Me starting a project “What kind of alcoholic simpleton set up THIS CONTRAPTION?!? This is why we need professionals”

Also me, finishing a project “I’m done fiddling with this godforsaken piping. That’s good enough, leave it for the next person”

And thus the cycle continues anew

This is why I jumped at the chance to buy my parents' old house when they moved out. Not only were they giving me a good deal, but I knew how my dad took care of the place and that I wasn't buying a fire hazard or worse.

I weep for whoever bought my parents old house. My dad left so much half-assed shit that's going to break again for them to find. Hell he's already done a number on their new house and that's just what I can see walking through. I'm probably going to inherit that one...

I like not having to wait for the landlord to get off their ass.

I did fuck up the plumbing. Like I said, got in over my head. All the old pipes were cemented in and the disposal didn't match up to the existing plumbing. I should have thrown in the towel sooner, but "too late" was when I, the dumbass with a sawzall, chose to admit defeat. He was here a solid 2 hours cleaning up my mess. I can fix most stuff, but sometimes, it just goes the wrong amount of sideways.

As for the disposal, if we were gonna replace it, we were gonna get a GOOD one. It's a 1 horse and it's probably overkill, but I'd rather spend the extra on a higher quality machine. We both spent way too much time living with shit tier appliances in cheap apartments.

Fortunately, the plumber was a total bro and replaced all the cemented fittings with compression fittings. So if the next one doesn't perfectly fit, it'll be as simple as loosening everything up and adjusting it all.

I'm pretty sure the horrendous drought we had last couple years and the 105-110 degree summers did them in.

We're the second owners so the lady who lived here before us had to have loved those trees. She and her husband built this place and raised their kids here. She continued to live here until he died. She seemed genuinely elated to be selling to another young couple looking to build a family instead of some corpo or landlord or flipper. Nice lady.

I don't think anyone caught that first tree was probably dying at closing. Oh well. It sucks but what're you gonna do? As for the second one, the last few summers have been brutally hot and dry. We didn't do anything to the trees. We did cut back on watering the lawn because of the drought. I think the poor old thing just couldn't take it anymore.

We're in Oklahoma, and the Eastern Redbud is our state tree. One of the neighbors has one, and when it starts seeding again, I'm going to ask if I can collect some seed pods so we can try to get a few going. They're really hardy here and a local tree should produce seeds that are best adapted to the local climate. I miss those two trees, but for those couple weeks a year, when the redbuds are in bloom, I think the beauty of that will be an acceptable consolation.

There's a lot of variables, not the least of which being the specific people you hire, how busy it is in your area at that time for them, and the specific site (can they access easily with their equipment, are there easily damaged buildings nearby, etc.).

The last time my parents had tree work done, my dad was getting estimates in the range of $2,500-4,000 per tree, for a total of 4 trees.

Then one guy came out, took a look, and says, "$1,500."

My dad is thinking that's the best price he's likely to get, but still wants to see if the guy has any wiggle room, so he says something like, "Is there anything you can do on the price if I want to get all four done at once?"

And the guy just says something like, "I was planning on doing all four at once. If I gotta come back a second day, it'll cost a bit more. Maybe $1,800 in total for the four of em. But I'll only need one day as long as I can get here early and put a full day in."

When my dad realized the price was for the entire job, he basically just said, "How soon can you do it?"

I take pictures on my phone and draw measurements on them. That's been pretty helpful for me.

Fire sprinkler installers crying

It varies by the locality, but the municipal inspectors in the US often let you get away with doing your own electrical and plumbing. They come down harder on gas, though. For a pretty sensible reason. If you mess up electrical or plumbing, you tend to only fuck yourself. If you mess up gas, you tend to fuck your neighbors, too.

I can find plenty of craftspeople. But usually they will only take specific jobs, with specific outcomes.

I have a situation where I have to have a bathroom completely demolished and plumbing and waste water lines redone.

It's a simple deal and a quick work yet nobody will take it because there are special demands that need to be met (it involves insurances) like ripping old water lines completely from the wall and run new tubes.

But "ripping out the old is too much work and puttin new pipes into the wall is too conplex: leave the old ones as is and put the new ones outside the wall".

Nope. Old out, new in. Everything through conduits, with joints and safety valves inside inspection bixes. And there they go running.

My wife and I have agreed to try to keep things to one emergency room visit per project.

The last one being when I was pulling up tack strip to replace carpet that was right along a transition to the kitchen tile. Crowbar caught a chunk of ceramic and gashed my head pretty bad. Missed my eye by a few centimeters. Wear a face shield for that shit.

You know that you can use drills and saws more than once, and for more than one kind of thing, right? I've used the same drill for plumbing, electrical, woodworking, and probably 100 other projects at this point. A basic mechanics set and a basic combo kit of power tools from any hardware store will allow you to do 90% of projects around your house, and will take up about as much space as a medium moving box.