Why You Don't Need a Home Contractor
October 09, 2011, By Andy Hinds 0 comments
As far back as I can remember in my childhood, there was always a home improvement project going on. Even when we lived in Army quarters, we had our “vacation home” in Montana—a log cabin that we built on a rocky hillside by a glacial lake—that we would return to almost every summer and try to make a little more civilized. When we moved back to the States after years overseas, my parents bought a string of fixer-uppers that we spruced up and parlayed into progressively nicer houses in better neighborhoods.
I don’t know if I ever thought about it when I was a kid, but I had no reason to suspect that there were people out there who hired others to fix or upgrade things in their houses. It seemed perfectly reasonable that if something needed to be done, a parent would buy a how-to book (if necessary), pick up the materials and put the kids to work.
I was in high school, working after school with some other kids as a laborer on my friend’s dad’s construction site when I realized that there were guys my age who had never really driven any nails to speak of. This opened my eyes to a whole world I hadn’t been exposed to—a world where total strangers are invited into houses to repair leaky pipes or build additions.
By the time my wife and I bought our first house, a tiny, ramshackle cottage, I had already been working as a carpenter for ten years, so there was never any question about who would do the work necessary to make the place habitable. Since that house, we’ve owned a 1910 shotgun shack onto which I built an addition that doubled its original size, and a dingy rental property that I rehabbed extensively.
Sure: we’ve been able to live in nicer places than we could have afforded had we needed to hire someone else to work on them, and we’ve been able to not lose our shirts on our investment property largely because we don’t have to pay for maintenance. But the financial angle is not the only reason it makes sense to work on your own house.
The energy you invest in building or fixing something in your house, more than the money you save or the value you add, can create a connection with your living space that makes your home feel like part of your family rather than just a shelter you pay the bank for the privilege of occupying.
