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EZTHE WASHINGTON POST.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2019three-bedroom house in the town of Palmer, Alaska, about
an hour north of Anchorage. Built in the 1930s as part of the
New Deal, the house had been made over in the 1970s. “It
was shag carpets, wallpaper, paneling,” Sampson says. She
and her h usband have spent years remodeling it themselves,
including removing a suspended ceiling and building out a
second bathroom.
“We’ve gotten more gutsy over the years, especially with
the advent of YouTube,” Sampson says. Most of their work
has been a success — including the range hood they made b y
steaming and bending wood over a frame. But a few years
ago, when they decided to install additional outlets in a
bathroom, things went awry.
“I thought we h ad turned off the a pplicable breakers,” s he
says. “But when he touched it, ‘BSHEW!’ It’s become one of
those stories you tell in the family that’s funny, but it was
scary. He could have died.”
Professionals around the country say they’re seeing an
uptick in requests to help with — or fix — DIY projects.
“It is definitely a phenomenon we’re seeing more and
more,” says Greg Antonioli, president of Out of the Woods
Construction & Cabinetry in Waltham, Mass. One reason for
the DIY surge, he surmises, is high real estate prices: Home
buyers are trying to figure out ways to save money.
You might assume that pros are keen for bigger, more
complex jobs, but the reverse can actually be true. “It’s a
nightmare when... now it’s at the point where they call
you,” s ays Marco Radocaj, general manager at HVAC service
company Te mp Control in Vero Beach, Fla. When a licensed
professional has done the work, you can assume that
everything was done correctly, he says. There are no such
assurances when a homeowner digs in.
Though 90 percent of air-conditioning fixes are simple, if
done wrong, the cost can easily double, Radocaj says. One
common — and costly — mistake he sees homeowners make
is to install an air-conditioning system that’s too large for
the house, which can dramatically elevate humidity levels.
“When drywall is starting to mold, you’re looking at
thousands of dollars’ worth of damage and you have to
replace the air conditioner,” he says.
Kelley Williamson, owner and operator of She Fixed It, a
San Diego-based handywoman company, recalls a client
who bought an older house that was a little drafty. He
decided to remedy the problem by filling his crawl space
with expanding foam. “That stuff expands to 200 times its
original size,” Williamson says. In his case, it expanded to
the point where it made the ceiling collapse.
“YouTube is great f or what i t is; I even use i t for a resource
when I get in a bind,” Williamson says. “But I think a lot of
people see the shows and videos and they have this super,
hyper-confidence that they’ve got this down.”
Like Radocaj, Williamson thinks HGTV is even more to
blame for DIY mishaps: “A ll of the remodeling shows — or
even when they do it on ‘Queer Eye’ — it’s like, they have
these ideas a nd boom it’s d one a nd it looks a mazing. B ut you
don’t even see all the workers that have to do it in a day.”
Code breakers
A few years ago, A ntonioli’s c ontracting firm took o n a job
for a tech executive who had signed a contract on a house in
Arlington, Mass. When the buyer conducted a permit
search, he learned that the owners before the current ones
had done a DIY kitchen and attic remodel without getting a
building permit — or meeting safety standards.
The contractor was tasked with pulling out the kitchen
cabinets and gutting the walls to examine the work. “The
wiring, it was absolutely atrocious,” Antonioli says. His
original contract was for $66,000, but “after finding major
structural issues and very scary wiring, we ended up at a
total of $93,000.”
As a result of the problems, the seller agreed to accept
$100,000 less for the house.
Michael Byrne, director of inspectional services for the
town of Arlington, says his office is getting more requests
for DIY permits — and seeing more problems as a result of
unpermitted work. One local engineer removed the main
support post for his house, causing the roof to start to cave
in. “Undersized lumber, it’s almost a given on DIYers,
because a two-by-three is cheaper than a two-by-four,”
Byrne says. “People think they’re saving all this money by
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