#1 Don't Remodel Your Home - Sure, it sounds great now; you haven't started yet, but think about it, you'll be dead in a few short, miserable years and none of the suffering you're about to endure will amount to anything. Someone else will just come along behind you and wonder what you were possibly thinking when you chose to paint your bedroom Mauve and then they will paint over it in an offensive Chartreuse and the cycle of madness will continue. Just leave everything as it is and let those fools who come after you wonder why you never pulled out that orange shag carpeting from the seventies. You will die with a smile on your face and they will be left with the disgusting task of finding forty years of dead skin cells under the carpeting they pull up. Take the money you save by not remodeling and go on a nice vacation away from your disgusting house; you will thank me when you're sitting on the beach.
A lot better than remodeling!
#2 See Your Doctor First - Okay, your wife has totally shot down the awesome vacation idea because, let's face it, it's her idea to remodel in the first place. You'd still be content with milk crates and bean bag chairs, but she won't have it and before she nags you into powder you give in and decide to remodel. Go see your doctor first. There is always the small chance he will say you are too unhealthy to remodel and then you can show the doctor's note to your wife. She will just hire people to do the job at ten times the price, but you are off the hook buddy! Just stay out of everyone's way for about six months and you are home free.
#3 Plan Your Budget And Multiply By Some Big Number - So the vacation idea and the doctor visit have both failed, nothing left to do but start planning. Add up the costs of all the materials you will need and then multiply this amount by at least twelve. This will cover the unforeseen costs associated with you knowing absolutely nothing about do it yourself projects. Costs like:
- Money for gas going back and forth to the store ten times trying to figure out what part you need for the plumbing that you were certain you had figured out by trip number four.
- Money for all the tools you don't have and never knew you would need. Also, be prepared to buy these tools because even though you will only use it once in your entire life, renting is somehow more expensive than buying a cheap version that will work just fine. People who own tool rental shops are about as evil as North Korean dictators.
- Money for things unrelated to the remodel that you will either break along the way or will discover were not done right by some other husband thirty years ago and now you have to fix it before you can go any further with your project.
- Money for materials that you didn't calculate correctly in the first place.
- Money for food. You will be way to tired to do all this stuff and also cook. Your spouse won't be able to cook either. Whoever is the usual cook in your house will have been sucked into the black hole of "helping with the remodel" from which they will never return.
- Money - (are we seeing a pattern here?) - for eventually paying a professional to fix everything you've screwed up in your house.
- Money for additional doctor's visits and therapy.
Your approximate budget for week 1 of your project
#4 Buy A Truck Sure, I could've included that in the list above, but this is important enough to consider on its own. You probably own a sedan or an SUV. Maybe you think you can have the store deliver supplies to your house and are willing to pay the extra amount for that service. Just buy a truck. You will be free. Free like an eagle. You no longer have to ask for help from your friends with trucks or rent a truck or wish you had a truck. You will have a truck and can go spend ridiculous amounts of money at the home improvement store any time you want. You also no longer have to use a scientific calculator to figure out how to fit those 2x4s into your Hyundai Sonata with the trunk open and the seats down.
Don't let this be you
#5 Avoid Watching DIY Networks You probably think you can learn a lot from watching home improvement shows, and you can. You can learn that these people are all liars and fakes and they really need to be rounded up and forced to work on your house for a while. All the parts are shiny and new and fit together perfectly on these shows; you never see a DIY star going back to the store ten times for the right piece of plumbing. Don't be fooled, this isn't because of their vast experience; it's because they have interns that do all the suffering for them. Think about the shows you like in this genre, they all show the stars having fun on demo day. Then, later, they just smile for the camera and put everything together nice and easy. All the in-between suffering that you don't see was done by minimum wage gophers like you and me. Take a good look at the well-manicured hands of a DIY star and tell me they actually do this work for a living. You never see them come out from under a sink covered in twenty-five years worth of life-threatening ooze like you discovered under your sink. Their hands and clothes don't even get dirty. And if they do get some dirt on their hands, watch as they recoil in horror and reach for a towel, or the shirt of an intern. These shows are phony and will only set you up for heartbreak while destroying any self esteem you have left. You are not the failure these shows make you feel like! So don't watch them.
#6 Get Familiar With Youtube When I was a kid I had an Encyclopaedia Britannica. Every report was done from this reference source and we pondered how amazing it was to have so much information collected into one place. Times have changed. If you have any skill at all, or even if you don't, you can repair pretty much any device ever invented by man by looking it up on Youtube. Dryer broken? There's a Youtube video- and for your specific model. Installing some obscure brand of laminate flooring? Don't worry, Youtube can get you through it. Just don't get distracted by all the Pop Sugar, Wiz Khalifa and Taylor Swift videos or you'll never get finished with your project. Which brings me to my next point.
- Reality. You've been avoiding it so far, but it's going to creep up and bite you on the rear end here real quick.
- Those hidden things I warned you about earlier. You think things are going smooth and you're making good time. You are about to find out that your home's entire foundation is sinking into a prehistoric burial ground that can't be disturbed so you will have to move your house to another lot somewhere in a neighboring state. But then you will find out that your house was an experimental home built completely out of asbestos in the 1950s and you need special permits to prevent the government from launching it out into space and away from the earth forever. Good luck Mr DIYer!
- Exhaustion. Those DIY shows that made everything look easy? You're starting to really hate them now aren't you? You are about to discover muscles you had forgotten about since high school and will have to expand your already blown budget to include Ibuprofen, Tylenol, Alcohol and time off from work. Oh yes, work. You forgot about that too, didn't you? You have to work and do your home improvement project and spend time with the kids and your wife and eat and sleep and somehow not deteriorate into a mindless psychopath, hell bent on painting and plumbing. Zombies on The Walking Dead move quicker than you do at this point. Face it, the only reason you and your wife haven't killed each other is that you're too tired. Which brings up another bullet point.
- Apologizing. You and your spouse are about to learn a lot about each other. At some point you will wonder why you ever married in the first place. One or both of you will break down crying because the other has turned into a homicidal maniac at the thought of going back to Home Depot. Then you will have to apologize. You will spend a lot of time apologizing. Plan on adding about two weeks to your finish time just to include apologizing for yelling at each other.
DIY project, week seven
#8 Learn To Accept Failure Let's face it, you suck at this DIY thing. The last thing you tried to make by yourself was a toolbox for your dad in 8th grade shop class and that somehow transformed into an ashtray. It's okay. Just deal with it. Here is one piece of info they don't tell you watching DIY on TV: the final result is fake. A lot of home remodeling is learning to cover up your mistakes. That horrible job someone else did thirty years ago in your house that you uncovered during your own project? You never noticed until you got close and looked, huh? Ta da! That's the secret to happy DIYing my friend. Just figure out a way to hide your mistakes and get over trying to do it perfectly; you're never going to get it perfect because no one ever does. That poorly painted wall? Can you say shelving unit? Those gaps in your baseboards? Fill 'em in with putty and paint over 'em- let some other schmuck find them thirty more years from now. Maybe even leave them a fun note to find: "This was a crappy job, wasn't it? But we did it!" Then include a selfie of you and your strung-out wife cracking open a cold one to celebrate. Professionals who are honest will even tell you this, that a lot of home improvement work is knowing how to just make it work and hide mistakes. If the professionals say that, then that leaves you a lot of room for leeway, so don't be too hard on yourself.
Make it work!
#9 Wear Your Safety Equipment! I'm including this for two reasons. One, so I don't get sued by some moron who reads this article and says I never warned him about wearing safety equipment. And two, because it's really important, but not for the reasons you might think. There will come a time during your remodel where, out of desperation, you consider not wearing your respirator so you get asbestos poisoning and die. Or maybe you will think about leaving those goggles on the table so a nail "accidentally" goes through your eye and into your brain, sparing you from any further suffering. These feelings of self-destruction are perfectly normal for the DIYer, but don't do it! You know as well as I do that you won't be lucky enough to die and then you'll end up having to finish your project with one eye, one hand and a feeding tube while your wife nags you about going to slow. The real reasons you want to wear your safety equipment are all the disgusting things you're about to come in contact with: thirty year old, highly-stained carpet padding, some substance the slides off the plumbing and up your arm, seeking a new host, the dust of an ancient civilization, lurking within your walls. Wear the gear for your sake, so when this nightmare is over you have all your eyes and limbs with which to appreciate your hard work; which is my 10th and final rule.
Bad safety choice or suicidal DIYer?
#10 Enjoy it! Any home remodeling project eventually turns into a nightmare. I hope you eventually reach the point in your journey where you are kneeling on a floor, laughing hysterically with aching knees while looking for the screwdriver you've misplaced for the hundredth time. This is when you'll turn the corner and realize that perfection doesn't matter, the end result doesn't matter, what matters are the things you've learned about yourself and your spouse along the way. You've learned to work together in a way you never would have imagined before this adventure. You've learned to be more accepting of each other's short-comings. You've learned just how much whiskey your wife can drink before passing out. Somehow, you've learned some Armenian cuss words, but in the end you can stand back and admire your incompetent, shoddy job and say, "We did this."
Then, you can start planning your next project!
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