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]

First pp here (the others weren't me)- like I said, ours does not look DIY. We are extremely meticulous and it looks better than friends who have hired out jobs. We're really good at what we do and DH and I encourage each other. My paint jobs are perfect and DH has gotten REALLY good at cabinet building (not exactly a cheap way to live below your means, but he's really interested in carpentry as a hobby). We have not refinished our floors, we just laid new. We do own respirators and use them for cutting wood (a cause of cancer), painting, spray painting and many other things. You act like respirators are expensive, but they aren't. Also, my house is up to code and we do get permits/inspections.

Youtube is great for learning how to do anything! 90% of the contractors you hire learned on the job and didn't get any special training. The exceptions are the ones who went to trade school like electricians and plumbers obviously. [/quote]

Sounds like me and my husband.  We laid a new hardwood floor in our TV room and it is much better work than friends of ours who had theirs professionally installed.  You would never call it an art project, by any stretch of the imagination.

I have done the majority of painting in our house and am really good at it.  Looks awesome.

We are very meticulous, though, and take time to do things right.  If PP can't do that, fine, but not all DIY projects look like crap.[/quote]

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