Doing Your Own Home Repair

I finally am realizing that sometimes it just does not make any sense to take the personal responsibility of fixing something in your own house. In this day and age, with an ever increasing amount of bills filling the mail box, a mortgage and the other expenses that are part of living the American Dream, it seems to make sense to do things yourself. But, sometimes time itself is a more precious commodity than they money your saving.

Take for instance last weekend. After seeing a friend's beautiful garage floor; perfect paint and show room speckles and comparing it to my twice painted, peeling, faded, They Call Me Earl, like garage, I knew I had to stop ignoring the garage and meet the challenge of fixing it up head on.

First, I checked out how much it would cost to have the garage done by someone else. According to the information I got at the local Home Depot, the cost would be around $600 - $700. I figured that I would save about $500 or so, doing it myself. Of course I underestimated how hard it is to paint a garage floor, which needs to be stripped.

I spent two full days stripping the garage. I thought it would just be a matter of moving the scraper over the old paint and watching the paint peel back like dead, sun burned skin. Assuming that was my first mistake. Actually, after the stripper I applied didn't work, I was forced to resort to Acetone and strip the floor one small square at a time. It took two full days. On one, I worked from 7:00 a.m. to almost 7:00 p.m. My spine was barely able to snap back into position when I stood up to streach. If my wife hadn't of given me a massage before I went to bed, I honestly believe I would have woken up permanently bent in half.

After stripping I had to go over the entire garage again and get the stubborn spots. This was followed by rinsing out the garage with a hose, going thru the garage a second time, sweeping, using a blower and washing it out one more time.

Now, I was ready to paint.

The garage had to be prepped first. This took about an hour. It took another our and a half to cut and then paint. The helpful knucklehead at the Home Depot said that I would only need one kit to do the job, but 1/2 hour before Home Depot closed, and I was looking at an empty paint can and a half completed garage, I had to go back and buy another kit.

Finally, everything was finished. The rest of the evening was spent putting plastic sheeting over all the stuff in the backyard until the garage dried. All in all, it took about four days to finish everything. It came out beautiful, but beautiful at what price? I have a bump in my back and my shoulders are humped forward like a zombie and every time I look at the garage floor, I remember the pain I went thru and start sobbing.

Would I do it again? Well, I figured I spent about $400 on materials and at least thirty two hours of labor. I could have had the entire thing done for a couple of hundred dollars more and not given four days of my life away.

This experience taught me that time is as much of a commodity as money and sometimes it's best to just pay someone the money and buy yourself some rest and relaxation. Forty hours of work during the week is pretty much all I can handle these days and saving $200 or so in this case, can't justify the added grief and stress.