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. The one advantage today's youth has is the internet. There is plenty of self-help information out there. If anything they have advantages previous generations didn't have and they'll do just fine.
So, knowing that I was not going to learn any of this from Dad, I proceeded to the local library, where, lo and behold, they had scads of books dealing with home repair and renovation. I identified a few that appeared to be the most useful and up to date and bought them. These books, heavily thumbed, pencil annotations in the margins, with the occasional sweat stains and blood splatters, still sit on the shelf in my workshop 40 years later.
I am sure all of this stuff is on the internet, which is a good thing, since I get the impression that a lot of kids today wouldn't look at, much less own, a book. But it's good to know that they are trying.
LOL! Sounds like my experience growing up!
I think one the problem is lack of tools and space to store them - well at least when you live in a Condo (i.e. Apartment - for those of you that don't in a major Metro area).
Most projects take specialty tools and then, at that, they run you hundreds of dollars, $$$$.
_ _ _ _ _
"-Hey, Honey... "
---"Yeah"
-"Can I store this 30 Foot plumbing drain snake in your closet? I'll put it near your shoes, but not too close."
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.
"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.
Yeah. The drive belt slipped off the track on my Maytag Dryer. I spent two hours trying to restring it before consulting Google. I found a site with step by step pictures.
Here are some of the wonders of repairing a "used" home. To put it in perspective, the previous 3 owners essentially sat on the appreciation and did little else except when warranted by emergencies and preparation for sale:
= Tiled bathroom shelf one inch above top of toilet tank
= Complete lack of french drains (on an adobe, expansive soil hillside in Cali)
= No retaining wall in crawl space, only a big cut into the dirt
= No garbage disposal (believe or not they had one of those faucet fed dishwashers from the 60s)
= Totally overwatered wrong areas of yard with major fungal growth experiment
= Post in garage hit by drunken wife, knocked off mount, never repaired or replaced
= 2 out of 3 front lights disconnected from AC
Etc .... a "contractor's special" - LOL!