DIY or don’t?

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0:37When I got a new car, I thought my insurance premium would increase and empty my bank account. Like if Fetween won the lottery. I've invested most of my winnings in chicken tenders because they're bomb. But bro, I bought a house and it's sick, bro. I'm thinking the floor is going to be all trampoline, bro. With the helipad on the roof. The contractor said it's structurally unsound. They're just being babies. But switching to Geico saved me hundreds, so my bank account is safe. It feels good to save some hard-earned cash. It feels good to Geico. Oh, what, did you watch a YouTube video and then try it yourself?

1:12And he said, actually, I did. That kind of gives me a purpose, personally, to be able to fix these things for our home. So I opened up the front of the dryer, and I used my hair dryer on it, and a week later, it broke down.

1:30I love a home improvement video. Like, you decided to install an entire IKEA kitchen by yourself. And we're having to deal with 210 packages, and we have to put it all together ourself. You bought an abandoned house, and now you're renovating it? There are holes in the ceilings. This is not the only one. But, you know, I have faith that I can fix this place up. You're building a tunnel under your home. I cut a hole in my sub-basement wall and started cutting into the rock under my house. That ambition is super impressive to me, because I will absolutely call in reinforcements to change a light bulb.

2:08But it seems like the internet is telling me, if you've got a screwdriver and a dream, you can get some real work done. I'm John Glenn Hill, this is Explained It to Me from Vox, and today, we're getting handy. But first, I need a little advice from an actual expert. Pam Pibus, host of Fix It 101 on MPB Think Radio here in Jackson, Mississippi. I have gotten phone calls from Korea. I guess they must be listening online. I don't understand all the technology. I just show up and they broadcast the show. Okay, so how'd you get into home improvement? Oh, girl, I grew up in it. Yeah, my daddy was a contractor, so we grew up renovating homes and building houses.

2:54And I grew up in the day where women definitely weren't doing this kind of thing. So getting into the industry was a bit of a challenge for me. I actually started doing home inspections because I was unemployed. Oh, wow. Yeah. And my mother saw an article in the paper and she's like, Pammy, you could do that because you grew up with that. So I went and took the test and I went to the class and took the test and came back. And I thought, well, why don't I build a business around that? Yeah, I'm curious. You know, you have all these people calling to the show. You work with people in real life. You're a contractor and a home inspector.

3:33You see a lot of people and projects up close. Are people rolling up their sleeves more and trying to do it themselves these days? Or are people trying to, like, leave it to the professionals? I think the people in my generation, and I am, I was born in 1962, so you do the math. I'll just go ahead and tell you, I'm 64. I think folks in my generation, we're kind of used to hiring somebody to come fix it. The problem has been sometimes who's the competent person to hire? And we have problems getting competent people to come in. But younger people roll up their sleeves and do it themselves. Oh, that's interesting.

4:11Yeah. Why do you think that is? I think because they're seeing that they have permission to do that. Because when I started with my house, I've been in my home 30 years. I went out and bought a book to try to learn all the things about my house. Now, you just Google it or you go on YouTube. Like the other day, I was having problems with my toilet. So I just went online and figured out what the problem was and fixed it myself. Young people are more apt to ask those questions and go to social media to try to figure out how to fix something themselves. And then if they paint themselves in a corner and they can't get it fixed, then they can call in 911 and get somebody to come over there and help them out with it.

4:57My experience has been with the younger people, they ask more questions. They're more inquisitive. And now these are the homebuyers that I work with that are buying these little cabbage patch houses. And I think some of that's economics. It's expensive to hire somebody to come in. And if you're barely getting into a house, you want to learn how to take care of that house, for one thing. And that's real big on education. Let's teach them how to use the air conditioner. Let's teach them how to take care of the water heater. Let's teach them how to change the filters and to check under your counters to make sure that there's no water underneath there.

5:33And you end up with a problem that costs you a lot of money when if you just maintained it a little bit at a time, you wouldn't have all those expenses. So I think some of it is more exposure from the Internet and some of it is just economics. They just can't they can barely afford to get in the house. So they can't really call somebody in to fix the rotten wood. They're going to have to figure out how to do that themselves.

6:01Yeah. What do you think of people going on YouTube or TikTok or whatever app it is and learning to do home improvement stuff from there? I do it. and I've, I mean, I've been a licensed contractor for 22 years. My dad was a contractor. The beautiful thing about social media is that there are a lot of ways to do the same thing. So why not take advantage of that and learn? And even if it's the wrong way, I'm still going to learn something. As an inspector, are you finding more people sort of like doing unpermitted thing? Like, is it getting dangerous? Are people good at staying on the safe side of things?

6:40Yeah, a little bit of both. You know, I've gone into houses and I'm like, oh, Pawpaw and a beer has been here today. They have done some things. And a lot of times, to be honest, a homeowner will do a better job than a contractor because they're going slower in taking their time. Some safety things to keep in mind. If you're going to build a deck, get somebody there who knows how to build the structure because deck failures are a big deal. And those are a lot of DIY projects. I draw the line on structure. If you're going to do anything structural that's holding people and things up that you love You need a professional And then you could come in after that maybe and put the pretty on it But but those things can be dangerous.

7:31Another thing is electrical be very very careful With your electrical stuff because you can do some damage to yourself I was changing out an outlet in a bedroom and it started smoking and the wires did not look so good So I stopped, stepped away from it and hired an electrician to come in to do that for me. Because wiring behind a wall that is old is susceptible to damage and can burn your house down. So those types of things, those safety issues, I would really suggest that we not be doing those types of things. If we want to close the skill set gap that we see with people trying to take on more DIY home projects, I'm curious where you think we should start.

8:20Look for workshops. I know some of these big box stores will have those. If you can do something hands-on, and I will tell you this, I have people asking me all the time, teach me how to use a power tool. So I will invite them over. A couple of years ago, I built a deck with 25 women, just women. And I taught them how to use a miter saw and I taught them how to use a drill. Find people maybe in your life and ask them to show you how to do things. And specifically when it comes to power tools, there are so many things that you can do if you know how the proper way to use specific tools. Get a group of people together.

9:04ask a contractor to do a workshop with you. It sounds like there's real community in this. Yes. Yes, I believe home maintenance is a community project. That there's a way, and I love doing projects with people. If somebody wants to paint their house and they call me up, I'm like, I'm in. I'd love to come over because a pizza and a Coke or something and laughing. I did that when I moved into my house. I invited a bunch of people over and I said, I will feed you if you help me paint my house. and it was awesome. We had so much fun.

9:41Coming up, how to be your own handyman.

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11:29I'm Jonquan, and this is Explain It To Me.

11:35Vladimir Surdoch knows his way around an apartment. As a handyman in New York City, he estimates he's seen as many as 18 ,000 of them. It would be anything from installing a television to fixing up dishwashers, fixing doors, hanging doors, adjusting cabinets, replacing doorknobs, fixing up holes, hanging curtains, picture hanging. And it was one such picture hanging job that almost broke him. There was a lady that asked me to hang about 47 different photos on one wall. 47? 47. And she had a specific pattern of how she wanted this done. And I spent almost a whole day measuring and hanging. And she came and she was just like, oh, you're about like two inches off this way.

12:28And I had to take everything off. So that led to being like, I can't be moving 47 pictures every day. So that was kind of the moment. That was about maybe three, four years ago where I started thinking about the class. He calls his class Back to Basics, and you need literally zero skills to sign up. We start out with a task right off the bat, just to kind of see what everybody can do. The task was always screwing on a piece of sheetrock onto a two-foot by two-foot metal wall that I built, right? and then we go into just trying to hang and all sorts of different things that are there like toilet paper holder, a handicap bar, a TV bracket.

13:08What you could do is you could turn the wall around so you could see how the anchors work on the inside to see why use a different anchor on different aspect or a different molly or toggle bolts or so forth. That's our first task. So if you could hang one thing, then you could do your curtains, you could do your television and you could put shelves up. Everybody wants to learn how to put up a TV. If you could put a TV up, you could put everything else up. Ooh, yeah. The idea of mounting my own TV, that's like, oh my gosh, because that's definitely something I would call the professionals for. You can do that so easily.

13:40Really? Oh my gosh. It's a matter of just simple practice and having someone there to make you comfortable. How did you initially learn the trades? Did you come from a handy family? So I grew up in what was former Yugoslavia. So everybody's just handy, right? So we grew up on a farm. There wasn't there wasn't any like TV time. You just help, you know, like no matter how old you are, if you can hold something for your father or your uncle or neighbor, you hold on. You just watch and you slowly, the older you get, they give you more responsibility. Does it feel like very different from sort of how people approach it here in the U.S.?

14:20Everybody around the world's handy except here. Oh, it's true. It's true. You go to second or third world nations, everybody has to figure out ways, right? Here we have the luxury of paying someone in a trade for the most part. So there is a big difference. And also technical schools are much more popular there as opposed to here. Say there's someone who doesn't know a hammer from a screwdriver and they're like, okay, I need to put together my first toolbox. What are the essentials? What are some things every person should have at home? A really decent screwdriver, a screwdriver that can be a Phillips, can be a flathead.

15:01You need, I would say, at least two pair of, they're called channel locks, just pair of pliers. Everybody should have what's called a five-in-one. A five-in-one is a little painter's tool, right? So it's got five different options of things that you could do. You could scrape the wall a little bit. You could clean your brush with it. You could clean the roller with it. And everybody needs a drill. You need a drill. And not an electric one, a battery-operated one, because electric drills are too strong. And people end up, you can break your wrist on an electric one. Oh, wow. Okay. What are some of the basic repairs that a tenant should know if they're in an apartment?

15:36I'll give you some of the experiences that I've had. I've had people call me that their curtains have fallen off in the middle of the night. If I could come and help them put up the curtains. I feel like that's something everybody should be able to do. It's a matter of putting in four screws into a wall to be able to have curtains and not bother your super for such a simple, simple concept. I think clogged sinks. Everybody needs a plunger. Everybody should own a plunger in their life. Learning how to shut off your own valves, right? So God forbid there is a flood in your apartment. Just to know how to shut off like your toilet is overflowing.

16:17If you just shut the water off to it, your toilet stops overflowing. So you're not putting anybody in a panic because water does a tremendous amount of damage. How do you do that? How do you turn the water off? I realize that seems like a very basic question, but where do you go to do that? So if you look at your toilet, right? Look either to the bottom left of your toilet or the bottom right of it. There's going to be a pipe and a little braided hose that goes up towards your tank. It's just a little round valve. Lefty, loosey, righty-tighty, right? So if you want to turn water off, you turn it to the right.

16:48If you want to turn the water on, you turn it to the left. Okay. And then for the sink, say I have a clogged sink, what is my first step? Do I pull out the Drano? Do I get out a plunger? I assume I have a special sink plunger versus a toilet plunger. You could, depends on your hygiene preference, I guess. But to eliminate any of those calls, just get a decent sink strainer. sink strainers help a lot. They catch it. So like, for instance, like a kitchen sink would need an inch and a half sink strainer. A bathroom sink needs an inch and a quarter. It just uses different size plumbing and tubs use like a two inch.

17:30Those help a lot. Okay. Let's say that my microwave is acting weird. It's on the older side, five years old. Do I call someone about it or do I just need to like fold and get a new microwave? You fold. How do you know when to fold them? So a microwave is either going to work or it's not going to work. When a microwave burns out, it just doesn't work anymore. It would cost more money to have someone come look at it than it would to buy a new one. Yeah. Any appliance that's over seven years old and you think it's acting up, just don't get it repaired unless it's like a sub-zero refrigerator. So let's say I want to install a dimmer switch for my lights.

18:11You know, I want to create some ambience, but I am not an electrician. Is that something I need to call a handyman for, or is it okay for me to do it myself? Can I tackle it myself? So electricity is nothing but black and white. That's literally the two wires that are inside the wall. You'll see a green wire, which is the ground. You should definitely be able to put a dimmer in yourself. All you have to do is, if you have a little tester, right? A tester is a$10 battery-operated thing that you take, you turn it on, you touch a wire with it, and it will beep. If it beeps, it's live. Now, it's not going to tell you what's there for voltage, but it's going to tell you something is or isn't energized.

18:50So it tests the voltage from the outside. That says it's hot. And it also will test an outlet, but again, you've got to make sure you're in the hot side of the outlet. If you want to do your own dimmer, go to your panel, your circuit breakers. have someone hold that tester next to the switch that you currently have and keep switching it off when it stops beeping you can take it apart and you'll notice that on a switch there's nothing but a black and white wire and you just have to connect the dimmer wires to those wires it's really simple i know i say it's really simple but like when someone sees it the first time they're like that's it what's it like seeing someone seeing that light bulb go off for someone seeing them be like, oh, wait, I can do this myself.

19:31It's rewarding. It's extremely rewarding to know that someone can do this on their own. I think it also bridges the gap between people that are of blue collar and people of white collar, right? Sometimes you walk into a house or an apartment and people are like, well, why is it so much money for you to do this? And I think showing people that don't work in a trade, certain difficulties of why something takes a certain length could also bridge a gap of understanding each other. So bridging that gap a little bit also puts people at ease a little bit when someone walks into your house and is saying like, well, this, this, this, this, and this.

20:09And you're like, I don't know if that's true.

20:16So how do you go from knowing your way around a drill to full-on DIY expert? that's next.

21:01Thank you.

21:21You can sign up for your$1 per month trial at shopify.com slash explained. You can go to shopify.com slash explained at shopify.com slash explained.

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22:06I'm JQ, back with more Explain It To Me. Have you ever seen someone's apartment and thought, wow, you really made this your home? That's the vibe you get when you see Imani Kiel's DC apartment. She's got gorgeous wallpaper, incredible shelving, intricate light fixtures, and mirrors that are placed just so. What's even more impressive is that she did almost all of it herself. So I built an entertainment system in my living room out of literally I took it from about five or six sheets of plywood to a beautiful, I love you so much, piece that is like the anchor of my space. I did this wallpaper right here.

22:52This is about a 30-foot hallway, and I wallpapered the entire thing. I have painted every room. I installed new, like, peel-and-stick floor tiles in the kitchen. For most of the things in here, if it is required to be built, I built it. I do everything. This isn't just Imani's home. It's also how she makes a living. She posts about her rentals on social media. I have started working on the final room in my apartment, which is the living room. Real live quick and dirty update on my kitchen. I'm starting to put that together today. That kitchen is my favorite. It's the kind of space where you would love to serve your friends a meal.