Home repairs can be confusing when you’re not familiar

Surprised there are no plastic parts to repair these toilets? That a toilet purchased from a plumbing supply house has metal parts and therefore lasts longer? Let’s look at how you can buy smarter and make better decisions about when to repair versus replace items for your home.

Tips for Buying Household Items

Looking at general buying habits, not just the home, this table outlines the consumer buying process taught at the University of Delaware (Consumer Buying Behavior). It shows why you should re-think how you make purchases for things you’re less familiar with, but are expected to last longer and therefore affect your life more.

Buying things for your home follows this process but requires more care when evaluating alternatives (my bullets here). You don’t install a dress or car, well maybe you hem a dress. Cars are similar to homes with operating and maintenance costs but no one to tell you when maintenance is needed or the cost.

Repairing Versus Replacing Household Items

You can buy a toilet for under $100 at a box store and if there are no plumbing problems, you can replace the toilet in … plumber under 30 minutes, handyman 45-60 minutes and a handy homeowner, maybe 2+ hours? You won’t find many parts to repair the toilet – they want you to buy a new one. A quality toilet from a plumbing supply store is better suited for repairs, and they do have the necessary parts. Why?

Inexpensive toilets sold at box stores are manufactured overseas. When you buy a brand, remember the Kohler toilet from a box store comes from China versus the Kohler toilet you buy at a plumbing supply store, which is made in Kohler, Wisconsin.

Home fixture require basic maintenance and repairs. Many repairs taking only 5 to 15 minutes once you know what’s wrong, and have the knowledge and tools. For a toilet, these include re-attaching the handle, the chain when it falls off the float ball or putting in a new flapper. There’s a universal (fits most manufacturers toilets) toilet rebuild kit our handymen techs carry to handle these simple repairs.

With inexpensive products, as soon as you have to take it apart to find the problem, it’s time to think about replacing it. Consider the time it will take to remove everything inside the toilet tank (learn more about Toilet Parts) and rebuild it – maybe it’s an hour or 2? You’ve got to go to the store and buy the parts (or rebuild kit), reassemble the toilet correctly, or do it again. You’re likely to spend 3 to 4 hours working on the toilet and then discover the leak is due to a hairline crack in the porcelain?

By comparing the steps and associated costs between repairing versus replacing your toilet on paper,  you’ll save time, money and lots of aggravation. It also helps you prepare to do the work correctly, or you might decide it’s more complicated and time to call a professional. The math shows unless you enjoy fixing things, it often saves time and money to simply replace.

• Replace a new toilet = $100 for toilet + 2 hrs @ $25/hr = $150
• Rebuild the toilet = $20 for rebuild kit + 5 hrs @ 25/hr = $145
• … or my preference, buy a $400 toilet that will last for 20 years!

Over the last few years, we’ve had much stronger winds than usual in many areas. A friend and peer handyman owner shared a story with me tonight which prompted this article about repairing white trim like that shown in the photo. Here’s my story and it will make you laugh, I promise … but there’s an important message here for all homeowners.

Don’t Estimate a Job You Can’t Do Yourself

You’ve probably been to a ball game where a friend keeps yelling at the coach because they (think) know better. It’s no different when it comes to home repairs. There are people who have a few tools and think they know everything there is to know about home maintenance. It takes a while to recognize these people on the phone and when we do, we find ways to avoid scheduling work for them as we know they’ll never be satisfied.

I learned this with a customer who wanted to replace 5 to 7 interior doors. He told me “… all the carpenters he’d talked to said it would only take 30 minutes per door to mortise out the hinges, the lock set and hang the door.” We had a long conversation until this man gave up because I wasn’t backing down on my estimate (provided by one of my technicians) of 1 to 2 hours per door.

How Long Does It Take to Replace One Piece of Coil Stock?

Now I’ll give this homeowner credit, as he knew the piece of white trim hanging down wasn’t vinyl siding. He knew it was a piece of white metal hanging from the gable end of his home near the peak. This metal is aluminum coil stock that is wrapped over the wood trim (see photo upper right) on vinyl sided homes to protect the wood from sun and rain. Wood is used for it’s strength and then it’s wrapped so it doesn’t require any more maintenance than the vinyl.

Unfortunately the customer also felt it should only take about 20 minutes to replace the damaged piece of aluminum, so he thought the job should cost about $25. This is where homeowners need to learn to trust their handyman as only someone who’s done the job can really estimate the amount of time needed. In fact after running my handyman business for almost 8 years, my husband is still!!! yelling at me that these jobs take longer than I sometimes estimate … so he’ll enjoy reading this article and seeing that I really do understand this. What I have to remind him about is my guys have all their tools in their van along with basic materials.

Tools and Material for the Job?

The tool you need for this job is called a brake. The name isn’t important. What you need to know and appreciate is the tool (comes in 8, 10 and 12 ft sizes) is very large and it can weight up to 200 lbs. With accessories, it costs $1,500 or more. Maybe a third of my technicians even own one and the larger ones need 2 people to hoist on top of a van — I know as I’ve sometimes provided the second set of hands.

The coil stock comes in 50 foot lengths and fortunately most of our repairs use the flat white stock so we’re able to spread the cost over several customers.

Almost forgot the extension ladder needed to reach the repair area. We carry a 32 ft ladder on all of our vans and that’s what is usually needed to reach the peak of the roof on a gable end of the house.

How Long Does It Take to Replace A Piece of Coil Stock?

Here are the steps we’d take to do this job, along with approximate times. This is an illustration as any job will have some steps that take longer and other steps that go faster. It’s simply the way I estimate and only give customers the overall time estimate.

Oops, one more thing people forget is it takes time to travel to your home and we do pay our technicians for travel time as they often do several jobs per day. The convenience of calling a handyman is they’re able to handle several projects in one visit, saving you time and money when you only have to schedule one visit and they have the tools with them although we can’t guarantee we’ll always have the required materials so sometimes a trip to the store is needed.