Subcontracting: What Not To Try At Home (Reno Tales: Part 6)

I’m a little delayed with work and consulting stuff, so I haven’t gotten the chance to fully explain why I punched a bunch of holes in my roof yet, because it requires a bunch of diagrams and pictures and stuff. I’ll get to it this weekend.

There’s certain things that I’m perfectly willing to do myself. There’s certain things that I’m willing to pay to have done. And then there’s things that I don’t want to touch, haven’t touched, and probably never will touch. These, I subcontract.

I’m willing to do most things myself. This includes dirty things, like digging holes, messy things, like dropping a ceiling with blown-in insulation, and dirty, messy, pain-in-the ass things like mudding and taping. My reasons vary — sometimes, I’m too cheap to pay someone else to do it, or I want the experience of taking something apart because I discover things (like additional rot and water damage or wiring problems) that I wouldn’t if I hadn’t taken it apart myself.

Things I never, EVER touch are sort of split into two categories. The first is safety, and the second is experience.

Safety-wise, I don’t feel comfortable making hookups with the main gas lines in my house in areas where they’re not accessible — in attics, walls, or ceilings. I’ll do hookups to appliances because you can smell if they spring a leak, but I don’t want it to be my fault if the gas line in my attic springs a leak and no one smells it until the heater clicks on, and KABOOM! I also feel that way about things inside the electrical panel, but having watched this video a few weeks ago might’ve saved me $150 in electrician’s fees… (Then again, the advice I got from him was priceless.)

Experience-wise, I don’t feel comfortable doing roofing modifications myself. For example, I had some turtle vents put in to vent my attic space. I don’t feel comfortable doing anything that requires a particular pace and will get screwed up if it goes wrong. For that reason, I don’t plan to put self-leveling compound on my living room floor myself before I install whichever type of flooring we eventually choose… I’ll have someone do that. I’d hate to pay for the materials twice.

I found one more thing I never want to do (again): Hang drywall on a vaulted ceiling. I paid a couple of friends to help me out with it, but it just isn’t working, so I’m going to end up subcontracting that out. I already wasted about $50 worth of drywall to do it completely wrong; I don’t want to waste any more. I’ll still tape and mud it myself, because I’m good at those things and I want to be responsible for the results.

Side note: You should’ve SEEN the four of us trying to hang the drywall on the ceiling. 5/8 in. drywall is HEAVY (about 40 lbs per 4′x8′ board), and I couldn’t until last week even lift a sheet of it by myself. We spent several hours trying to hang each sheet, and still screwed it up in epic ways that were nearly impossible to correct. I’ve got a new idea for a comedy show on DIY Network: “Gringoes Hang Drywall” Freakin’ HI-larious.

Here’s a few shots from the pilot episode…

Nice detail on that can light, ‘eh?

There’s so much wrong with how we did this, I can’t even begin to describe. First, we cut the angle to the right incorrectly. Second, we didn’t hang it high enough. Third, we didn’t notice how close to the header we were getting, which would’ve meant I was putting a up a lot of scrappy pieces. Third, we weren’t a full factor of four off of the ground, which meant that I couldn’t hang half-sheets where I needed to in order to get efficient use of my materials.

FAIL. I’m letting the professionals do it.