DDIY – Don’t Do It Yourself
Like all woodworkers, I’m a fairly handy DIY guy around the house for most repairs. And if I can do it, why pay someone else an outrageous amount to do…
Like all woodworkers, I'm a fairly handy DIY guy around the house for most repairs. And if I can do it, why pay someone else an outrageous amount to do it?
I'm not talking about major repairs best left to the professionals like, oh, say roof repair (see the "Stupid, stupid, stupid" blog post on June 27), but fairly simple little things: a broken light switch, loose molding, nail pops in drywall, drippy faucet, replacing locksets ... Most of these are easy, and often take more time to run to the big box store to get parts than it does to make the actual repair. But I have a leak in the kitchen sink that I just don't want to mess with for a number of reasons.
- I'm not sure what's actually leaking, and I can't quite get to it to take a good look without dismantling something first.
- My kitchen sink cabinet is incredibly cramped, plus it has slide-out stuff I'd have to remove first (even then, at 6' tall and 200 pounds, it's still too cramped for me to comfortably work).
- We have a very deep sink, and even once I manage to cram myself under there, I still have trouble just reaching the fittings.
- My house's plumbing is all that plastic PEX stuff that requires a proprietary crimping tool that costs about a hundred bucks, and I don't want to buy one.
- And finally, I just don't have the time right now, and all the things I mentioned above guarantee a time-consuming job.
So for this task I'm switching from DIY to DDIY, and calling a plumber. Since I actually do have the skills to do the repair (in fact, I was recently paid quite handsomely to write the entire script for a plumbing-repair DVD now on sale at one of the big box stores), I feel a bit guilty about this.
But then I got to thinking, I buy lumber that's already surfaced when that's something I can do myself, right? I could make my own dowels, but I don't. And while I've often made my own moldings, more often than not I just buy them without a twinge of guilt. In each case I've left the dirty work to someone else so I can be more productive, and that's exactly what I'm doing here.
So, welcome to my personal DDIY Network.
Till next time,
A.J.
A.J. Hamler is the former editor of Woodshop News and Woodcraft Magazine. He's currently a freelance woodworking writer/editor, which is another way of stating self-employed. When he's not writing or in the shop, he enjoys science fiction, gourmet cooking and Civil War reenacting, but not at the same time.
