#106 Penny Wise & Dollar Foolish Episode: Household Repairs, DIY or hire a Professional???

When my kids were young they loved a show called Handy Manny. It was a child's show where the main character was very handy and fix or build anything. The reason the kids loved it was, he could talk to his tools. I was always interested because I knew I was never going to be Handy Manny. We all know people who are super handy and know there way around tools. Now I am capable but sometimes you have to ask yourself, "Can I do this project myself, or do I hire someone to do it"? 

In this episode we discuss what projects we should and can do ourselves to save a buck or two or hire a professional to take on the task. This hilarious discussion is something we can all relate too!

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to Talk Wealth to Me, a safe space podcast, where we chat about anything and everything related to personal finance. The information contained in this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It does not constitute as accounting, legal tax or other professional advice.

Chase Peckham 0:31

I don't know about you, Phil, but I am not a DIY guy and I've been a homeowner now for gosh 11 or so 11 plus years, I think. And it's, I'm getting better. My wife always gives me these well, the internet said it's very simple to put together. Uh, and I always look at her and say, how long have you known me? It's never simple with me because I never read the directions. And I always put something together first.

Felipe Arevalo 1:02

No.

Chase Peckham 1:02

Or upside down or backwards.

Felipe Arevalo 1:04

Right.

Chase Peckham 1:04

Which means it's going to take extra time to do it. And it's also one of those things where there's always an extra screw or two, you know.

Felipe Arevalo 1:12

There is.

Chase Peckham 1:12

There's always extra parts. And so that must not that something's not right. If there's extra parts,

Felipe Arevalo 1:18

I always just figure Ikea just throws an extra screw in or two, just to kind of either mess with us or just in case you lose one.

Chase Peckham 1:23

Well, that's your first mistake I had learned my lesson long ago. No more Ikea, both physically go into that place and, or put together their stuff. Sorry Ikea they're never going to sponsor this podcast.

Felipe Arevalo 1:36

Or if you ordered things from Amazon, like we are like little, um, drawer things from Amazon and you know, Amazon's going to ship it to you in one big heavy box that then you have to rearrange into something that kind of looks like the furniture you saw on the website. But, you know, I haven't been a homeowner that long, but I think my wife has unrealistic expectations of my DYI skills. She's like, you could just move this over here. And I'm usually looking at it thinking someone could, I don't know if I can.

Chase Peckham 2:09

We're very similar in that way. That's really, that's very funny. And, and this is, this is one of those conversations that comes up because you are a new homeowner. So when you're a renter, you don't exactly get to do all the DIY or, or improvements that you would like to have.

Felipe Arevalo 2:24

No.

Chase Peckham 2:24

When you're a renter cause you, or you have to get special permission from the landlord. Uh, if you're part of a management company or you're in an apartment like that, you know, forget replacing carpets, unless they're that brown look or that cream look, you know, that's very neutral, but, or redoing the walls colors you want to do otherwise, you know, you're going to have to paint them when you move out. But being a new homeowner, you're probably running into things that you would like to improve all the time in my house in particular has gone through that morph. Uh, since we bought the house, although been relatively slow, you know, I think about where my house is today versus where it was 11 years ago. And it's a big difference between the yard and everything else the before and afters are crazy now. But at the time it took a long time to get there.

Felipe Arevalo 3:12

Right.

Chase Peckham 3:12

Because it can be extraordinarily expensive and home improvements that you can do yourself and save a few dollars. Be, you know, your be the Home Depot hero that I call them.

Felipe Arevalo 3:24

Yeah.

Chase Peckham 3:24

Because you're a hero. If you can walk through that home Depot or that Lowe's and know where the heck you're going and what to buy and what tools you have to have. And, you know, I found out a little while ago that I used to have a ratchet set. Now I don't know where it is because my wife cleaned out the garage and figured this isn't very well put together. So it must be old.

Felipe Arevalo 3:42

It's something where I even saw a meme. Like when you pull up to the home Depot, you want to really show your DYI dominance, grab one of the flatbed yellow carts. If you're grabbing a shopping cart, you're not a DYI master, but if you grab one of those flat ones for, you know, now we're talking,

Chase Peckham 4:01

Really?

Felipe Arevalo 4:01

I'm trying to avoid those.

Chase Peckham 4:02

Even if I go in there for just, I just need a hose or something like that,

Felipe Arevalo 4:06

Well then you would grab a regular shopping cart.

Chase Peckham 4:08

Yeah, that's true. I am definitely not. I am not a Home Depot hero, although it is funny how, when I go in there, there are all kinds of things that I, that I feel like I need, but I don't really, I just think that I, I feel more manly by the fact that I have those things, but it was interesting.

Felipe Arevalo 4:29

Like a full tool set or something.

Chase Peckham 4:29

Because when you're a homeowner, there are going to be repairs. There's a reason we have homeowners insurance and that you have to have it when you have a mortgage, there are going to be things. That's why we talk about emergency funds in, in putting together budgets. Those kinds of there's going to be those things that you have to pay for. And typically deductibles for homeowners. Insurance can be rather large, um, not compared to what it would be to fix things.

Felipe Arevalo 4:53

Right.

Chase Peckham 4:53

But if there is a, you know, a big flood in a pipe breaks or you've, you know, God forbid a roof caves in or whatever it might be. It's a large deductible, but not nearly as expensive, it's going to be to repair these things. So with that, there is a lot of upkeep to the house. There are going to be things that are painful that you're like, oh, why do I want to go spend a thousand dollars? Because I have to redo my back wall of my yard because the idiots that built it built soil right next to this concrete wall. And so now all the moisture goes in there and it's not my fault. It's the fact that they built it. So idiotically, then now I've got to repair this thing because it's got moisture that goes right into it all the time. So it's going to cost me, you know, 15 grand to dig it all out and then put a new wall in that, by the way I share with my neighbor behind me. So who's going to pick up the cost for that. Right?

Felipe Arevalo 5:49

Right.

Chase Peckham 5:50

So, but there are things that, you know, can I do that? Heck no.

Felipe Arevalo 5:55

Yes. You can say, ah, I don't know if I'd venture there

Chase Peckham 5:58

No, there's, there's no way. There are certain things that are just out of our range, but I do have a lot of friends. Um, one of our good friends, Mike Marsden, uh, we work with, uh, he is phenomenal with his hands. Like he's great with tools. He built his kids, this incredible tree house. He's so good with wood in building things, his backyard from the time that they bought their house to now, it just it's unreal. Uh, what, what he has put together yet, there are even things that are out of his control. And I'd love to talk to him, uh, about this because there's gotta be a, at what point do you have somebody else do the work

Felipe Arevalo 6:41

It's different for everyone.

Chase Peckham 6:42

Oh, for sure. Like, you're going to have to replace a toilet at some point. Right? They're going to break. There's going to be a leak. You're going to have to do the wax seal, right.

Felipe Arevalo 6:52

I'm not. I'm not doing it.

Chase Peckham 6:52

That I had learned about wax seals. No, no chance I'm doing that. But yet you could call my brother and he could do it for me in 20 minutes and go, that's it. And I go, I would've made, I probably would have cost me myself three times what It would really cost for somebody to do it.

Felipe Arevalo 7:09

Yeah.

Chase Peckham 7:10

And pay somebody to do it because I would screw things up so bad.

Felipe Arevalo 7:13

Yeah. I remember in high school, my parents needed a new one and my dad said, we're not paying someone to do this. You and me, we're going to home Depot. We're going to get this done right now. And after maybe three trips to the home Depot and a whole weekend worth of work, we got it to work. We got it. We figured it out. But my dad was like, I'm never replacing a toilet again. This is too much work.

Chase Peckham 7:34

Oh and but about the fact that you do it yourself and it looks all pretty. And then you flush it for the first time and water goes everywhere.

Felipe Arevalo 7:41

It starts seeping out.

Chase Peckham 7:41

And now you've ruined your wood floors. You've ruined your tile or you've just made a complete mess.

Felipe Arevalo 7:46

or you got to remove it buy another seal.

Chase Peckham 7:47

Take it apart and do it all over again. And you got to do the wax seal all over again. Yes. See, so this is my, this is the conundrum of us, of those of us that when you own a home or you're, you know, my wife and I battled over this all the time, like, I'm like, well, it's the best thing in the world for me is having our, a guy right down the street. Who's a handyman. So those little things that I, that he can fix, like literally faucets. And I, we battled this faucet in my bathtub, my kid's bed or bathroom. And there, that thing would fall off all the time. I would try to put it back on, I'd get it going. And then three weeks later it would fall off again. And then I'd have, I just would never buy the right part. I endless times to home Depot thinking that, okay, I'm buying a Delta faucet that this'll just automatically fit. Just, it just doesn't work. So it's a constant comedy routine between my wife and I now on she, in fact, she just leaves it to me. Can you get this done? Sure. And whether I'm calling their handyman to do it, or I actually try to do it like even to replacing, there's nothing more irritating than when your smoke alarms go off.

Felipe Arevalo 8:59

Ours went off this weekend.

Chase Peckham 9:02

And BEEP. You know, and it's loud and it's in the middle of the night and you're trying to take it apart. And these days you can't just take the battery out and kill it right.

Felipe Arevalo 9:09

No.

Chase Peckham 9:10

It's got this backup and it'll just keep going. You take it off and it'll still keep going. And it's like, I'm not sure how it stopped beeping ever. But then you go into home Depot or you go into Lowe's or whatever. Those big markets are, even ACE hardware. And then you look at all of the different options you have and oh. Should I have the one that has the dual, uh, the, the gas leak re uh, so it can.

Felipe Arevalo 9:35

Oh yeah carbon monoxide.

Chase Peckham 9:35

carbon monoxide can.

Felipe Arevalo 9:37

and they have some that are like voice and they yell at you.

Chase Peckham 9:41

Yes.

Felipe Arevalo 9:41

Then you have the beeping ones.

Chase Peckham 9:42

There's some that are$50 a piece. And there's some that are like$6 and then there's five packs. And then, right. And

Felipe Arevalo 9:50

You can get like Google activated ones that hook up to your wifi.

Chase Peckham 9:54

Exactly. And then you don't look at what kind of hookup yours has. So does this in your ceiling. And so if it doesn't fit this model, do I have to buy, does it come with a piece that will connect them together and adapter it for me? It's not even worth it. It's almost like I just, I tie, you know, my wife has timeismoneymom. And it's for me, it's the same thing. It's like, I'd rather pay the guy 25 bucks, 50 bucks, and I'll buy the parts and do it quickly. And I don't have to worry about it. Although I have to tell you, I have learned, I am like a professional at smoke alarms now, like, I know I can do it. I it's, no problem. I got the packages. Cause I, you know, you know, one goes, all of them are going to go pretty soon.

Felipe Arevalo 10:36

All of them coming up.

Chase Peckham 10:36

They're coming up.

Felipe Arevalo 10:38

And the last thing you would want to do is have a be in the middle of the night. And you're stumbling, looking for a step ladder because you can't reach it and it's waking everyone up. And so you might as well just replace them all if one of them went.

Chase Peckham 10:50

Right and those are the simple things. Right. But then there's things like foundations, like you buy a home and you know, the, when you bought the home, when it was inspected, they looked at you and said, you know, eventually this foundation looks like it could be a little scary, right? I mean, it's fine for 20 years or whatever, but eventually this is going to happen. So that's always going to be over that. Now that is something that that's a big fix.

Felipe Arevalo 11:14

Right.

Chase Peckham 11:14

That is something that you're going, okay. That's why you have an inspection on a house. Is, is this something down the road that I'm going to want to repair that obviously has to be repaired. Otherwise you're, you're going to be in a place that's unlivable. It's just in an uninhabitable. You can't do it.

Felipe Arevalo 11:29

Right.

Chase Peckham 11:30

So you have to get on that. And I don't think any story's bigger than that, that crazy, um, condo that collapsed in Florida. I think it's Surfside Florida.

Felipe Arevalo 11:41

Yeah that was crazy.

Chase Peckham 11:41

And 98. People died in that, um, that that's not. And that obviously is something where you know, that that's a condo. So you've got a committee or a board that has to decide on what, you know, how to, what fixes need to be made and what are critical.

Felipe Arevalo 11:58

right.

Chase Peckham 11:58

And, and then if you, you know, people, you've got so many people that are really, I don't want to spend the money to do that. And eventually you may have to, you can have a condemned building, but those are the kinds of things that you have to stay on top of. So what is it that you DIY yourself and what is it you can't? And I thought, man, what a funny conversation this would be because one person's DIY is no Problem, right?

Felipe Arevalo 12:22

It's not everyone's

Chase Peckham 12:23

Like my brother can fix almost anything. Right. He'll replace his own deck. Mike Marsden that we just talked about. He replaced, he builds decks, built tree houses. He, he, I mean, he built all the cubicles for, I mean, these beautiful wooden cubicles for our office that we just spent hours and hours and hours taking down,

Felipe Arevalo 12:43

Pulling apart.

Chase Peckham 12:44

Pulling apart. Right. I mean, that's crazy. Right.

Felipe Arevalo 12:48

Well, you and I could pull things apart that wasn't very hard because if you mess it up, you know, it's not, we're not

Chase Peckham 12:56

The woodwork that went into that. They were so beautifully built. I mean, we kept saying that over and over again. Right? Like these things, this building was falling before these cubicles, they were.

Felipe Arevalo 13:04

Right.

Chase Peckham 13:04

They were very, very nicely done, but there are gotta be things, there are things, again that, you know, would seem very, very difficult to some people like myself. And then those that look at me and go, you're crazy. Like I have never been a touch in plumbing or, or electrical.

Felipe Arevalo 13:22

Yeah. So there's somethings that are just really best left to professionals. If you're not a professional, um, anything gas and electrical can be dangerous and that could be like health and like really dangerous. So you suspect a gas leak or things like that. You really need to just call up your, you know, local. Well, if you smell a gas leak, if I'm not mistaken, I think you just call emergency services straight off the bat.

Chase Peckham 13:49

You do right away.

Felipe Arevalo 13:49

But, they'll send off. Yeah. They'll send out, you know, the, your local gas and electric company or whoever, once it's deemed safe and those kinds of repairs best left to professionals. You're not, you shouldn't be trying to mess with.

Chase Peckham 14:05

I have an old water heater that the pilot would go out all the time and it would tick me off and then I'd have to go in and it was one of those manual. And then you had to stick one of the flame clickers in there and you go, sh I, every time I was afraid I was going to blow something up. So, and then finally we got a new one where it just clicks and they don't allow you to do that anymore. All the new ones are just clickers, but I had to have people, real people, you know, people that know what they're doing to come in and do that for the longest time.

Felipe Arevalo 14:31

Yeah. Things like that that are dangerous. You definitely want to leave to a professional, but then you mentioned plumbing, not dangerous, but could be very costly if you mess it up. Um, you know, I would, I take my chances trying to replace like a faucet, maybe anything more than that. Probably not going to be something that I would give a go.

Chase Peckham 14:51

What about, um, what about a garbage disposal?

Felipe Arevalo 14:55

Garbage disposal? Yeah no.

Chase Peckham 14:56

I had to replace one of those in my old condo. And I did the whole thing, myself Felipe, but I forgot to uncap it.

Felipe Arevalo 15:04

Oh so you had to take it.

Chase Peckham 15:04

So we went to use it, in and I didn't uncap it and it screwed. It flooded everything. That's what I'm talking about. One step forward, proud of myself and just completely messed up. Everything else had to take the whole thing apart, take off the cap, put it all back together. And in the meantime I flooded a good portion of the floor.

Felipe Arevalo 15:22

Water everywhere.

Chase Peckham 15:23

Yeah.

Felipe Arevalo 15:23

Yeah. That's not one I would probably touch, uh.

Chase Peckham 15:27

I never ha since by the way.

Felipe Arevalo 15:27

Perhaps you find a handyman and then he comes in and he fixes in 30 minutes and it works better than you would have done in an all day adventure. Yeah.

Chase Peckham 15:38

Putting in a dishwasher.

Felipe Arevalo 15:40

Not touching that one.

Chase Peckham 15:41

Right.

Felipe Arevalo 15:41

And you might do it wrong. Oh yeah. Putting in a dishwasher. Exactly. You might, you know, have it be where it's like, oh, like my I remember my dad had, uh, the, the, uh, garbage disposer. And he had someone come in and fix it. And when the guy was in there fixing it and he's like, you know, whoever put in this last one really messed it up. This pipe should go this way and this pipe should do this. And my dad's like, well, yeah, that was me I didn't know what I was doing,

Chase Peckham 16:06

At least he's honest. That's awesome.

Felipe Arevalo 16:08

Right. He was like, yeah, I don't know what I was doing. I just put it in. And I had this pipe, it seemed to fit in there. It goes. And he's like, well, this is, this can cause backups. And this that's what they do. They know this stuff. So plumbing I'm, I'm, I'm usually not touching.

Chase Peckham 16:23

Then you talk to my brother. I don't know how these people, all of a sudden figure this stuff out. My dad was the same way he would. I think they just didn't. They loved taking things apart or trying to figure out how to put things together. Uh, and, and my father didn't live in the world of YouTube right. On how to do stuff.

Felipe Arevalo 16:38

Right.

Chase Peckham 16:38

Uh, he would just know it's like, you just, I just thought my dad and my brother just, you know, they just knew, you know, when they were born, they just like, yep. I know how to take apart stuff.

Felipe Arevalo 16:48

I think some people are just better at it.

Chase Peckham 16:49

Yeah.

Felipe Arevalo 16:50

Yeah. But I also think that it's something where, you know, even with today's technology, we have YouTube, which you can learn to do.

Chase Peckham 16:58

Pretty much anything,

Felipe Arevalo 16:59

Pretty much anything. And so you would think we have more knowledge to do it, but I think there is something about further back in the day where people just were more apt to just give it a go and try it. And there was a lot more like, I think back at like car repairs,

Chase Peckham 17:15

Uh, well that's, when cars were.

Felipe Arevalo 17:15

working on like a 70 something, something or other, there was two wires.

Chase Peckham 17:20

Right.

Felipe Arevalo 17:20

And the rest you can just kind of do yourself,

Chase Peckham 17:23

Change the oil. There was a filter, there's the filter. And then you just Drain it.

Felipe Arevalo 17:28

one little drain.

Chase Peckham 17:30

And then oil. And it's really simple. You could reach it. Today's engines. You can't even find the oil filter.

Felipe Arevalo 17:36

And they're not always at the bottom. There's sometimes on the side, there's some, each car is different and there's more technology. I mean, there's more technology probably in people's refrigerators than there was in people's cars back then.

Chase Peckham 17:46

Without questions.

Felipe Arevalo 17:46

So I don't know. I think people were just more apt to try things back in the day. Um, but other repairs that you know, are very important that, you know, people maybe want to leave to professionals, roof repairs,

Chase Peckham 18:03

Oh my gosh. I wouldn't even know where to begin. And that reminds me, some guy was trimming Palm trees above my house last week. And I happened to be in the backyard and he yelled down to me. He's like, Hey, you got a shingle loose on the middle of your roof. I'm like, oh, great.

Felipe Arevalo 18:20

Uh, that could, and the last time, like, you know, you go up there, you try and repair your own roof, which I probably don't recommend for most people, but you don't, when you're going to find out something went wrong is when it starts raining. And it's in the middle of like a three or three days of rain event.

Chase Peckham 18:38

Yeah.

Felipe Arevalo 18:38

And all of a sudden, you're really a water dripping on you waking you up in the middle of the night. That's when you're going to find out who mess something up. And that's where you're going to realize it's going to cost you even more.

Chase Peckham 18:48

Yeah.

Felipe Arevalo 18:48

Good luck trying to get someone out last minute. It's just, you know, that's a very expensive repair though.

Chase Peckham 18:55

It is.

Felipe Arevalo 18:55

Um, for the most part.

Chase Peckham 18:57

It scares people, Because you don't know if the person you're hiring to go look at it.

Felipe Arevalo 19:03

Right.

Chase Peckham 19:03

Also is telling you the truth. Oh yeah. The whole roof needs to be replaced. I can imagine I have one shingle and they're going to go, oh, this is, this could go at any time. gonna need a new roof. Let me, let me come over here. And I'll give you an estimate.

Felipe Arevalo 19:19

Let me give you a free estimate.

Chase Peckham 19:20

It's it's kinda like when my wife goes to get the oil change and they tell her that you know, that air filters and all kinds of things need to be replaced for$44.95, when you can go

Felipe Arevalo 19:29

DYI this is my biggest pet peeve with, with cars is people who pay for air filters to be replaced. That is one of the easiest car DYI that you can do in most cars, like both my car and Sarah's car, the air filters sit in there right behind the glove box. You don't need any tools. You just need to pop the glove box, empty it out, pop it down, remove one, add the new one, pop your glove box back in.

Chase Peckham 19:56

Yours's is easier than mine.

Felipe Arevalo 19:57

Easiest fix.

Chase Peckham 20:00

Although mine is not hard.

Felipe Arevalo 20:00

Each one is going to be different, but you could do a YouTube video. And it's probably something you could do with little to no tools at a third of the price of having someone doing it for you at the dealership.

Chase Peckham 20:11

For sure there's no doubt. There's no doubt that, you know, it's funny, my wife jokes, sometimes that I want to hire Chris, our handyman to replace light bulbs. And I said, well, it depends on the light bulb.

Felipe Arevalo 20:24

Yes. I have a light bulb right at the stairwell. It's like a way up there. I am not gonna change that I'm not going to bring in a giant ladder and change it. But, um, you know, roof repairs, that could be dangerous. So it, that might be something best left to professionals.

Chase Peckham 20:39

And there are certain things that you just have to have professionals do, but there are also things that you got to know your own skill level. Is it worth me trying to fix this? Is it worth me trying to fix my fence for instance, right. Woodwork, uh, I have a rickety. My fence is ready to go that the entrance, the gate at the side of my house is, is ready to go. Uh, and I'm going to have to fix that. So do I hire somebody.

Felipe Arevalo 21:05

I think you can give that a go.

Chase Peckham 21:05

Who can put on a new fence? I don't have the patient. That's the problem. I don't know if I have the patients or the know-how, but you know what I am to do. I'm going to call Mike doesn't know this yet, but Charlie, I'm calling you and all that wood that we dumped in your backyard. Um, we're going to use some of that and maybe build me a new fence.

Felipe Arevalo 21:22

There you go. And

Chase Peckham 21:24

I'll pay.

Felipe Arevalo 21:24

It'll will look nice

Chase Peckham 21:25

I'll pay you in beer.

Felipe Arevalo 21:28

Like they're sealed in different colors that might that will look pretty nice actually.

Chase Peckham 21:32

Uh, no, my wife will make me paint it or she'll paint it cause she likes to paint, but yeah, that'll be fun. And that brings me up to something else. My wife literally has repainted the whole inside of our house three or four times over, she gets sick of a color, gets, you know, she likes the way, you know, we, or we re did the kitchen and now the kitchen doesn't really match the living room of the diner.

Felipe Arevalo 21:50

The color.

Chase Peckham 21:51

Yeah. And or she gets tired of it. Or we took out carpets and put in wood floors and now the, you know, the, the, the bedrooms, they don't look as good anymore. And so, but I gotta give her credit. I hate painting. She has repainted, everything she's even redone. She even re did. We, my kids had these terrible, terrible, ugly tile, like desert looking red, kind of Arizona ish looking, uh, tiles in their bathroom. And not that that's ugly in itself. It just looked nothing like the rest of our house. And instead of redoing, having somebody come in and replace all these floors, very expensive to re tile or put in wood, she literally went to home Depot and found this tile paint and made this pattern. And they're gorgeous. You would never know. You would never know that those weren't just the tiles. They went in there and I had to say, I, my hat off to her, I'm like, that's incredible. And it was$50,

Felipe Arevalo 22:51

Right.

Chase Peckham 22:52

50 bucks,

Felipe Arevalo 22:53

And probably a day or two of hers.

Chase Peckham 22:55

about a day in between the sealant and all that kind of stuff. And for her, you got to figure, all right, what is, you know what, let's just pretend of what she makes or how much she makes an hour for her living. I'm not sure what that is. And believe me, she makes a lot more money than me. So the time in her day, even though she did it over a weekend, what it would have cost, right. Time-wise would have been a lot more than that.

Felipe Arevalo 23:18

Yeah. But it's something where she probably gets a good sense of accomplishment when she's done and she sees it and then she hears you talking about it like oh, that looks really nice.

Chase Peckham 23:28

He's a little cheap for certain things. We we've had this conversation about what we want to spend money on. Right. It's the same thing with these home improvements. It do I want to re she repainted all the cabinets in our house. We had that ugly. And I apologize for those of you living in apartments and living in condos and even, even homes that are built these days, they have the very neutral cabinets. That light wood look right. That every seems like every house has, she hates those more than anything. And she redid them all white and it looks phenomenal. So I thought she was crazy, but you know what? Some things are worth it.

Felipe Arevalo 24:05

Yeah. And, and it's something where painting, for example, some people really just like it. And, and that's something, if you're careful you can do without damaging anything else. And guess what? You don't like the color, you paint it again.

Chase Peckham 24:19

Right.

Felipe Arevalo 24:19

You know, I paint over it next month. If you decide, oh, that didn't come out. Right. Like I wanted it, you know? So it's something where that could be an easy DYI, not necessarily easy, but something you can accomplish, you know, do it yourself, change, changing out one board of your fence. I mean, it sounds like you need a much larger piece of your fence, but if it was just one board, that might be be something you get yourself, one board and a little hammer and you fix it up, you know?

Chase Peckham 24:46

Yeah.

Felipe Arevalo 24:46

So, so it's something I know one of the walls in my garage is unfinished is just, it's, it's just the two by fours.

Chase Peckham 24:53

Yeah oh ok.

Felipe Arevalo 24:53

Um, so eventually I'm going to put, that's a drywall. I think I can handle that. Um, you know, just putting up plain drywall and then printing it, whatever color

Chase Peckham 25:04

And there are all kinds of things. Again, I'm bringing up home Depot and Lowe's, but there are all kinds of things that you can create. If you have an unfinished wall, for instance, you can create that look.

Felipe Arevalo 25:14

Yeah.

Chase Peckham 25:14

Of the pattern or whatever it might be. They have that for right at these places. They're like a kit. So if you have the patients and you want to learn how to do it, if you want, like my wife and I've talked about putting in a new floor in our garage, you know, there's, there's some, our brother-in-law has this really nice finished.

Felipe Arevalo 25:34

Oh those that click in?

Chase Peckham 25:34

Oh, there's click in. So he's had that. Those are easy, but I'm talking about like the paint with the sparkly shiny.

Felipe Arevalo 25:40

Oh yeah.

Chase Peckham 25:40

Kind of a coated, you can do that. But I mean, the prep is really,

Felipe Arevalo 25:44

Almost like a car dealership garage?

Chase Peckham 25:46

Correct. Yeah. Really kind of sharp looking like a sh like really clean car shop has those kinds of floors. They're pretty nice.

Felipe Arevalo 25:54

Yeah.

Chase Peckham 25:54

Um, and, and for, you know, I'm not a super handy guy, so I don't have the technical name for it, but there are so many things that you can do. Um, but it comes down to budget. And then there's just going to be times when I know I can't do that and we know we can't afford to have it done professionally, so we're just going to have to wait on things, but there are certain things you just can't like a roof or those kinds of,

Felipe Arevalo 26:17

I saw this thing, you know, according to the EPA, a leaky faucet that drips at the rate of one drip per second can waste you over 3000 gallons a year.

Chase Peckham 26:27

That's a pet peeve of mine.

Felipe Arevalo 26:27

That's a lot of money.

Chase Peckham 26:27

Oh, it's not just a lot of money. That's a lot of wasted resource.

Felipe Arevalo 26:31

Bad for the environment.

Chase Peckham 26:31

Water is a very incredible resource that we have. Right? All of us have these leaky and it drives me nuts. I'll be going to the bathroom and my kid's bathroom. And I hear this drip, which is the reason I was trying to replace that faucet handle in the first place. And it was funny and I kept screwing with, and then finally, I had to have Chris come in and do it. Um, but thank God for Chris. And just so just to wrap this up, if you have somebody locally that you know is like a handyman and can fix it guy, and man, they are worth their weight in gold. They really are.

Felipe Arevalo 27:04

Yeah. So go through it and maybe do a monthly checkup on your house and little things you can fix yourself. Maybe you can clean your gutters without having to climb on a ladder or something, changing out air filters, light bulbs, some energy efficient, light bulbs, that kind of stuff

Chase Peckham 27:21

You would think air filters would be super easy. Right? How many times have you bought an air filter That was the wrong looks like it it's the right size. It looks like it's the right model. And then you get home and it's not, and you bought four of oh. And then you find out that the air filters are different sizes throughout your house. And you bought one size thinking, oh, they're all the same.

Felipe Arevalo 27:41

Just take a bunch of pictures before you go. Take them out nd bring them with you and lay them down on the floor of the Home Depot.

Chase Peckham 27:48

Only tool me 11 years of figure that out. I just walk into lows and go, Hey, I need to replace that. they go okay come over here.

Felipe Arevalo 27:55

It might look silly, but you bring it with you. And you'll set them down on the floor in front of all the other air filters and then pull out the matching air filters and set them aside and like, okay, I need two of these. I need one of these. And then you verify, you have all of them and you go home and you just g ot t o figure out which one goes, where,

Chase Peckham 28:11

How many times have you put a bolt or a screw into your dry wall in your house? And it goes, right. It's not the right kind of screw. And it goes right there and you hang it up anyway. And then three weeks later.

Felipe Arevalo 28:22

You hear it crashing down.

Chase Peckham 28:23

Falling down. And the hole is like three times as big as it used to be because you were too lazy to go find the right screw for that, Or the stud finder by the way, you might as well get what you pay for pay for the more expensive stud finder, cheap stud finder can lie.

Felipe Arevalo 28:39

You don't want to mess up and think there's a stud there, but have it really be an inch over.

Chase Peckham 28:44

You got an extra hole. Exactly. Exactly.

Felipe Arevalo 28:48

Yeah. we'd love to hear or people leave comments. What have you tried? What have you failed? What have you succeeded at changing or repairing in your own home? Uh, you know, it'd be fun to a conversation to have, and if you haven't had a chance to watch it, you know, we had our SWYM live, which is kind of along the same topic. Last Wednesday. You can find that on social media, on YouTube and, uh, you know, we touch on some of these topics and some other ones as well.

Speaker 1 29:28

[inaudible].