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I have never owned a home, but it seems to me like if a homeowner has a full time job, especially an unmarried homeowner, he or she either has to
(A) take off vacation time just to be home when contractors make repairs, upgrades, fixes, do maintenance, etc. (assuming the contractors don't work on weekends)
(B) Bite the bullet and let the contractors work unsupervised, essentially trusting total strangers with your home and its contents, or
(C) attempt to DIY virtually everything, which requires a lot of background knowledge and a lot of time invested. I would think this might risk making it tough, after both full time employment and work on the house, to have any free time left for social life, volunteering, self-improvement, or dating .
What am I missing here, and how do most home owners with full time jobs (or couples with two full time jobs) manage? I want to be able to own a home some day and just would like to know how people pull it off.
How much time do you think is spent on home repairs? What kind of jobs/contractors are you looking at?
I purchased my most recent house almost 6 years ago. Since that time I have had to employ three contractors, one to redo the roof, another to replace my heat pump, a third to install a wood stove. All were one day jobs. I had a dishwasher delivered, which I installed myself, and I had to call the internet guys out because my signal kept dropping.
That is about one vacation day every year, which isn’t too bad.
I do most other jobs myself. Replacing light fixtures, painting, flooring, some exterior siding. I will be installing a French door next summer, and may rip up some carpet and install hardwood flooring. Some of those jobs are easily accomplished in an evening, some take a couple of weekends.
I find that a balance of contracted and DIY work is best, but I am pretty proficient.
Unless you are doing a major renovation, most maintenance jobs are pretty quick. For a major renovation, you should remove valuables such as cameras and jewelry, hire a bonded contractor, and give them the keys.
I have never owned a home, but it seems to me like if a homeowner has a full time job, especially an unmarried homeowner, he or she either has to
(A) take off vacation time just to be home when contractors make repairs, upgrades, fixes, do maintenance, etc. (assuming the contractors don't work on weekends)
(B) Bite the bullet and let the contractors work unsupervised, essentially trusting total strangers with your home and its contents, or
(C) attempt to DIY virtually everything, which requires a lot of background knowledge and a lot of time invested. I would think this might risk making it tough, after both full time employment and work on the house, to have any free time left for social life, volunteering, self-improvement, or dating .
What am I missing here, and how do most home owners with full time jobs (or couples with two full time jobs) manage? I want to be able to own a home some day and just would like to know how people pull it off.
If you don't own your living space, then B happens all the time, and you may not even know it has happened. Or your landlord may allow you to do A now and then, but the landlord always has the right to do B whether you want it or not.
An outside repair or upgrade is much easier to deal with than someone needing access to the inside of the house.
This is one of the benefits of living closer to work, especially if you can take just a few minutes here and there to check in on the work if it's outside (a new roof, work under the house in the crawl space, landscaping/grading, etc.).
Work on the inside of the house is what is a pain. I personally wouldn't want a contractor inside my home when I wasn't there (or at least a very trusted friend or family member), even if I though I could probably trust them, or if it were a total redo where most of my personal belongings were moved out. Especially since some of their employees may be there too, and I don't know how trustworthy they are.
One of the biggest PITAs with being a homeowner and having a small job that you don't have the interest, talent, or time to do is the reliability of some contractors. Just getting them to come out and look at something to give you an estimate is a challenge because it's not uncommon to have half of them not even show up on an agreed upon time, which is especially aggravating if you've had to take off work for them to come out. I know they deal with some flaky homeowners on their end too, but not showing up on the first encounter isn't a good business practice. The better the economy is, the worse the no-show issue is. Some contractors are chomping at the bit for the large jobs (large apartment/condo complexes, commercial and industrial projects, etc.), and just don't want to fool with a small job like repairing the gutters on a small house.
An outside repair or upgrade is much easier to deal with than someone needing access to the inside of the house.
This is one of the benefits of living closer to work, especially if you can take just a few minutes here and there to check in on the work if it's outside (a new roof, work under the house in the crawl space, landscaping/grading, etc.).
Work on the inside of the house is what is a pain. I personally wouldn't want a contractor inside my home when I wasn't there (or at least a very trusted friend or family member), even if I though I could probably trust them, or if it were a total redo where most of my personal belongings were moved out. Especially since some of their employees may be there too, and I don't know how trustworthy they are.
One of the biggest PITAs with being a homeowner and having a small job that you don't have the interest, talent, or time to do is the reliability of some contractors. Just getting them to come out and look at something to give you an estimate is a challenge because it's not uncommon to have half of them not even show up on an agreed upon time, which is especially aggravating if you've had to take off work for them to come out. I know they deal with some flaky homeowners on their end too, but not showing up on the first encounter isn't a good business practice. The better the economy is, the worse the no-show issue is. Some contractors are chomping at the bit for the large jobs (large apartment/condo complexes, commercial and industrial projects, etc.), and just don't want to fool with a small job like repairing the gutters on a small house.
That's where you check around for a good handyman, find one, and keep him. Most people's idea of a "handyman" is a flaky guy with a toolbelt, but these days you can find some very well-established, well-equipped people running serious businesses that specialize in small jobs.
(C) attempt to DIY virtually everything, which requires a lot of background knowledge and a lot of time invested. I would think this might risk making it tough, after both full time employment and work on the house, to have any free time left for social life, volunteering, self-improvement, or dating .
Do you think that some people just pop out of the womb Knowing home repair? That the contractor you might hire, just intuitively knows how to do whatever job? No. Every last person on the planet has learned to do what they can do. It's not rocket science, it's the kind of work that's completed by people who barely graduated high school, if that, and skipped college. In other words, if you know how to learn Anything, you can learn to work on a home. The hardest part is simply working up the self confidence to start/try.
Yes, there's a time investment, but it's not really That much for the kinds of things most homeowners are doing. One little piddly project here or there... replacing a microwave, or a sink disposal. Clearing a clogged drain, replacing a faucet... It's not like Most people are jumping into whole house renovations/restorations their first time out. Yeah, there's always "that guy" who's done just that, but one person doesn't make a majority.
The other angle of this is that if you don't have the time, knowledge or desire... you don't buy the house that needs work. You spend more to hire a good home inspector to know what's wrong with the house (there's Always something wrong, even and especially with brand new) and have all of that fixed/addressed BEFORE you move in. Yup, that means you have to be smarter about buying a home than most people are, don't buy at the tippy-top of what the bank says they'll lend you. And there ARE contractors out there who work weekends, you might wait longer and pay more, but they exist.
I do not understand the relationship of homeownership/ maintenance and marital status and lack of social life. Some folks even have hobbies and children and a home or two
This happens to renters too, even those who are unmarried!
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