How We Saved Over $2,000 On These Simple DIY Home Tasks

We sure do love our seasons here in the northeast and we’re currently enjoying the long, hot days of summer. Along with playing outside during these warm summer months, we’re also taking advantage of the weather to accomplish those pesky home maintenance tasks that need to get done whether we like it or not. Fortunately, Mr. MMM and I aren’t too proud to activate our very limited DIY skills to save a buck. 

Like most people out there, we had a few household tasks on our summer To-Do list that we decided to tackle ourselves in an effort to save some cash. After many hurdles and questioning our sanity, I can truly say, Mission Accomplished. Here’s what we did and how much we saved!

Power Washing Our House

I’m just going to start out by saying that power washing one’s house is an extremely easy and satisfying chore. In fact, it’s so easy and satisfying that it almost doesn’t qualify as a chore. We started power washing our own house a few years back when we noticed the siding on the one side of our house was starting to look dirty and discolored.

Immediately, we considered hiring someone for this job but quickly changed our tunes when we realized the cost of hiring someone would’ve been more expensive than just buying ourselves a nice power washer and doing it ourselves. And, since this is an on-going thing, we decided to opt for the latter.

Well, this summer we noticed the same dirt/discoloration on the same side of the house and decided to break out our power washer and ladder to get the job done. Within an hour, we were sitting back and admiring the fruits of our labor.

The side of the house was sparkling clean and it cost us nothing other than the original investment for the power washer (under $200) and the amount of water we used.

If you’re interested in purchasing your own power washer, this is similar to the one we bought (psst…that’s my affiliate link). We opted for the electric version over a gas-powered machine because it was less expensive, easier to maintain, and we simply didn’t need the extra power for our vinyl siding and small concrete patio.

Re-Staining Our Massive Fence

I bought our current home back when I was a single parent in 2010 and installed a fence shortly thereafter. Since it was a cedar fence I had to wait a year for the wood to dry out enough to stain it. Needless to say, that year flew by and before I knew it I was staring down a massive fence that needed massive stain.

Being alone and a being single parent made me feel like I couldn’t handle the job on my own because, let me tell you, the fence was (and still is) MASSIVE. Due to that situation, I inquired with a local painting company for an estimate. Whoa. That estimate was way more than I bargained for and way more than I could comfortably afford as a single mom. The company wanted to charge me $2,200 for one coat of stain. I’m sure you’re not shocked to hear that I had to consider a more cost-effective approach. Enter me.

That cost-effective approach turned out to be doing it myself for the cost of materials alone. Materials ran me approximately $600 for the stain and another $100 to rent a professional sprayer for a day. I did just that and was finished in about 4 hours. To say I felt accomplished and proud of my work was a huge understatement.

Well, the years passed and the stain faded. By the time the weather turned warm this spring, I was looking at the fence thinking it at least needed to be touched up, especially at the bottom where the stain was non-existent in some spots and along the one side of the house where a carpet of green, mossy, organic material (how’s that for scientific?) had started to make an appearance.

Did I mention the stain is black? Yeah, the stain is black so it’s quite obvious when it’s starting to wear off and look tired.

This was a chore I dreaded. Even though it’s really only a day’s worth of working, including the acquisition of both stain and sprayer, it’s still a commitment and one I’d rather delay as long as possible. Alas, I could delay no longer.

I scheduled some time off work to prep the fence which entailed power washing where needed and staining it in its entirety. Although I thought I could get away with just staining the bad section, that turned out not looking so hot so I went ahead and committed to doing THE WHOLE SHEBANG.

Now, I figured since I did it before and knew what I was doing, it would be easy peasy. I was wrong. Mr. MMM and I picked up the sprayer around 9 am in order to beat the summer heat and finish by early afternoon. But, by the time we waited in line at the rental store, completed the on-site tutorial, loaded it into our car and got it home, it was already after 10 am.

No worries though. I knew what I was doing…until I didn’t. Before leaving with the sprayer I emphasized how thick our stain was and that we needed a nozzle that would be able to accommodate without clogging. Well, guess what. We fiddled with the thing for another hour and the nozzle wasn’t working. It was clogging immediately and not allowing any stain to spray through.

It was 11 am when we decided to call a technician from the rental store to come to our home and show us what we were doing wrong. Turns out, thankfully, we weren’t doing anything wrong and that the stain was just THAT thick. The technician was at a loss but fortunately had a box o’tools with him and was able to rig it up and get it working. He stayed until I did the first 8’ long panel and said, “You got it. Just don’t stop.” He was right; if I stopped it was going to clog up again and I didn’t think we would be able to get it working again without calling him back out.

So, for the next 3.5 hours, I stained that fence. Mr. MMM brought me a hot dog to eat on the fly and I occasionally ran inside to sit on an air conditioner vent and guzzle water to avoid heat exhaustion. But, hey, I got it done. And aside from the initial clogging and a mishap on my part of forgetting to depressurize the sprayer that caused the stain to fly 50’ in the air and all over us, it was a job well done and a lot of money saved.

Related: 

• The Trials And Tribulations Of Managing Money As A Single Parent 
• DIY Hacks For Creating Personalized Artwork At Home
• The DIY Pet Grooming Hack You Need To Know About
• The Financial Pitfalls Of A DIY Attitude

The Case Of The Shot Glass And The Garbage Disposal

A few years back we had some people over and one of them put a shot glass in our sink that inadvertently ended up slipping down into our garbage disposal. The next day when we turned on said garbage disposal we heard all sorts of grinding. Despite our best efforts to remove the remnants of the shattered shot glass, we were left with a contractor-grade garbage disposal that worked less than optimally.

We didn’t address it because it still worked to the extent we needed it to work and we didn’t feel like spending the money on a replacement. However, after a few years, the garbage disposal finally gave up and burned out. It truly was dead this time so we had to address it. That meant a trip to the hardware store to pick up this new disposal (that’s also my affiliate link). But how to install it? Well, since I had YouTube and plumber’s putty, I figured we could swap the old one out for the new one and save ourselves an installation fee. And that’s exactly what we did.

Granted, it didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped – but nothing ever does when you embark on a DIY home repair job. After about 90 minutes of fussing and yelling, “where’s the flashlight, I can’t find the flashlight”, we turned the breaker back on and relished in our home repair accomplishment.

And just in case you’re wondering how much we saved by doing it ourselves, a quick internet search yielded an average installation cost for a garbage disposal to be $185.

Adventures In Dishwasher Installation

Then, there was the dishwasher. Our dishwasher was approaching its 10^th birthday and since it was also contractor-grade and not always draining the way it used to, we decided to preemptively replace it.

The following Saturday I decided to engage in this activity and surprise Mr. MMM who was away in Canada on business. I called around and found the best deal I could possibly find for a Samsung dishwasher and decided to go for it.

The total cost of the dishwasher was $400 and I declined the installation at $159. I had some guys at the hardware store load it into my car and I unloaded it myself when I got home. It was a little awkward but not too heavy. I didn’t purchase a new hot water cable because I planned to use the existing one from the old dishwasher. That was a great idea until I realized I needed an elbow piece to hook it up that my old unit didn’t have, so I drove back down to the hardware store and bought the $5 piece I needed.

On the way home, Mini Monster and I stopped at the golden arches for a quick lunch. That’s when I told her that the hook up should only take 5 minutes when we get home. I also made sure I pointed out to her that I said it “should” take 5 minutes and that things typically don’t go that smoothly.

Ironically, we got back home and things were going that smoothly! I was able to hook everything up in a few minutes and was ready to slide the new dishwasher back into place. I can’t express to you how happy I was to finish this task and tell Mr. MMM that we have a new dishwasher and that I did the whole thing.

I started pushing it back into place and just before it was fully back, I heard a CLUNK. Yeah, that clunk was the door of the dishwasher that was just a hair too tall to fit under our kitchen counter. I made sure the adjustable feet on the unit were not the issue before panicking. Then, I panicked.

Interestingly, when we had the porcelain tile installed throughout our house a few years ago, the installer also put it under the dishwasher – the whole way under the dishwasher. Obviously, it wasn’t an issue with our old unit since it was a quarter of an inch shorter and able to clear the counter. This unit, not so much.

My choices were to throw my hands up and walk away, try to take it back and exchange it for another/shorter unit, or figure out a solution to finish this job. Needless to say, I chose to figure it out. I borrowed a chisel from my brother-in-law and started going to town removing the half-inch thick porcelain tile that was under the dishwasher. Thirty minutes later the unit was in place and operational. Well, kind of.

Apparently, new garbage disposals have a molded plastic piece that you need to hammer out before a dishwasher can drain through it. I figured this out after the first trial run with the new dishwasher leaked onto the kitchen floor when the water couldn’t drain through the disposal. Thankfully, it was an easy fix and all I had to do was disconnect the drain hose from the garbage disposal, hammer out the plastic plug and reattach the drain hose.

Total time to remove the old unit, pick up the new one, get the elbow, and complete a proper installation without a garbage disposal drain plug: 10 hours.

Was it worth 10 hours of my time to save $159? In retrospect, probably not, but I did enjoy learning the skill and I do feel accomplished and like I could do it again in the future. If I take that into consideration, it probably was worth it. Plus, I really impressed myself and Mr. MMM.

And there you have it. By taking on the tasks of power washing, staining, and home appliance installation, we were able to save ourselves a small fortune (over $2,000) during this DIY summer.

What are your favorite DIY home tasks that save you big money?