In a last ditch (ha!) attempt to save a little money during my house remodel, I decided to dig the trench for the electrical for my hot tub by myself. 120’ long. 18" deep.
How’d it turn out? Well, I have a great hot tub. And radial tunnel syndrome. Think carpal tunnel, but closer to the elbow. Or, if you prefer, something rather similar to tennis elbow. I’m in my fourth week of physical therapy.
I should have just paid for someone to do the digging.
-D/a
I did the same, but rented a trench digger. Piece of cake.
Yeah, that’s my experience. I’m glad I did it. It looks a lot better. I saved boatloads of money. But every time I look at it I see all the flaws and things I did wrong.
I have installed tile in an entire house, approx 1500 sq feet, and have installed saltillo tiles. Let’s just say that the former is tedious, but doable and the latter is something that I will pay for if I ever decide I want it in my home. Installation of saltillo is incredibly time consuming, frustrating and frought with potential issues due to the porous nature of the clay tile. The floor ended up beautiful, but so much work.
Your refinishing looks great!!
I have a family full of perfectionist engineers who have the build-stuff gene in large measure. A typical attitude is something like “Sure, I can tile a bathroom. No, I never have before. Why do you ask?” And then they’ll go and do a decent job of it. The second time, they’ll do better than a contractor would (they just take 10x the time).
My own build-stuff gene runs to small handcrafts and I don’t own a house, so I haven’t really gotten myself into trouble yet. I do all my own computer building and repair, but that doesn’t count, since I am a professional.
Oh! I have tried to tailor a few pieces of clothing. With no research and no background knowledge, it’s invariably been a disaster. I didn’t appreciate the complexity of trying to fit the human body until then. So now I’ll hem pants and do repairs, but anything more than that goes to a very nice gent downtown.
All tile has mistakes. Mine really bugged me til someone pointed that out.
I tried to install laminate flooring in the back room of my house. Turns out the slab back there isn’t nearly as flat as I thought it was. I’m eventually going to have to pay someone else to redo the floor. After I pull up my awful work first - too embarassing to have anyone else see it.
I changed a car battery once. That’s not really a “must have a professional” job, but I was doing it without directions or help, having never done it before, based solely on “that kind of looks like how it should all fit together”.
It worked, and I got called “awesome” by the girl I was doing it for, but it turns out the battery wasn’t the problem. The starter motor was fried.
Last year I had an abscessed tooth. The pain was mind-numblingly agonizing, to the point that I could barely eat or sleep, but I had a few days before I’d have a day off and time to go to the dentist to have the offending tooth treated, and I didn’t want to miss work.
So I sterilized a kitchen knife by boiling it and then soaking it in a bleach solution and lanced the abscess myself.
It made the pain much more manageable, I experienced no adverse side effects, and on my next day off I went to the dentist, had the tooth pulled, and got a course of antibiotics.
I draw the line at do-it-yourself dentistry … :eek:
My attitude is that if I have never done it before then there is really no indication that I can’t. Leads to some interesting projects, like:
*converting intrior doorways to archways
*building a floor to ceiling, 10’ long entertainment center with cabinets and a corner unit
*tiling a bathroom floor and building a matching 2 sink countertop
All of the above was done with no formal plans and little prior experience, just a mental picture of what it should look like when it was done. Turned out OK.
The only time it has backfired is on auto repair, like the time I was changing the water pump on a Windstar van. I’ve changed water pumps before, but did not realize until I had the belt removed and pump unbolted that it could not be removed without dropping the entire engine! Not enough clearance above or below due to proximity to the frame and engine well. Fortunately, the shop nearby did the remainder of the work and didn’t charge for the stuff I had already done.
I wish my mom had. Wen I was around 4, one of her back teeth broke, leaving mostly roots. She couldn’t afford to go to the dentist, and the pain was unbearable. She got a fork, sterilized, it and dug the remainder of the tooth out, with no painkillers. It was quite a bloody thing to see. She still swears it was worth doing.
As for me, I haven’t ran across anything I won’t do myself, aside from medical stuff.
It was pre-internet, so I never got the advice, but I have offered it to many.
The service manual for an 86 Ford Ranger/Bronco II has a procedure for removing the oil pan from the engine in-chassis. It is insanely difficult. It would seriously be easier to pull the engine. I swear it was a joke between two guys writing the service manual, and I am sure they still giggle when they think of it. Here are the highlights:
-Remove the upper intake manifold and distributer so they don’t hit the firewall in the following steps.
-Take the two front engine mounts loose. Note that these will be rusted solid and have virtually no access. I chipped a front tooth when the U-joint socket slipped off and the impact wrench wound up and slung the socket at my mouth.
-Now jack the engine up as high as it will go.
-Now take the oil pan loose. It won’t come off of course, the oil pump is in the way. So reach in through the half inch gap and take the two torx bolts holding the oil pump on and drop it into the pan.
-Now look at the above step and think about what it is going to take to put that oil pump back.
-After you drop the pan, there is an unexplained sequence of manipulations that just allow the pan to be removed. Good luck getting it back on without knocking the gasket out of position.
-Oh yeah, the oil pan gasket still leaked oil after I got done. Fuck it.
Replaced the screen of my iPhone myself. It was actually extremely interesting. Unfortunately when I got to the end (you essentially have to take the whole thing apart and then rebuild it) I realized I had pinched a little cable and would have to go all the way back to the part where I put the screen on again with all those stupid little screws. I tried to gently pull it through myself. Broke it.
Had to go to the pros with a box of parts.
However, I WAS doing a good job and could have actually completed it myself if I had either not pinched the cable or patiently redone all that work.
I tiled a bathroom myself. The problem is not that it’s so terrible I instantly regretted it and swore to hire a contractor next time and can’t stand it. In fact, by the end, I was doing OK at it, and while you can probably guess which end I started at, it’s good enough that it’s not worth re-doing.
The problem is that after all that learning and practice, I know I could do better now; my fingers do itch a bit every time I see the first-done part. And I really don’t have many other opportunities to put my hard-earned tiling skills to work.
Does anybody have some tiling they need done?
Previous owners of my house did all kinds of nasty corner-cutting. Like tapping my downstairs bedroom electric to run the sprinkler pump, instead of running a dedicated circuit.
I wasn’t going to trust that there weren’t unpermitted buried lines or something out there. So everything was slow and careful. Next time, I’ll just hire you!
-D/a
Checks location: South Florida.
When do I start? 
Hehe, I bought a Windstar from a friend for pretty cheap because it needed a waterpump. I thought, “Well, that’s easy enough.” Yeah.
Ended up donating it to a charity rather than try to go through all that. 
My do-it-yourself-stubbornness is probably my hair. It sucks. Hairstylists cant do anything with it, and I’m done spending money trying to find one that works, so I just trim it myself, with varying degrees of success.
When can you start?
Dude, you’re a Canadian. Aren’t you required, by law, to come down here and visit?
I’ll invite you for the occasionally talked about SoFlaDopeFest.
But then you’ll have to treat me to a beer next time work flies me to YYZ.
-D/a