look fantastic, but given what we started with - abject filth, rotting corkboard floors, a toilet and stove to disgusting to contemplate cleaning - and I did try - cabinets falling literally to bits, well, it’s turned out…liveable. Not lovely, not going into House Beautiful, but liveable.

The professionally done parts? OMG, lovely. I cried when I saw how it turned out (this includes the floors, BTW, the replaced ones upstairs and the sanded and varnished ones downstairs.)

But we worked nights and weekends for six weeks, and were so physically exhausted that I, at least, just stopped a couple of times and had a really good cry before I could go on. We also laid vinyl floors (cheap, not terribly ugly, and long term temporary.)

But yeah, we’re amazingly glad we hired a professional on the parts of the house that won’t be changing ever, and they look fantastic, and even with enough time and the right tools, I’m pretty sure we couldn’t have done a comparable job ourselves.

I’m glad we hired an electrician who was familiar with the sort of lighting that we have here (early pull cord lights with rocking switches) and was even able to locate some antique fittings. Unrendered brick means you either have exposed wiring (ugly) or beautiful Victorian looking pull cords, so we went with that, but I wouldn’t have been able to do it. And he was able to show me that the wiring in the back was unsafe, why it was, and was able to fix it for me. Plus, I’m frankly scared of electricity.

That said, we learned a lot by trial and error. We can prep for paint, paint and lay floors, use a drill (no kidding, I’d never used one), replace glass, all sorts of things we’d never had to do before, so that was good.

Cheers,
G

39

I am regularly astonished at how many people allow their bicycles to languish unused for months because of flat tires. They just can’t find the time to take it into the bike shop. Crikey, it can’t take any more than fifteen minutes and $5 to do it yourself!

One thing I can’t / won’t do, tho, is patch up the old tube. I’ve never been able to do it quickly and easily so I’m happy to just buy a new one, it makes my life so much easier.

40

Ummm, my understanding is that with a TV, the capacitor takes a lot longer then “a while” to lose it’s charge. In fact, I think the offical SDMB statement about repairing your own TV is…don’t.