Sunday, October 29, 2006

For the beginning DIY's out there

Through years of owning our own place as well as having landlords in the past that were not that up on making basic home repairs and having older cars, we've become semi-experts on many types of do it yourself home repairs. Yet, if you are just beginning to venture in to the wonderful world of DIY, Handy Household Hints is a good place to start. As an example, many people don't know how to do some of the basic simple car repairs such as oil leaks or bleeding brakes. I'll never forget when Miguel first moved here and we had a radiator hose that needed to be replaced and he asked me what shop I took the car to. When I told him we could to the repair ourselves he asked me, "We can?". Now of course he's moved on to be able to do repairs such as change brake boosters...:-)

When it comes to some of the household repair information, some of the hints could be very helpful to those just starting out with home ownership. In painting exterior windows, the new home owner might not realize that if old paint that is peeling is not removed the end result of new paint will not last long.

The website is also sponsoring a "$50,000 Extreme Home Makeover Contest", which I did enter but I will advise you in advance that to be able to submit your entry there is a few page survey that has to be filled out. You do however have the option of selecting you are not interested in the additional offers and will still be entered into the contest with the exception of one question regarding how many people are in your family. There was no "I'd prefer not to respond" and I don't give out DOB information on my children so I entered one person. The rest of the demographic type questions that most surveys ask were included, which is pretty much expected.

Back to the review of the website and the material though, it says on the "About page":

www.handyhouseholdhints.com equips you with expert and easy-to-follow advice on repairs, projects and related information that guides you about the right and safe approach so you save up on time and surely, loads of money.

That I would say appears to be very correct and I would use the site as a reference to check since it's possible that something we've done for years one way could be done in an easier manner. I also have to add, I really love the color of the kitchen floor in their contest image:

1 comment:

Mark said...

I'm not much of a do-it-yourself type. I'm more of an exchange-favors-with-others type. They do it themselves and I do something that doesn't rely on wrist strength for them. Many wonderful things can comeabout within the world of skills bartering!