jmdirt said:
Tricycle Rider said:
High-five, jmdirt - I hate the electrical stuff...
Not just because it needs to meet code, but also because you can very well burn your house down if you didn't get it right.
So for the electrical stuff, by all means, hire a pro.
I just run the wires and let the electrician do the parts that could lead to fire. I can't justify paying a guy $65 hour to pull wire when that's pretty easy to do myself. I feel OK about changing out electrical parts without a pro (outlets, switches, light fixtures...).
Jay, very true about any plumbing, but especially old plumbing. Instead of using food oils, you could also buy silicone that is specifically made for plumbing (~.99 for a small container that will do about 10 jobs).
that's a reasonable 'electrical' approach but you can still run into troubles/fires/shorts by changing out electrical parts w/o a pro. I am not a pro but took care to learn the trick. It is called the component current
rating. for ex, i once replaced a switch previously rated for 10 amps AC with the one rated for 1 amp. the result was carbonizing the underrated switch which luckily did not cause any fires...
i am a huge fan of diy. diy just about anything - plumbing, electrical, cooking, learning more languages, software, our cars, our bikes, our taxes... for me, it's not so much about the savings, but an opportunity to learn and apply it to reducing my household's waste. not wasting $$ is a welcome coincidence... i am only limited by the available time and the permissions form the significant other when my drives become more than personal.
today i fixed an old bike computer, a cat eye) instead buying new (if i even could find a replacement for the 20 yo part). there were 2 problems: a disintegrating mounting bracket handle bar band and the broken anti-slide plastic computer latch.
to be brief, i stitched the disintegrating plastic bracket with steel wires, then epoxied the surfaces. the latch was a more involved fix... i extracted a springy metal plate from an old electrical outlet, shaped it (bent, cut to size, drilled holes) and attached it (with the stitching wires) to the repaired handlebar band just about where the broken plastic latch was. tested the the thing today. the computer is not sliding out when i manipulate the buttons.
etc etc