Throughout the years we've been asked quite a few questions about our various renovation efforts. From the routine queries of "How do you a fix a hole in a plaster wall?" or "What's the best way to install crown molding?," to the truly bizarre, such as "Have you two ever had sex in one of your construction areas?" It sometimes feels like nothing is particularly off limits. I'm not even joking on that last one, someone we don't know personally actually asked that question at a party. I think I answered the question with a blank stare of amazement, which I'm sure the asker took as an silent and awkward confirmation. For the record, it wasn't.
As strange as some of the questions may be, one of the most common questions curious individuals ask on a regular basis is one of the harder ones to answer, and also one of the answers most difficult to understand.
Q: "Why don't you ever just hire someone to do the tedious and time consuming work?"
Though my initial reaction is to smack my head with my hand and stare back blankly (as I had with the construction zone intimacy question), I know that any person asking this question can't realize the level of obscenity they'd just leveled at me and my DIY prowess. Rather than turn my back and walk out of the room mumbling incoherently, I've always tried to come up with a reasonable response that goes beyond a simple, "Because we don't do that."
The response to this seemingly simple question requires a great deal of personal introspection, willingness to accept my emotional foibles, and an ability to adequately convey my desire to frivolously spend an inordinate amount of my own time toiling away on a project rather than an interest in spending money to have others do work that I'll forever and always be mildly disappointed in. Disappointed in quality, in price, in execution, in my own failure to complete the task with my own two hands. I know, how weird am I?
No matter the response, the person posing the question either agrees or disagrees with my stance before the words fly from my mouth. Hire out vs. DIY is almost as engrained as red state vs. blue state, and we all know how easy it is to change a red or blue stater's mind.
When it comes down to the answer, I usually say something along the lines of "I prefer to do the work myself. I enjoy it, and I enjoy the satisfaction I have when it's complete. I know the quality of work that many tradespeople perform, especially those willing to be hired by a non GC for smaller jobs, and it's all a balance of time vs. money for them. The longer a project takes, the less time they have to work on another project that could be making them more money. I also know my own ability, and my personal insistence that I want to do a project and do it well. I'll gladly take a much longer time to ensure a project is completed to the best of my ability, while a tradesperson will usually ensure it's completed with just enough quality to be accepted by the customer. Not perfect, but good enough for sign off."
By the time I get to this point in my answer the question asker has typically either nodded off or has wandered away to find something or someone more engaging. I don't blame them, I'm quite boring, and especially so when I'm standing on a soap box. But I feel quite strongly about this topic.
However, every once in a while my DIY brain gets soft. It usually happens somewhere in the middle of a massive and long running undertaking. Subconscious notions of hiring out portions of work to completely qualified and professional tradespeople begins to creep into my fragile psyche. I start to imagine sitting on the couch and watching TV while a team of capable individuals knocks out portions of my project that would take me days in a matter of fleeting minutes, all while I happily write out checks for the work and eat cookie dough and ice cream. Ah, how nice might that be to wake up in the morning with progress on a project and not have an aching back, stiff knees and ankles, bruised arms, hair full of dried joint compound, and cut hands. DIY can be a full contact sport, and sometimes the allure of watching from the sidelines starts to draw me in. Then...it happens, and I'm reminded exactly why this life of perceived luxury comes with it's own set of torturous results...or at least torturous to me.
A nearby home that is quite beautiful and rather grand has a breathtaking front porch. The home just recently sold, and though it is in overall good shape, there has been a lot of work going on both inside and out. Many of the wood elements of the porch's columns were quite rotten and needed to be repaired.
The thing about work like this is that it's time consuming, tedious, and not cheap. You can't just run down to the big box to pick up new molding to replace the old, everything is completely custom and needs to be milled specifically for the job.
I've been watching with great interest as the work has taken place on this grand and beautiful home. I'm totally fascinated by being an external observer in projects like these. I have no concept of the cost, only of the time and effort necessary to do the job, and I love watching as other people's hard work comes together. A few weeks ago, the custom and very large molding started to go back on the front porch columns to replace the rotten and deteriorated elements that couldn't be saved.
The new pieces that had been custom cut matched the old almost perfectly. They were obviously new due to the lack of pitting, dents, and other evidence that it's been outside for over 150 years, but that distress and patina will come back over time.
As I walked by I silently inspected the work, how the corners met up, how it all looked so good, but that's when I saw it.
You know...IT! The thing that reminded me of exactly why I prefer to take my own time and effort to do a project. The reason why I sacrifice weekends, evenings, and free time where I could otherwise be at the pool or playing tennis. And the thing is, I think 99.9% of people that walk by this lovely home and its newly restored molding will never notice what I noticed. Here's what I saw.
Do you see it? It's right there. The lower square base of one of the several columns is set back about 1/2" from the front edge of the rounded detail above. I can see from the pencil marks that the measurement and the cut was just a little off, which resulted in this minor error. But the problem is that it would take a fair amount of time to correct, requiring the removal of at least three and potentially six pieces of molding to remedy the mistake. Here it is compared to the other side of the same element.
You can see how it's right in line with the front on all of the columns except for this one column. And to me, this is the detail that I get stuck on. This is the thing that I will see each and every time I walk by this house. Nobody else will notice. But I will see it, because I have a sickness, the same way I see the bump of wood filler on one of our door casings that I didn't quite sand enough before painting, or the slight gap left on a bit of window molding from an incorrect cut on the miter saw, or the crack in one of our closet door panels because I glued it in place instead of allowing it to float.
But the thing about all of these things that I see wrong with our house, they are our own fault, and I'm more okay with things that are my fault. I'd much rather know that the crack in our guest bathroom's marble threshold was caused by my own negligence than the shoddy work that I had paid for and expected to be perfect. I'll look at it every time I use the bathroom, and almost nobody else will see it or think anything of it, but I'll see it and know that it was my own fault, and that's okay. Had we paid for it and not noticed it until after the final payment check was cashed, I'd always beat myself up over the fact that we overlooked it and had expected it to be perfect.
The fact of the matter is that our home is over 125 years old. It was never perfect, isn't currently perfect, and will never be perfect, but I want to make sure that our own four hands are the ones responsible for whatever level of imperfection we bring upon our house. And the level of imperfection I'm talking about, well, that level of imperfection costs far more than I'm willing to pay anyone else.
And that's the long answer of why we won't just hire someone to do the tedious and time consuming work in our house, at least not while we're capable of doing it ourselves.
