My parents' house in Caracas, Venezuela, was built by my father. Just as you say, he would come home from work and stay up until ten o'clock at night to continue the work. Before he passed away in 2002, the house had been converted into 5 complete flats and a garage for 5 vehicles, a large basement and about fifty square metres of land where there are now mango and avocado trees.

The house I live in here in Ontario is a second home, but in good condition and with the help of neighbours we did general maintenance in certain areas that needed it. I finished paying for it five years ago, and for the moment it is the inheritance I will leave to my son Matthew.

My brother Henry's children, for example, are not even able to connect a light bulb to their socket, for fear of electricity, but Gilda, the youngest, who is twenty years old, is the one who is studying law at the Central University of Venezuela.

Two to one, I always tell my brother. Two men who do nothing (aged 28 and 34 respectively) against a girl who knows how to defend herself and is self-sufficient.

My grandfather had built their home. I helped my father renovate first the lowest floor, and then the top floor. It was fun, I learned a lot, and got electro-shocked quite a few times because my grandfather had done some really weird wiring. That experience helped me tremendously building my business, as I didn't have to call any tradies for anything. Only once, when 220V was installed, I had someone come and do it. I watched closely, though, and did it myself the second time around. Worked fine, none of the machines burned. 

I'm not good at doing it beautiful, though. It works, but everyone will notice that it was done by someone who doesn't have the patience nor gives it the importance to be perfect. 

My wife always thinks it will be a good idea to paint ourselves, but she definitely doesn't have the patience for it. I honestly can't stand painting, almost as much as I hate drywall. It's just messy and it never comes out right.

Honestly, Taraz, I can't help but tip my hat to you👏
What you said really touched me, especially the idea of ​​"sweat doesn't go to waste" and what you did in your first and second apartments until you arrived at your new home. This is a true example of how personal effort can build a future, literally.

At some point in the future I may frame a few of my art pieces and hang them on the walls. No is buying them but I like them and the puzzles that are on the walls now are in quite sorry state.

I also have this crazy idea to draw something on the house walls but I still have no idea how much that would cost, how I would do that or even what I want to draw...

![IMG-20250515-WA0018.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/galberto/23s9P6iRAarE6eCiCcyrP2EJQ1ijkY6jCQcB29v1AAjCoTaGNBRoD38fgBAyvsZziUbzY.jpg)


Well people, young people don't know how the little pieces of ceeling in the house should putting, for example the chanel's go up and down and should be connect with professional, because if you don't know how do it, when the raining comes, your house could be damages and the water is comming to enter in your bedroom ok.

My dad always teach me all kind of habilities for be prepared for the future, he know when he has gone I am prepared for assume the responsibility of our house and for take care of the familiar owns.

People do not know how they would save money with little think, for example the last piece of wood was harvest by us, from the little plants to cut the tree and put to support our ceeling.

You motivate me motivated to paint the wall this night and teach to some little person to do, and if this would be bad, nothing else matters, you can painting again and again and enjoy the process.

By the way I need to build a house the problem will be I only have weekends maybe in ten years it would be finish.
Thanks for your inspiration, wall by wall I do it.
I hope to share the Avance in a far far away future.

By the way this is me repairing the house.

In Australia at least, there's a limit to the sort of shit you can actually do to your house legally, before insurance or other mishap avoidance things leave you in the lurch should something go wrong - even if it isn't your fault. 

That, and the fact that people are so afraid of getting their hands dirty, or think that something they don't know how to do is voodoo magic. 

Yet the Bunnings car parks are some of the busiest places on Earth. (Bunnings are our monopolistic hardware stores) - and they're not exactly filled with trade vehicles. 

I usually calculate the jobs as in time needed to make that money. I do pay for someone to wash my windows, especially the ones for the first floor, and I do pay somebody every 2 weeks to wash my bin. One is £12 every 6 weeks, another £4 every 2 weeks, but is paying them I save at least 4-5 hours, which I can use more efficiently. Other stuff like gardening for example, I enjoy doing it, even if it is hard.

> I think the younger generations, with all of their challenges and complaints, still need to look in the mirror and reflect on what they can do for themselves.

In India, we don't have that trend of doing everything on our own, I think no one does that. However, one still needs to plan and take care of everything, to run a house and the young generation even hesitates to do this little, which is really sad. They don't want to do anything but still want to live a very comfortable life, which is simply not possible for a long time, because of increased responsibility.

I completely agree with you on renovating places we live in ourselves. I tend to do a lot of work around the house myself. In our current home, which was built new for us in November 2018, I installed all new electrical outlets to upgrade from builder grade, light switches, changed out every single light. Build a 10 by 10 foot patio, installed garage flooring that I bought at Costco, Installed garage shelving and cabinets, mounted TVs in garage, living room and one of the bedrooms on the wall, textured and painted our garage and so on.

However when it came time to sell the house that just went on the market last night I chose a different path. Yes, I still worked on it for two months to prepare it for the sale and was dog tired working 10 hour days taking off work. But I chose from the very beginning to involve multiple professional crews. I had more than 10 professionals working on the place every single day for the last two months, I paid out over $100k for their services. They did roof replacement, new gutters, new paint inside the home and outside the home, junk removal services, septic tank pumping, furnace inspection, whole house inspection, electrical panel replacement, correction of roof based electrical service connection to the public utilities, and hundreds of other items. 

Why did I do this? Three reasons:

1. To not miss the Spring selling season
2. It would take me years to do these things instead of two months and I would be paying $4k+ per month in mortgage and utilities for an empty house
3. Not all the things I can do myself or would be acceptable legally after the inspection report (like pumping septic and electrical work on the roof or the main electrical panel replacement)

So yeah, sometimes it just makes sense to pay the professionals. I still did plenty of electrical and other work on the house in those two months saving thousands of $... 

If the issues in home repair work are not very technical, the person should do it on his own. As he does these jobs, he will become a professional. Repair work also benefits the person psychologically, I recommend it.

Why don't u drink beer? A cold beer would be great while doing house chores/repairs/renovations, particularly during the summer :)