Our shower/bath handle started getting a little tight, then it was tough to move at all, then we went through the trauma of a bath time with the babes when we couldn’t get the water to turn off at all. Thankfully with a little elbow grease we got the faucet turned off, but were then left with the conundrum that we couldn’t turn the shower back on.
After 3 calls to plumbers with zero response, 3 days of sponge baths, and the fear that we might never shower again (perhaps that is a little dramatic), we decided to take things into our own hands. We found a YouTube video to help us, took a trip to the hardware store to get a specialized tool and replacement part, and then hopped into the tub to get stuff done.
Before we started our homesteading journey we wouldn’t have thought twice about calling someone out to the house to have them fix this for us, but after our plumbers game of phone tag and the threat of missing more showers, we were motivated to rely a bit more on ourselves and less on others.
Save Yourself Some Money
The typical cost of having a plumber come out ranges from $175-$450. Their labor cost is usually the biggest chunk of the expense, as with any trade you get what you pay for, and (according to google) plumber rates vary from $45-$200 per hour. In addition to the labor cost you have to take the parts into consideration, typically you are going to pay them a bit more for a part than you would at the hardware store purely for the convenience of them keeping them on hand.
For the specialty tool we needed and the replacement part, we spent $70. In taking on this project ourselves, we saved over $150, plus the projected was completed without the added time cost of making sure we were able to be home when a plumber could come.
We can now say that we know how to replace a shower valve cartridge! After tackling this challenge we feel so much more confident in moving forward on other home projects.
You can do hard things!
How to Decide What You Can Do Yourself
Take some small steps check some of those household “must do’s” off your list. Doing these things on your own makes you less reliant on outside sources:
- Take a look at the things that need to be done around your home or homestead. Make yourself a short list.
- Are there any on that list that you can clearly identify the problem? (With our plumbing problem we could clearly determine where our issue was, but say an electrical problem we probably wouldn’t be able to know exactly where the disconnect is).
- Do a google search, type in what’s wrong, or even “how to fix…”
- Read, read, read. Learn a bit more about your problem, familiarize yourself with the terminology about your issue.
- Head to YouTube. Pictures in a typed tutorial are fine, but watching someone actually fix the problem you want to fix can really give you an idea of the ease of repair and give you more confidence.
- After watching a video or two, decide if you can actually take care of the home improvement on your own.
- Know your limits, we would never tackle anything electrical (too dangerous in our opinion), or a major construction project.
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