If you’ve been keeping up on your notes, a coupla weeks ago, I washed windows and cleaned the deck railing at FairyChatEstates, and just this weekend, I cleaned the carpets - well, most of them. Then **FCD **and I were talking about painting our bedroom and maybe some other rooms. I figure I can attack that post-retirement, probably in the spring when I can open windows again.
It’s not that I like doing these things, but I’m well enough that I can still manage them myself, plus, yanno, I’m frugal. (Not cheap - frugal!!!) I still do mowage and snow shoveling. In fact, the only regular chore so far that we’ve hired out is cleaning the gutters. I won’t get on the roof, and I refuse to let **FCD **do it any longer. It’s worth $120 to have someone come in and take care of it for us. And in the spring, I’m going to get someone to pressure wash the 2 sides of the house that have siding, because we don’t have a pressure washer, and even if we did, it’s a job we don’t want to do.
We’ve long been having someone else maintain our vehicles. I’ll refill the washer fluid and replace wiper blades or the occasional light, but I was never interested in changing oil or brakes or, frankly, and of that stuff. **FCD **used to like to do that in his youth, but about 25-ish years ago, he got bored with it, too.
So, what do you do yourself, and what would you rather pay someone else to do?
First! but otherwise, Damn! Just beat me, Mooommm…& I have a much more important topic…
I am very concerned about one of our Mumpers; I fear he is in danger.
“Grave danger?” you inquire.
Is there any other kind? [del]Col. Jessup[/del] I respond.
The plan was to meet Ruble yesterday; however I fear he has been kidnapped (:eek:) as I was not able to properly authenticate him. When he answered the phone, I informed him that my hovercraft is full of eels he neither offered me some matches or asked if I wanted to come back to his place.
Someone call the FBI, or the ATF! Better yet call the ATF; ask them if we’re smoking Cohiba’s & drinking Scotch what size mortar round we should be firing off. Isn’t that what their purpose for being is?
Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffeinatin’. YAWN ‘Tis <snerk> 69! <snerk> Amurrkin out and clear with a predicted high of 89 and mostly N.O.S. for the day. Fall is in the air! Well, for these parts anyway. Today’s big chore is to clean the ovens over to the church house. It is not necessarily one of my [del]church janitor[/del] Junior Warden duties, but they are ick and need cleanin’ so I shall. Really shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. Sup shall be burgers ‘n fixin’s and fries, just cause I have a gnawin’ and a cravin’ for a homemade grilled burger.
As to chores/jobs I hire out, a lot of things. Obviously the remodel of da cave was all hired out. So far, money well spent even though my anxiety level has been at an all time high throughout the whole thing. What’s left is the kitchen counters which I hope will be either this week or next week. I also don’t do vehicle maintenance. I leave that to the pros. I do mow, clean the place, and do laundry however. I’m not a total sloth!
Spidey Ruble reported on the book of faces that his wife is in the hospital. She had a gall bladder attack. Hopefully she’s doin’ better now.
Now I need more caffeine and rumbly tummy wants to be fed. Then, bother, alas, and alack, I must purtify and don appropriate bein’ in the public attire. One must look presentable even while cleanin’ ovens after all.
I live in a townhouse so don’t do anything outside. Inside I’ve had the place painted by professionals. The dealership takes care of the car. The barn takes care of the horse.
It’s currently 47 with a predicted high of 67. Saturday is forecast to be a high of 48 and raining. Once again, skipping fall and going straight to winter. Le sigh.
We don’t hire out much, we don’t do much ourselves either! My shiny new vehicle is maintained by a local garage and anything major like remodelling the Fortress will be farmed out to the professionals. We tinker around with decorating but generally can’t be bothered much.
I cook, clean the floors, do laundry and occasionally clear the weeds outside but that’s about it. I work full-time and have a busy life so domestic chores get the back-burner unless it’s desperately urgent.
In other news, my doting parent got hauled into the horsepickle last week with breathing problems, and they are hopefully letting her out again tomorrow. I will be taking a day off work (scandalous!!) to drive the 80 miles to the horsepickle and then take her home and make sure she’s got food and whatnot in the flat. Better than being in the office and having to deal with timetabling lalaland.
It’s a cloudy 66 degrees outside, supposed to get up to 70.
The pups are off at daycare. My son can sleep all day while I am gone.
I’ll start getting ready soon to head down to the armpit. I have to remember some things to take with me. I bought a shirt for my son and it is too small, will probably fit one of the nephews.
What I hire out? Pretty much anything done to the truck. I need to have some painting done, I am still debating that. I won’t do the bathroom, the paint in there is blistered and peeling, I think it is better to let a pro handle that. The bead board in the kitchen involved no ladders, so not a problem. As far as the other stuff, I’m debating. I hate ladders. We do all the yard irk, but there are a few trees that need to come down. One I think we can do, but the other two will have to be done by a pro because of the wires running through them.
The problem is getting them done. They are knocking over the fence between my neighbor (S) and her neighbor §. P and I both want the trees to come down because we have dogs. It won’t be a disaster if the fence comes down, our dogs know each other and get along, and they really can’t escape, however the trees need to come down. However, neither of us wants to pay for it because the trees are in S’s yard and she or her landlord should have to pay. S doesn’t care what I do out back, but even if I was willing to pay for it, I don’t know if a tree company would do it on my say so. I’ve thought about seeing if the electric company will do it since wires are involved, but they probably need the home owners permission. It’s because of one of the trees on her side that my shed needs a new roof.
This shit with the house and yard next door not being taken care of is getting old. P has talked to S about the trees, S says she’ll take care of it but we both know she won’t.
The neighbor on the other side of me said he’d cut them down, but he could take forever to do it, and in the meantime the trees are getting bigger and will be harder/more expensive to take down. I wish I had cut them down when I first moved in, but I didn’t feel right going over there to do it. At this point it would probably be cheaper to put in a fence between me and S than to cut down the trees.
Anybody wanna come help me pack a big suitcase and/or organize my flat? Starting a new job in the domains of Her Most British Majesty next week (yes, for the next project I’m Brexining), had the painters in last week, now the house looks like a hurricane has gone through but it’s got clean walls. Clean walls are nice…
Up, caffeinated, and sheveled. Off to work. Closing shift tonight. I farm out my oil changes, since modern cars are designed to be serviced without a lift.
I used to do pretty much everything. I designed and built a two story addition to my house. Lower level is an entry way and utility room. Had to move the mechanical room for that. I did hire out the concrete pumping and electric (had to move the elec meter, way more than I’m comfortable doing). I rented a tracked excavator and did the excavation for the foundation.
Now though, I will hire things out. I’m not getting any younger (looks like I need a hip replacement), and time is getting harder and harder to come by. It was REAL hard though to put my trust in contractors.
And if I get a hip replacement, I’ll need to hire someone to plow for me. Looks like I will be sidelined for about 6 weeks.
Morning all. Raining and 65F, so it looks like my AC will get some time off. Not supposed to be above 70F all day and high for the week is the low 80’s. Still not exactly fall, but I’ll take it.
Need to do the Oscar Meyer Braunsweiger run this morning, just waiting for all the working folks to get off the road.
I am all thumbs except for the basics (mow the lawn, keep the house reasonable clean), albeit I did re-paint my mailbox last year, any major changes or dealing with plumbing or electricity gets hired out. Car goes to the dealer for servicing.
ruble, don’t know when you’ll be back, but hope they take care of the gall bladder, probably by yanking it…had mine out 30 years ago.
I hire neighbor kids to weed-eat my fence rows. The horses’ hotwire shorts out if there’s too much impedance by weeds, and I hate thousands of feet of weed eating. Money well spent. My cars are professionally maintained - I don’t have the desire or the skill set, although I change the oil and filters on my diesel tractor. I recently hired someone (who was on FB looking to do odd jobs because she got a traffic ticket she had to pay) to clean out my attic and haul crap to the dump. Definitely money well spent!
Don’t think I’ll meet him. It wouldn’t be polite to get my country in a pickle over my detailed description of that shredded potato’s many sins and failings.
That’s the way my husband felt when he had his workshop built this past summer. There was nothing about it that we couldn’t have done… 12 years and 8 spinal surgeries ago. On the other hand, the Amish crew had the entire 32X40 building dried in with about 2 1/2 days of work. It would have taken us a little longer.
Now we did pull all the wires, install the outlets and cutoff boxes, and run the air lines, but we had an electrician bring the juice to the building, and we hired another crew to install the overhead lights because crawling in the attic would have been bad for both of us.
When we bought this place 15 years ago, we gutted the kitchen, changed the wall between the kitchen and dining room and knocked out the wall between the kitchen and the family room. It took 4 solid months working nights and weekends, and the only thing we hired done was the carpeting. 11 years ago, we put in a full bathroom in the basement. 9 years ago, we added a couple of decks out back. But our construction days are over.
As for things I can still do - supper is built and ready to go in the oven about 3:30-ish. Dishes are being sloshed in the dishwasher. The furnace guys are downstairs doing their thing. It’s been a productive morning.
I don’t hire much out (aside from work on the car- though I’d like to learn, to do more car stuff, I don’t want to enough to put the effort in). For the house, well, I don’t own it, so I keep the inside clean, the outside is an SEP. Major work ain’t my responsibility, but as none of it has happened since I moved in, well…
Remember to bring a care package Nava unless you’re OK living on potatoes and whine, and pop by if you’re in the very South West (Ps, Moooom, yes I did live further North- though not a whole lot- until I moved down for this course; been in Cornwall 2 years now).
We hire out some things and others we make a judgement call to either DIY or hire out:
[ul]
[li]Vehicle maintenance/repair - We always pay a shop, and in most cases it is scheduled maintenance or covered under our warranty. I -can- change oil, rotate tires, and in the old days change the brakes but why do that now? It’s just not worth the time for me.[/li][li]House cleaning - My wife and I both work on keeping the house reasonably clean but we do hire out to a cleaning company to come in once per month. It has been a life saver.[/li][li]House painting - Depends, we’ve done a lot ourselves and we’ve hired out. Last year we renovated our 3rd floor and that space is 1500 square feet with a double stairwell. It was far easier to hire that one out to paint the walls and ceiling and get it done quickly. Likewise, when we did a major renovation to our 2nd floor, we included painters in the scope of work for the bedroom, walk-in closet, master bath and guest bath. When our oldest daughter moved from the nursery to her own bedroom, we painted that ourselves. When my wife decided our daughter didn’t like the color, I re-painted that too.[/li][li]Electrical - I have replaced all the outlets and switches in our home. But anything beyond that, we hire an electrician. I don’t wanna kill myself touching the wrong wire or burn my house down.[/li][li]Plumbing - Same, we hire a plumber vs. MeanJoe causing thousands of dollars in repairs he created due to having no realistic experience in the area.[/li][/ul]
I hire out the trades–electrical, plumbing and auto repair. I also paid to get a fence put in around my house–actually, the insurance company paid. I usually do painint myself, but I have high ceilings over a stairwell and couldn’t figure out a safe way to get that done. so I paid someone else to risk their lives.
We’re back from the playground and erranding. As soon as we got there, Roxy decided to fill her diaper, and I discovered that there were only 2 wet wipes in the bag. :eek: But I prevailed, and she had fun. We stopped at the Amish market for 'maters, cukes, and green beans. It was a good trip.
About 30 minutes of chillage now till I have to shove supper in the oven.
Mr.Wrekker has just recently started hiring out the most mundane things. He’s away alot. Sometimes we(me and Son) get stuck overseeing his hire-outs. Grrr!
Man must hobby.
It has cooled off significantly. I’m planting fall greens.
Happy day, all!
We have a housekeeper that comes once a week, Hubby has a girl that he pays to file and pull weeds. Most everything else we can take care of. We did recently pay a guy to rescreen the porch that was messed up from the hurricane 2 years ago.
