One of the hardest things for me to do is to hire out a job that I know I’m capable of doing myself. I struggle with that so much, and even when I know it makes sense to just hire it out and let someone else do that job while I’m concentrating on something else, it’s still so hard for me.
It’s not that I feel like I have something to prove to myself or anyone else. After all of the things I’ve done, either by myself or with help, on this house over the last ten years, I don’t feel like I have anything else to prove to myself. I know I’m capable. So most of the time, it comes down to money. It’s just so hard for me to write a check to someone else when I know I could have saved that money by doing it myself.
And that brings me to our bedroom progress…or lack thereof. I am the type of person who can sometimes take forever to make a decision. But once that decision is made, and I’m ready to move forward, I actually want it done yesterday. Or last week. So when I realized that the floor and subfloor needed to be taken up, and new subfloor and flooring installed, I called a guy who has done a lot of work on our house in the past to get an estimate from him.
He was on vacation when I called, so I had to wait about two weeks for him to get back and come look at the room. Then he took a couple of days to get me an estimate. Then I noticed a couple of things left off of the estimate, so he revised the estimate. And when I got the new estimate, that’s when my DIY brain took over.
The estimate came to $5,250. That’s for taking out the current hardwood flooring and subfloor, and also removing the walls that form the closet area. To refresh your memory, here’s what that looks like now…
So all of these walls will come out to square up the room and make the room feel bigger.
That means we’ll gain about 32 inches, and this wall will be uninterrupted all the way to the current TV wall.
And then this wall will end at this white line, and then wrap back around to the right towards the bedroom door.
The view from the bedroom door will look so much better because about 32 inches of this wall on the left will be removed.
Those are all just closet walls, so none of them are load bearing. The back wall (i.e. the TV wall) of the closet area is load bearing, but that wall is staying put.
Once all of that is removed, they’ll patch the drywall, install new under-floor insulation, new vapor barrier, and new subfloor. When they’re done, I’ll install the new hardwood flooring, and then sand, stain, and seal it.
As I said, once I got the estimate, my DIY brain kicked in. I don’t at all mean to insinuate that their time and effort in doing that job isn’t worth the estimated cost. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable estimate. But at the same time, $5,250 isn’t a small amount of money, and my DIY brain always want to convince me that I could just do it myself and save money.
I’m fully capable of removing non-load-bearing walls. While I hate patching drywall, it’s something I’ve had to do countless times. And while I’d probably want to bring in help, I’m certainly capable of ripping up flooring and subfloor. I’ve done that, too, and the last time I did it, my family came and helped me, and we made quick work of it. Except that time, we were tearing out drywall and old insulation on the ceiling, drywall and shiplap on the walls, flooring, and subfloor. And it didn’t even take us a whole day to do it.
It’s just so hard to know that I’m fully capable, and I could save over $5000 if I just do it myself. So it took me a few days to mull it over and weigh the pros and cons of DIY vs. hiring it out.
In the end, I decided to go ahead and hire them to get it done. I think that’s a much more efficient use of time. Sure, I could do it myself. But at what cost? I could save that $5000, but it would probably take me weeks to do what they can do in days. And while they’re working on that room, I can be doing other things — much more fun and interesting things — like working on my studio bathroom and working on the hallway bathroom. And I’m sure that those are things that y’all would much rather follow along on. Watching me tear out walls and tear up flooring and subfloor for weeks would probably be as interesting as watching paint dry.
So I finally told Jose this morning to put me on the schedule. I’m not gonna lie. That’s a hard decision for me. But I’m also motivated by my desire to get into that bedroom as soon as possible. The new flooring has already been here, sitting in the breakfast room and taking up way too much space, for a couple of weeks now so it can get acclimated before I install it, and I’m ready to get things moving forward. I don’t know yet when they can get started. When I first talked to him about it, which was about a week and a half ago, he said they were about two weeks out. But then I took too long to make a decision and get on their schedule, so another project may have taken that first available spot. But hopefully it won’t be much longer. Once I made the decision to let go and let them do it, I felt good about it. And I felt pretty relieved, to be quite honest. So I won’t be changing my mind. I’m excited about seeing some progress made in there, even if it’s by someone else’s hands.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.