The question is do you want to have this kind of exiting adventure in Home Improvement or do you want quality work and quality products backed by the installer? This is real life not a sitcom. If you think all this possible grief is still worth it because of all the money your going to save doing it yourself your going to have a rude awaking. A few paragraphs down we will tackle how this illusion exists, but the short answer is your not going to save a dime.

Sure there have always been folks who are "good with their hands" they fix, repair, rebuild everything around the house. They usually do the same for their car. If they really have a talent and an interest in such work they probably already are a professional contractor. That brings us back to what the contracting trade offers, quality products and quality installation that is backed and serviced.

When starting a home improvement job, the place to start is with the contractor. Knowing that the person doing the installation work is trained, licensed, insured, and above all, professional, insures the job will get done to your satisfaction. The contractor can help you pick out the products you want, has available a much greater breadth of products, can make appointments for you to professional manufacture indorsed showroom facilities, and will backup his work if any thing should fail or malfunction.

Finally there is the cost issue. Your still thinking about all the money you will save. If the idea that buying the product from a home center and doing it yourself will cost you more money sounds funny, perhaps that’s because your not including all the costs involved. Lets look at all the factors.

Time. How much does the time cost? What is the hourly rate? "If I do it myself I don’t have to pay for the cost of time." That’s not true, your time is worth a lot. Most people find they don’t have enough free time. It isn’t free if you have to use all your free time to get it done. You worked hard for that free time. Now if your thinking, "but I think I will enjoy (somewhat) the experience of the home improvement job", that could be true, the enjoyment value of it, but it still is costing you more. As a mater of Time, it will take a professional contractor less time than you or I to get the job done. It’s the Time that really is valuable. The less time needed the lower the cost.

Product. How much does the product cost? The more expensive the product is clearly, the more expensive the job. Despite all the flyers and promotions by the home centers, a licensed professional contractor can buy ANY item you can buy for significantly less than you can buy it for. A contractor buys thousands of products every month and every year, you buy a couple items, it’s the simple economics of business: the contractor gets better pricing and service. Plus the contractor has hundreds of styles and products available, not to be found in that one isle of the home center.

The contractor will generally charge more for the product than it was purchased for, but even still the price will be competitive with the home center, and don’t forget to look at what you get buying from the contractor. Your buying a higher quality product that can be installed faster and will last longer. Most importantly, the contractor backs the product. Wrong size? The contractor will come back with the right size. Damaged? The contractor will be right back with a new one. It’s leaking a week later? The contractor will be back to fix or replace it. That can save you a ton of money and aggravation. Anyone who has gone through the nightmare of having a problem, bringing it back to the home center, calling a plumbing and heating contractor to find out what’s wrong, going back to the home center, calling the contractor back to install the new one so this time it won’t leak. You just spent hours standing in line at the home center, plus you just spent a lot of cash every time you called your contractor. If you had purchased the product from your contractor, all that time the contractor spent back and forth would not have been charge to you. And it would be your contractor going back and forth getting the right size unit not you.

Now what about the old unit? What do you do with that? You can’t just throw it out on your curb for the trash. You’re going to have to hall the thing off to the dump. That will cost you say ten bucks at least perhaps much more. Do you own a truck? How are you planning on getting it to the dump? Some dumps do pick up, but that will cost you a lot more money. Instead if you purchase the new unit from your contractor, the old unit will be disposed of for free.

So the contractor needs less time to complete the job and can get higher quality products at better pricing and value, that seems to add up to lower cost and higher quality with less aggravation. So instead of going over to the big box to confer with your neighbor’s teenage kid, call your professional contractor first, quality products and quality installation, that’s backed and serviced. It will not only save you a tremendous amount of stress, aggravation, and clutter, but will be of higher quality and lower cost.

If your still looking for adventure maybe you should try hiking up Mt. Washington! I personally prefer driving up but then you’re the one looking for adventure. Either way, its one glorious view and a much better use of our free time than the view from underneath a bathroom sink!