Reply to Spinoff: How do you live below your means?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Our #1 is never paying someone to do work for us. Mow your own lawn, lay your own wood floors, paint the walls yourself, put your own brakes on (dh learned through YouTube), install your own light fixtures, clean your own house. We have a well maintained, beautiful house with new kitchens and baths we did ourselves. We only hired out what was mandatory under code (like gas lines). We've saved tens of thousands. [/quote]

This is assuming you want to sacrifice family time for these things. We are firmly in the camp of not worth it.  Plus i don't want to have a bunch of tools around the house. We just had our HW floors refinished and it took 3 guys 5 full work days to do our floors. That's 120 man hours. That would take us months to complete.[/quote]

Then you must have a huge house.  We diy'ed ours and it was not a big deal.  The prep work was the worst.  We have tons of tools but a floor sander is something you generally rent.  We get the kids involved so it is family time.  We don't work on our cars but do our house. That's not really living below your means.  Living below your means is spending less and saving.  [/quote]

Not interested in exposing my kids to those fumes.  The people who did our floors wore respirators and it was strongly suggested that we stay somewhere else for the week. They were correct. Polyurethane is not healthy to be breathing in without the proper equipment.

Just look at the back of the can of those chemicals. Nope.[/quote]

Not to mention, I recently bought a home and the DIY projects were so obvious.  So many hack jobs out there. The DIYers just do not have the expertise to make the job look  finished.  If it works for you great, but I don't want my house to look like a kids art project.[/quote]

This is so unnecessarily negative and mean.  So what if you don't do the job perfectly?  Sometimes learning, saving money, and the satisfaction of doing something for yourself makes up for it.  You call DIY a "kids art project" when you just admitted that you bought a house with DIY projects!  Does your house look like a "kids art project?"[/quote]

i did not buy a house with DIY projects. They were obvious when were were looking. It is GREAT that you like the satisfaction of doing them and learning, but not everyone wants to live in that kind of house, nor does everyone want the property value hit when they go to sell.  Bottom line everyone knows it is a DIY project and that is fine for you, just not for everyone.  This is not mean, this is the trade off of not getting your work done professionally. Same reason I do not sew my own clothes, they would look terrible.[/quote]

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