Young homeowners often repair-challenged (Gen Y can't DIY)

MSBNC.com ^ | 8-3-06

[Hydroshock]

CHICAGO - The staff at his neighborhood hardware store can spot John Carter from a distance.

He's the slightly befuddled guy who often comes in declaring, "I have no idea what I'm doing. Can you at least get me through tonight?"

The 26-year-old Chicagoan, who's been slowly rehabbing the condo he bought last year, is part of a generation of young homeowners who admit they often have no clue how to handle home projects.

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For them, shop class was optional. It also was more common for their parents to hire contractors, leaving fewer opportunities for them to learn basic repair skills.

With low interest rates allowing more young adults to buy property in recent years, many inexperienced homeowners are desperate for advice when the furnace goes out, the roof leaks or when a home project that seemed like a no-brainer goes terribly wrong.

[Toby06]

pea trap

LOL, it's just P-trap. I knew what you meant, though.

My ex wife just knew it as the place I would find her ring.

[MrEdd]

I think todays men coming up don't do that because of all the low wage immigrants in construction have killed the high school labor market.

Nope, litigation and government regulation had executed the high school labor market before illegal immigrants became such a huge problem.

[CT-Freeper]

I'm somewhere in the border between late X-er early Y-er (born in December 1978).

I'm not the most handy person in the world, but usually with some careful examination and thought, and if necessary a quick call to my father or father-in-law for a tip or two if I am really perplexed, I am usually able to get myself out of most situations.

I'll admit though, I generally tend to stay away from electricity. I'm more into the woodworking, general home maintenance, repairing lawn mowers, and landscaping.

[HairOfTheDog]

Most DIY knowledge comes from screwing up something yourself or hearing stories about how someone else screwed it up.

Or watching it done. When we remodeled our house, we spent the whole summer being there, watching it done, doing most if the demolition ourselves, watching the carpenter work, discussing the job, running to get him the materials he needed to finish. I learned a lot about how houses are constructed, how wiring and plumbing works, and can now envision how things should be built if and when I have to build something.

Too many people now hire their remodels done and don't spend any time at the job site. I've even heard of contractors who won't allow the homeowner to be on site because we slow them down and get in the way... And I'd never hire one of those.

[rarestia]

Like you, I work in IT, and it took me a TON of trial and error to get where I am today. I remember specifically going through the DOS directory and deleting everything with a .sys extension, as I believed it could be purged. Found out real quick that doesn't work. Trial and error, to be certain. I've also taken 220 while working on a circuit breaker I "thought" was disconnected from the main. BIG mistake, to be certain.

I understand general malaise about fixing stupid things. Some people can deal with water hammer, because they don't want to open up the walls to look for loose straps or drain their water system at the main to relieve valves. They'll deal with the banging or call a plumber. But things like spackling a wall, installing a new door or a new deadbolt in a door, knowing to keep the thermostat at 78 to conserve energy, connecting flexi-hose to replace a broken copper pipe under the kitchen sink or even figuring out how to find a stud to hang a picture are all so basic and common sense to me that it's mind boggling when someone looks at the components and can't make a one-to-one comparision when in Home Depot.

I've gone to the Home Despot several times with an idea of what I needed and left with parts to fix it easier, better or cheaper because I asked a pro about the best way to do something. Nothing wrong with asking for help to "fill in the blanks" on a subject in which you're marginally intelligent, but to go into something completely blind is ludicrous. You'll irritate the old hats and befuddle the teenagers if you ask how to build a patio deck that's attached to the foundation of your home and have no carpentry or general contracting experience. Then again, we're talking about menial homeowning tasks, nothing that extensive.

[WackySam]

At age 12? Crown moulding is a pain! Good on him!

Crown moulding is actually pretty easy once you learn to unstall using the coping method instead of trying to match the angles in the corners.

[tacticalogic]

My 12 year old can trim out a room a well as any carpenter.

IMHO, carpentery isn't that hard. Joinery, on the other hand....

[groanup]

they push everyone to attend college.

And usually pay for it with tax money or gov't guaranteed loans which causes tuitions to skyrocket because they can. My brother-in-law told me about a handy man he knows who takes down 150,000 a year. Now THAT guy is educated.

[E.Allen]

Plumbing in three easy lessons.

1. S**t rolls downhill
2. Payday's on Friday
3. Bon't chew your fingernails

[E.Allen]

Plumbing in three easy lessons.

1. S**t rolls downhill
2. Payday's on Friday
3. Don't chew your fingernails

[Toby06]

Could I still justify buying a 12" slide arm compound miter saw? LOL

I wore out my non-slide miter saw pretty well building decks for chump yuppies who wanted a white guy who speaks english to build their stuff. OK, so it really only needs brushes and a fresh blade, but looks like hell.

[Tokra]

The main thing I learned from my father is to spew profanity the entire time I work on a project. I really get going when things go wrong (as they always do).

No matter how carefully I plan things, I end up making 6 more trips to the hardware store. (cursing during each trip of course)

[Charles Martel]

I think there's an inverse relationship between the money you spend on coffee and your ability to do basic home repairs (or car maintenance, drive a stick-shift, handle firearms, take down trees, etc.).

Perhaps in general, but there must be exceptions. For example, I gutted out the lower 4 feet of my sheetrock after Katrina (six inches of water will ruin your whole damned day, I assure you), hung new drywall, floated and textured it, installed new floors, and added a Leviton structured wiring system with Cat5e wiring and quad-shield coaxial cable while the walls were open. I also cut a non-structural wall down to counter height and did a few other long-postponed renovation projects.

Now that my home-repair tasks are caught up, I can finish installing that 5-speed manual transmission in my '65 Mustang, and maybe build another FN-FAL from a parts kit and bare receiver (though perhaps not; "timing" the barrel so that the front sight aligns at "12:00" on the receiver is one big pain in the arse).

Oops, nearly forgot... my faithful old McCulloch Pro-Mac 610 chainsaw was on the floor of the detached garage, which took more floodwater than the house. I flushed it out, got it started, and helped my cousin slice up the 18" diameter pine tree that was laying across his roof (the lucky S.O.B. - all the rainwater that went through his roof went right out through his bathtub drain!).

And yet, I occasionally enjoy a large cup of Starbucks mocha. < grin >

[ark_girl]

Yep. It's called Lowes, the little Home Depot "how to fix everything" books, and the internet.

We're NEW homeowners. There's a learning curve. I know darn well my dad had to ask the hardware store guy how to fix stuff when I was growing up.

[Waryone]

Boomers - 1945 to 1965

Generation X - 1965 to 1985

Millennials or Gen Y - 1985 to 2005

If the guy is 26, I think he's Generation X. The oldest Gen Y's are just turning twenty-one this year. Another name for Gen Y -- Echo Boomers. As a group they are much larger than Gen X. Though not quite as large as the baby boomers.

[rintense]

I learned how to do a ton of stuff by volunteering for Habitat for Humanity.

[ansel12]

"This article seems like a lot of BS non-news. I don't think young homeowners today area any different than at any time in history. I came from the baby-boom generation and yes I took shop. I didn't learn a thing from shop about basic home maintenance tasks. Likewise I also worked with my father, a WWII vet who did teach me one of the most important home maintenance arts - how to swear like a sailor while you are banging your thumbs, strippping bolts and bending nails."




What has changed is that people have been drawn into doing projects they would not have tried in the past.

I've been a off and on contractor for 30 years, in the distant past people hired contractors for everything, it is only in recent years all this do it yourself stuff became common.

I think we are creating a tacky, creaky, leaky, home environment because of lousy work done by homeowners.

Now we walk into friends houses and see crappy tile work, and crappy new floors, etc.

A lot of the work I do is redoing poorly done jobs that are only 5 or 10 years old.

The article actually has it backwards, we are now in a period of wild DIY that previous generations could not have imagined.

[erikm88]

Full-fledged X'er here. I learned most of my "handyman" skills from my father who passed them down to me. My brothers have never fared well because my father now just "hires someone", plus, my younger brothers don't have the drive nor initiative to learn how to be self-sufficient or how to fix anything (read: spoiled).

I am currently replacing a non-functioning alternator on my wife's vehicle. Last year I replaced a starter on a 300ZX I had.. this spring I dropped the fuel tank in my Suburban and replaced a dead fuel pump.... Where did I learn all of this??? A Haynes repair guide, the World Wide Web, and good 'ol trial-and-error, plus the motivation of saving thousands in car repair bills. When we bought our house, I inadvertently put a rather large hole in our drywall... picked up a DIY book at Lowes while I was there, and read about how to patch it up... Anyone can do these things.. they just need to have some initiative to learn how to do it...

[linda_22003]

Good for your sister. I have applied the same principle to learning how to start the lawn mower; I refused to.

[Clemenza]

Well, duh! Unless your daddy (or mommy) was a carpenter/plumber/tradesman, or did such activities as a hobby, you yourself will be "repair challenged."

If Drano can't do it, I call the plumber. I haven't got time to go through all of those dusty Time Life home improvement books...