From Dream Home to Money Pit: The Real Cost of Maintaining Your Castle

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Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us today.

I'm Eric G. John Dudley, Good to see you, buddy.

What's happening, brother?

Another exciting day.

This is an exciting day, and I'm really excited here because this came across my desk a few weeks ago and it fits so well with what we talked about last weekend and those 10 truths of home ownership.

Right.

We've got Patrice Boone from Synchrony's first ever lifetime of home care study, which I think is amazing.

Patrice, welcome to around the House.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

I'm excited to talk about our study.

This study blew my mind and rarely do I get something where I go, oh, wow.

This one, though, you guys brought out some shocking numbers and some realities that I think a lot of people aren't prepared for.

I was one of those people who was not prepared.

Honestly, as a homeowner, I think I was completely underestimating the cost of home maintenance.

Right.

Because it comes in in waves.

And so you're not thinking about it long term.

The fact that it's almost $100,000, $340,000 for the lifetime of your home to take care of it, that's another house.

Right.

And some places that's like buying a new house.

So that was definitely eye opening for us.

So we were definitely surprised at the numbers that we were seeing.

It's so funny because someone goes, oh, I'm not going to worry about that.

I'm just going to go buy a new house.

But the problem is these days is with lifespans of things that start to kind of come due.

Like, you might hit the reset button, but by seven years in, you're looking at new appliances, you're looking at other stuff that's failed.

And unless you're buying a new house every four or five years, you're really going to have to deal with this unless you're a renter, and then it makes it a lot easier.

Agreed.

Because I think that gap of expectation versus reality shows up even on an annual basis.

Eric.

So when we asked in the research how Much people thought they were spending even annually.

They thought maybe between a thousand, $5,000, and they're actually averaging more than $7,000 in a year on home repairs.

So that disconnect is there both for the.

On an annual basis and over the lifetime of homeownership.

Man.

And you guys came up with an overall number that was just absolutely shocking.

What was that number specifically?

It was $339,000.

I was gonna say 340, but yeah.

Yeah.

I was always foolish enough to buy.

Yeah.

I was always.

I'll tell you what, it doesn't bother me.

The point I was just gonna make is that I was always foolish.

Foolish enough to have several properties.

Right.

And so every time a renter moved out, it was 2, 3, 4,000 bucks.

Yeah.

Really good.

My point being is I got really good at not paying attention to that.

So when I saw that number in the email Eric sent me, I was like, yes.

And thus my following thought, glad I haven't owned a home in a decade.

Yeah.

And that 339,000 doesn't even factor in whether you had an emergency repair.

When you think about emergency repairs, if you factor that in, that figure is about $418,000.

So it just gets higher and higher.

But that disparity is huge, and it can have some major consequences for how homeowners plan and how they budget for these sorts of things.

And that was it.

And that's where people started out with.

Yeah.

And when you've got that smallest space.

Houses were way simpler back then.

They didn't have ac, they had a heat source.

There wasn't that much to maintenance that you couldn't just fix.

You didn't have to call in the H Vac tech in to come fix the computer in it.

All these new things, sprinklers.

Yeah, yeah.

And now all of a sudden, we've got all this technology that does make our homes healthier.

But entry level homes now are, oh, I could never get anything below 2,400 square feet.

Yeah.

And that expectation is shifted and the cost has it.

Agreed, agreed.

And it.

The gap starts with some of the small things.

Right.

The little repairs that occur over time.

You know, the refrigerators here and the stoves there.

But homeowners, when they're thinking about their cost of their home, they don't always think about the regular maintenance.

And the regular maintenance over time can actually exceed the cost of purchasing the house in the first place.

And then if you have some of the major things that come, like having to change your roof every 25 years, changing your H vac, which my husband and I just had to do, painting your house, like, those things just add up and up.

And that's how you get to that, you know, $339 or $418,000 number.

And especially like you mentioned, H Vac is a great one because they have made so many energy efficiency rules now federally.

So it's not just the state you live in, but federally, they've made so many changes, that $5,000 new system is out the door.

You can spend 15, 20, $25,000 really quick on an emergency basis.

It's even worse because now you're paying that extra fees for that and you're just trying to get it fixed.

Yeah.

We found that an average replacement cost of an H vac, based on our research, was about $8,000.

And that's just a regular H vac system.

It's not, you know, the high end thing.

When my husband and I replaced our H vac, we found out that because we'd built a basement or someone had built a basement before we bought the house, we actually needed two units and we only had one.

So we had to buy two units at the same time because the unit that we had just wasn't big enough for the house now that the basement had been built out.

So it's just little things like that add up.

And so now you're at $15,000 for an H vac system when I didn't even know the H vac was broken two months.

Then you have those other incidental costs too, because putting in a second unit now gets the electrician out there, all those other little pieces that.

And then they go, oh, your electrical panel is now old and it's not room for that.

So there's another five or six thousand dollars.

So this cascading numbers start happening at that point.

Yep, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Back to baseboard heaters.

Back to baseboard bucks.

Almond.

Done.

But it's so fun, you know.

And Patricia, it's interesting too, because we also cover here another report that we use, which is Remodeling magazine has this cost versus value report where they do regional numbers across, which is fascinating.

And it's so crazy to watch what the numbers for these systems keep getting on Average year after year.

Like you said, it can get expensive.

I put in a high end efficiency unit, like a year in my last house before COVID And I wanted it zones.

I wanted it super efficient.

I wanted kind of the latest and greatest.

So you know what I mean?

It was expensive and so that's what the high end stuff does.

Yeah.

And was it going to save me a lot of money?

Absolutely.

Did it work great?

Yeah.

I mean, it was killing viruses.

It was so good cleaning the air.

In my house, we couldn't bake bread without turning it off because it would kill the dough in the house.

So yeah, it was awesome.

But again, who's ready for a $25,000 hit when it fails?

Whatever helps you sleep at night, bud.

It was, it was killed on viruses.

It was that.

Next thing I know it was paint in my car.

I don't.

But you're so right.

And you know, and roofs are another one.

All it takes is to have a 25 year roof, which is kind of the industry basic one out there, and maybe you're eight years into it and the windstorm comes through and the insurance company goes, we're going to pay for some of that.

Yeah, yeah.

Because it's about $11,000 to replace a roof on average right now.

Right.

And to your point, it could be if you're lucky enough that a windstorm comes through and your insurance pays for it.

If it doesn't, or if your insurance company says this isn't, you know, caused by any kind of damage, then that's you having to pay that 11 for the roof.

It's it.

The instances and things that you have to think about and repair and keep in mind are wide.

There are so many things and even with homeowners who try to be proactive about it to keep up with, you know, the maintenance of the house, even the maintenance of it is expensive.

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But kids.

These days will never understand.

What's up.

This is Sticks it in ya and.

Satchel from Steel Panther and you are listening to around the house with Eric.

G. Yeah, we love Eric G. And you should too.

Welcome back to around the House with Eric G. Your expert guide to upgrading your home like a pro.

Today we have been chatting with Patrice Boone from Synchrony and their lifetime of Care study about how homeowners spend money on their homes.

Let's get back to the conversation.

And even with homeowners who try to be proactive about it to keep up with, you know, the maintenance of the house, even the maintenance of it is expensive.

Even for those who don't wait for something major to happen or be able to replace something, you have to budget for those things as well.

And that ties right in with what we were talking about.

Our last.

The show we just recorded is.

Yeah.

Was, you know, set aside a certain percentage of, you know, total cost of your home if you want to use that for a number.

But.

And the big push was maintenance, like maintain vacuum under your refrigerator so you don't have to replace it in three years instead of seven.

Like.

Yeah.

Things that, you know, inconsequentially, we're all so busy, we don't think about, you know.

Yeah.

We don't think about.

Refrigerator is going to wear out quick.

Yeah.

Or it's expensive.

Our research found that, you know, 90% of consumers or homeowners have a home repair that needs their attention.

But less than half of them, about 48% haven't addressed it because it's too expensive.

And you know, they're like, that's something I can live with.

But unfortunately, if you wait and then you don't go away, they just make it more expensive.

Right.

Compounds.

That's always the follow up point.

You're like, yeah, I really don't want to fix that.

And now suddenly.

Right.

The entire interior wall is ro button and you're changing.

Exactly.

And John, you just talked about a budget.

About 78% of homeowners don't really have a formal budget for routine maintenance.

So yeah, you know, they cover costs as they rise or they plan informally, but they don't really have a formal budget for routine maintenance.

Because it's great to say set aside x percent of your house, you know, the cost of your house for repairs, but things are so expensive these days that there are other things that homeowners need to spend on.

Yeah.

It's not like I'll have money to squirrel away.

I mean, that's kind of my great.

You're talking like my grandpa's era, right?

Yeah, he's that guy that would save nickels, you know, and when it came time to fix the roof, he's like, I've got three giant water jugs of nickels.

You're like, yeah, but it's what it is.

Practical, logical, anything, everything.

I'm not.

But then Murphy's law gets involved here too, because we have these averages.

But let's say, oh my gosh, my roof is failing.

I need a new roof.

And the roofer gets up there and goes, oh, yeah, but you also need 32 sheets of plywood and you need all this other stuff that goes with it because you've deferred that.

And so.

And then it even gets worse if you've let it go, is not only do you need 32 sheets of plywood, but we need to get the mold remediators in there to get the mold that's in the attic from the water leak.

Yeah.

And this can become a six figure fix before you know it.

Yeah.

That's probably why some people just wait.

They're like, I know that there's going to be more.

I know that this is not it.

And I just, I don't have the time or the money to deal with that with all of the other incremental things that are going to come up if I just ask for you to look at.

One thing I also visually just tell people as well is think about when you're filling your gas up in your vehicle.

Right?

Yeah.

That number, when you're deferring, that is still growing.

It's getting bigger.

So just think that, okay, I'm going to hold off and do that next month.

That's still going, clicking away.

It's.

Those numbers are changing.

So the more you can get on that and maybe you get in there and just stop the damage.

If you're on a budget and say, okay, I need to invest in this, but you still need to stop the damage from getting any worse.

Okay, you need a new roof, but maybe spending $2,000 to get somebody up there to stop the leaks until you can do the roof or, you know, get yourself budgeted, get a home improvement loan going because there's so many issues that happen there that again, it's called just putting those things together so you have that ready for that emergency.

Because those emergencies always cost more than you think they.

Absolutely.

And that's.

Eric, you just talked about home improvement loans, Right.

With synchrony.

That's one of the reasons why we did the study.

One, to educate homeowners.

But financing is there for these repairs and maintenance to help consumers get ahead of these, some of these emergencies or some of these larger purchases that come up.

Right.

We have the Synchrony project card and that is a revolving line of credit that you can use across 45,000 contractors nationwide to get things done for your home.

So it's not just, you know, one person or one company that it works for.

It works for 45,000 contractors.

So if you get the project card, that kind of helps you to take care of things as they come up and not just wait until they get.

Worse and having that access, because I think that is such a good way to go.

Because when you're in a bind and you need to come up with ten grand to fix your home.

Yeah, you're scraping stuff together.

And ten grand for many people is really hard to scrape up.

Yes.

When I need to get somebody in here today to get my heating system or my cooling system or my hot water heater's gone or whatever is going on, you want to get that done now because it's going to just get more expensive.

And having a good way to come up with that is smart.

I like that.

Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, there, there are some consumers who will put things like that on their general purpose credit card, with the project card.

They have some flexible payment options.

Right.

They're promotional financing that they can take advantage of.

So you have flexible payments, you don't have to put that 10,000 down and then a month later have to pay the entire thing off.

And it really helps to ease some of the stress that has to do with taking care of.

Of those repairs.

So we're happy to offer that at synchrony.

And I think 74% of homeowners know that those financing options exist, but only 34% of them actually use it.

The majority are paying out of pocket.

So I think it has something to do with trust, where the trust factors in.

Especially when you think about things like H Vac or when a contractor is coming into your home, you are relying on that person not just to say they're going to quote you the right number and they're going to do the right thing.

But if they offer up financing as an option.

Right.

You already trust them to do all of the work in your house.

So that contractor is really important and uniquely positioned to help introduce financing into the process as a part of the solution.

Right.

Not just a thing, but it's a part of the solution.

I don't want to.

While we're at it, we need to do this.

And so, again, that's another great way, because as much as home warranties and insurance policies for damage work, people go, I'm just going to buy a home warranty for my house and it's going to cover everything.

One, it doesn't.

Yeah.

As much as you'd like it to, it doesn't.

They'll put the new $22 part in your H Vac system, but it's still going to probably break next year.

Or that's going to buy you a little bit of time.

Yeah, but you know, great example.

I know somebody that bought a home warranty dialed in.

Perfect.

And then the water line from the front of the house to the street fails.

They have to put it in home warranty covers inside the house, not outside the house.

So that $60,000 waterline project that they had to do was expensive and they.

Had to bring that up earlier with that.

Yeah, when?

When?

Yeah, I was going to bring that one up earlier.

We were talking about emergencies earlier and I was like, oh, yeah, Scarrick's neighbor.

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Welcome back to around the House with Eric G. Your expert guide to upgrading your home like a pro.

Today we have been chatting with Patrice Boone from Synchrony and their Lifetime of Care study about how homeowners spend money on their homes.

Let's get back to the conversation.

We were talking about emergencies earlier and I was like, oh, yeah, ask Eric's neighbor.

That happened to your neighbor, Eric?

Yeah, it was my neighbor.

So these 30 something kids moved in there, and the drive for the front of their house is probably 130, 140ft to the street.

And because of all the trees in the area, they couldn't dig a ditch.

They had to tunnel it with one of those boring machines.

Well, the boring machine couldn't drill through the rocks because there were big rocks that were the size of a small vehicle, size of a Prius in there.

So they had to bring in a semi truck commercial drilling rig to horizontally drill underneath that.

And the expenses on that project, it was over 60 grand to put a simple water line in.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's just one.

You just don't.

You can't plan for that.

Yeah, you're like, oh, it's just the water main to the street.

A few thousand bucks ought to fix that.

Or 60, considering they paid 600 for the house.

That's a lot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Even if they had Put something away that.

That wouldn't have been anywhere close to.

Yeah, no.

Yeah, yeah.

And of course they had to have the 500 an hour arborist standing there so they didn't hurt the big trees.

And that was all the city codes that go with it, too.

So not only was it that there were all these other accessory pieces that made it more expensive, which again, you run into that with homes, all of a sudden you've got damage and, oh my gosh, I've got asbestos flooring.

So now I got to pay for that to be abated.

So, again, these things can get way out of control.

And I don't want to bag on homeownership here, but I just want to make sure that we're talking so people can understand that.

I love homeownership.

I've done it as much as I can in my life.

But there's associated costs that.

That comes up and sneaks up on you and you're just better to be prepared.

Yeah.

It's not just the mortgage and the property taxes right there.

There are real other things that homeowners need to worry about.

And I think one of the things that we've seen is 72% of homeowners feel anxious about being able to afford the necessary repairs.

They think about, are they going to be able to afford it?

Are these small problems just going to become bigger?

Can we find a trustworthy contractor?

Or if I go digging, am I going to discover a hidden issue like mold or structural damage or something like that?

So there's a.

There is some anxiety around owning a home.

And so this study is hopefully shedding some light on what it truly cost.

Eric, to your point, not because we say, we're saying, don't own a home, just go into it with eyes wide open.

Right.

I know that there are solutions for you if these things do come up.

Financing is a solution for you.

Financing can help.

And that's what we really want homeowners to take away from this conversation.

Yeah.

It's interesting too, because so many people think of maybe the last time they had that electrician or plumber come out to the house, and Maybe it was 10 or 15 years ago.

You know, maybe they've been a homeowner for a while and it was.

That was $150 for them to come out and fix something, or $250.

And those days are long gone because of the way that we've been short all of these tradespeople out there.

I love that our plumbers are making a six figure living Wage out there and our electricians and stuff.

I think it's awesome.

But that does reflect in your bill as well.

So that, that quick fix.

Yeah.

It's not the $100 fix anymore.

Yeah, Supply and demand.

Right.

We don't have enough supply of these contractors to your point.

So it is going to be a little bit more expensive when they come out.

Yeah.

What are you guys finding?

I know we've covered what you guys have done.

What's that, Johnny?

I got too old too soon because you tell me prices up there now.

I was a con.

I was a general contractor for almost 30 years.

He tells me prices now I'm like, okay, I'm gonna come back, just do one kitchen remodel.

I'll live for the next five years down here.

Yeah, yeah, it's wild on the.

But that's just reality these days.

It just is.

And patrisse, what else have we not talked about in the study because you guys had so much information in this thing.

It was jam packed.

We did have a lot of information.

It was a jam packed study.

I think we talked about the budget piece and how 78% of homeowners have no formal budget.

I think one of our the things that we saw in the research too was the top three emergency repairs at homeowners face the H vac system, which we've already talked about.

Right.

With an average replacement cost of around $8,000.

There's also roof leaks or storm damage, especially with the storms that we've been seeing, the increase in the number of and the strength of the storms that we've seen.

And Those are about $11,000 to replace or just burst or leaking pipes, which is about $4,000 in water damage repair costs.

It's not just the pipes, but it's everything else that happened.

But again, this doesn't always translate into okay, I know those things might happen.

So I am saving for it.

So that's those.

Some are some of the things that we saw as well.

And then the regular maintenance piece.

Many homeowners fail to account for the regular maintenance, which can be expensive and over the lifetime of the house can exceed the cost of purchasing the home.

Yeah, we actually on the show cover, every spring and every fall we go through the home maintenance checklist of kind of what people should be doing around their home that's grown to just.

On average, it's two to three pages now of single space to things you should be doing.

And so many people out there, I know go, oh, yeah, I haven't walked around my house to see if the gutters are leaking down the siding when it's raining or when was the last time you did the caulking around the windows to keep the water from getting in there?

Just the basics and that stuff just.

And again, that's the stuff that catches up to you, because all of a sudden, that little leak that you could have caught three years ago with the siding is now a, ooh, I need to replace the siding on the south side of the house because it's all gotten wet underneath it.

Absolutely.

At the end of the day, your home is more than just an asset.

Right.

It's where people feel safe.

It's where they go with their families.

So for us, we don't think homeowners should have to choose between making these essential repairs and financial stability.

There is a place where they can have both.

We can help with the synchrony project card for them to have both of those things.

Accessing all of the contractors that we have managing your home care costs with this flexible financing, so they can do the preventative maintenance and they can handle the critical repairs without the strain and the stress of the financing piece of it.

Nice.

So how do people find this card?

Because this sounds like an easy answer for many people that are looking at going, man, I am living right now, paycheck to paycheck.

Gas prices are crazy right now.

You know, things that maybe they didn't plan for.

And they're like, I don't have that money put away right now, but I've got a good job.

How do people find out more information about that?

Go to synchrony.com and you can find out more information about the synchrony project card.

You can also apply for the synchrony project card through any of our 45,000 contractors nationwide.

I would encourage homeowners to also ask about financing when your contractor comes in to do work, because they don't always remember to talk about financing or that's not always the first thing that they go to.

But know that those options exist and ask, is there financing available when those contractors come to do repairs on your house?

It's a lot more common than it used to be.

Like, contractors.

I mean, when I was in the game, do you guys do financing?

I'm like, financing.

Eric, you brought up gas earlier.

Like, I was the guy that, like, I'll put five bucks in today, and that'll get me through.

There's.

There were times when I had to limp along like that, and.

But, yeah, it's way more common and way more.

Way easier for contractors to make that available to clients now, which is awesome.

Absolutely.

And the great thing about the card is, let's say you get the card from Generac or Ream, you can still use the card at all of these other retailers.

It's not that card just for that one particular retailer.

You can use it again and again anytime you need it for home improvement, anytime you need it for home repair.

It's a car that you can keep in your wallet and use for.

For those things.

I fix the roof.

I'm going to Mexico.

I love it.

I love it.

Johnny, Patrice, thanks for taking the time today.

I love what you guys did with this study.

It's so brilliant.

And I like it when things open my eyes up and I go, holy smokes, that's a big number.

Yeah, yeah.

Absolutely.

Happy to be here.

Thank you guys for having us.

And hopefully we will have some additional studies to share with you, and we can come back.

Oh, I love it.

I love it.

Around the House.

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Welcome back to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us today, John.

It's been amazing.

Kind of resetting my brain on what actual home maintenance costs per year versus what I thought.

I guess the math was doing in my head.

I thought, grand or two, not a big deal, but seven grand on average, that adds up quick.

And maybe I've been just deferring a lot of maintenance, or I'm in that spot where I did a lot of work.

And then I've been writing on that for a while.

I think it's common to think, oh, it's a couple of grand, which is why I would never look at the balances.

Like I did want to know.

I just avoided.

No, no, it can't be that much.

Everything's fine.

Everything's fine.

Especially if you're paying for it.

But really, it's kind of taking your car into a shop these days.

You take a car into a shop, all of a sudden it's, oh, yeah, that's a thousand dollars really quick.

Because they're charging you a couple of hundred bucks just to even look at it.

Yeah, I.

Full transparency.

I have to say that.

And we mentioned it when we were talking about this, I haven't owned a home in over a decade, and I don't really Miss it, right?

Yeah.

Nice yard for my dogs to play in would be cooler, but I don't.

There's something to be said for just renting places or Airbnb and around or what?

No kidding.

I haven't owned a car in over a decade either, so.

Ah, see, there you go.

Your first world problems.

And I'm like, ah, I don't know.

I don't seem silly.

Yeah, because you're in the.

You're in the city, you're walking around.

You can walk to the store.

If you need to take something, there's a bus system.

You take it.

And I. Yeah, dude, we got a Rail Metro here.

I just.

I love not worrying about those items.

I'm aware of them.

I paid them all for years and years and years, but, yeah, I sure don't miss a lot of it.

Yeah, I get that.

But you think about it.

It's so easy.

I've had so many people go, man, you know, it's going to cost me.

There's four holes on my drive drywall.

What I need to get fixed.

Maybe there was a leak, there was something there, or they had to do some kind of an update, or maybe your teenager busted a bunch up.

We got mad at the wall and threw a few punches at it.

And therapy is one thing, but you still got to fix a drywall.

Once again.

It's just depending on.

It's.

Yeah, it's just drywall, but you got to go in there and patch it up.

You got to try to match the texture and then paint the entire wall to make it look like if you want it to look right.

Sometimes that can be a bigger project.

That could be a couple grand.

Because now you're retexturing the entire wall to make it look dead on.

Right?

Yeah.

And that.

And again.

Right.

That's something that's seemingly so simple.

Right.

A fist through the wall.

Right.

Ah, it's a little patch.

And if you're a homeowner and a contractor comes in, being the contractor.

Yeah.

They're floored.

They're like, wait, it's just a little.

Hole in the wall.

I've got to come here four or five different times, not counting the one to look at it.

Right?

Yep.

I've got to set everything up.

I've got to put protection for the mess.

I've got a paint.

I've got a Sand I've got.

It's not just a simple hole in the wall, right?

Yeah.

And now you're talking.

Is there asbestos there?

Is there?

Is there lead paint there?

There's a lot of other variables that in an older home, that could be like, ouch, that's getting expensive quick.

Yeah, yeah, it's.

I see both sides of it, right?

I see the homeowner side, where you're like, that seems kind of crazy just because my son put his fist through the wall.

But I also see the contractor side of it.

Like, time is valuable, and it just takes time to do things right.

If you want it done right, or, you know, go to Home Depot and buy some duct tape and paint over it.

You can do that.

This is the time to learn those DIY squills.

And what's funny, I've got a really good buddy that I went to high school with that I still chat with every other day or so with.

And three years ago, that dude.

Maybe we'll go even farther.

We'll go seven or eight years ago, that dude had no handyman skills at all to fix his own stuff.

He just didn't have it.

And he was my roommate when I first moved to Portland and I started showing him stuff, going, hey, man, now you could do this.

And the first project him and I did together was he was selling the house that we were living in because he was moving to Texas.

So we were selling that house because I'd moved on, and we put in some LVP flooring, got rid of some carpet and.

And got the house cleaned up a little bit to sell.

And he's.

I wasn't so bad.

There we go.

And now all of a sudden, he's.

What's he doing today?

He's over at his beach house tearing all the siding off and went, oh, man, this board and batten stuff that was underneath the siding was rotten.

And now he's.

Little sill repair while he's there.

And he's, oh, the.

They didn't flash the deck rights.

The ledger board's rotten out.

He's diving into this thing and sending me some pictures, and I'm like, man, yeah, you are coming along.

That's fun to see people grow in their DIY journey like that.

And I encourage it, right?

Like, even as a contractor, I would tell people, you know what?

I could tell you a price.

I could charge you for it.

I could do it for you.

But honestly, if you want to just listen to me for five minutes, I'll tell you exactly what to do and you can take care of this for yourself.

Yeah, it's not that big a deal.

And for two reasons.

Right.

I encourage it also so that people get a better understanding.

When a contractor does come in and say it's twelve hundred dollars, they're like, yeah, that seems fair because I tried that myself once and it's learn what you can do and do it and then let the pros do what they're good at and understand why it costs money.

On the flip side, I've seen homeowners try to get the project started and make it more expensive for themselves.

Indeed.

Down the road, you and I have seen it.

It's hey, I want to do the demo.

And sometimes a contractor will go, oh man, you're gonna do the demo.

So now I've got to deal with the half demo.

All the nails that are in there, you under demoed or over demoed.

And somebody grabbed up the 12 pound sledge and decided to make an HDTV recreation of them blowing everything out, which in most cases, that sledgehammer shouldn't even be out.

Yeah.

No, it's.

Yeah.

To.

Again.

To be honest, I never.

Or maybe I did once and that's why I never did again.

Allowed.

No, you can't be a part of the project.

I'm sorry.

I get it.

You want to save money, but I'm not the guy to do that for exactly that reason because you're gonna make it more expensive, and I don't want to see you do that.

So I'm not gonna let you.

You want to control that part of it.

If that means I lose the job, I'm okay with that.

Because I'll sleep better at night.

Yeah.

Knowing that I didn't just not fair.

So.

Oh, I have seen homeowners do stuff that.

That just inadvertently.

Because they just.

There was no ill intent, brother.

It was just they didn't know better.

And yeah, sure, they disposed of the asbestos wrong.

Or they did something wrong and they threw it out in the trash can.

Now there's fines, and now that comes back to the contractor by default.

Yeah, that's where it gets tough.

So I do when that.

Because here's the thing, and I guess to go back to that, there's a schedule you as a contractor Johnny have to follow.

Right.

You're like, okay, painting day is this day and they need to come in and do this and maybe a next coat the next day.

But those are my painting days when the homeowner's in the schedule.

Yep.

That's.

I didn't Feel like it Today I got stuck at work, or the kids had soccer.

Now there goes the schedule.

And now you're trying to spend all the extra time to put the schedule back together because you got four of the jobs you're working on.

That's why I would never do it.

I just didn't.

I wouldn't do it.

No, I get it.

Yeah.

I won't dive down the hole, but.

Yeah.

No, but I think.

Here's the other thing.

There's a number of things that go wrong in that situation.

Right.

And it only leads to miscommunication and bad blood.

And nobody wants negativity around something that's already difficult, which is a remodel project.

Like, why add one more element of, oh, this could go wrong like that.

There's plenty that can go wrong without putting that in the mix.

Absolutely.

And then the other part of it, too, man, is the.

You want to get pictures as the contractor designer at the end of the project, and they did the painting job, and they did a horrible job, for instance.

And you're like, well, I take a picture of this, it looks like I can't paint.

And there's just no way to get around that.

So there's just so many layers of problem here where that can just really get.

Where you get bad and either kind of have to decide, am I to do it or am I going to not do it and just let it go.

And the other part of that, too, that I'm seeing is that it gets expensive.

But the project creep, if you have a good contractor, they're going to catch most of those things on the beginning side of that.

So you're not going to look at a $50,000 bathroom renovation and have it be a hundred, unless you just went that crazy on the spending side of things, which can happen.

Which can happen.

And that's where it gets expensive.

But I think the thing to be learned out of this episode is one, I think, just to recap, if you don't have seven grand put away, have seven grand of credit to pack it up, at least that you can go out and get things fixed.

And then you're gonna have to put into your schedule how you're gonna pay that back.

But I think that's the biggest takeaway of this, is, wow, those numbers can really creep up on you.

Now, it's one thing to amortize that over 12 months, but if you have to do it all at once and, wow, I need.

How many people, if they need $7,000 by Friday, can go, oh, I can pull that together.

Yeah.

That's why it's cool to see synchrony offering, right?

That kind of funding for exactly that problem.

Because.

Because everybody's got it, right?

Typical maintenance and painting and things.

Normal stuff.

That's barring the oh, I had to spend 60 grand to get a new water line ran.

Emergency, stuff like that.

Yeah, exactly.

Y. Yeah, Again, that's big money.

It's like we always talk about with projects.

It's the same thing, man.

Just plan for it, plan ahead, do the research, know what you're gonna need, and be prepared for it.

Johnny, we've run out of time for this show.

I'm Eric G. And for John Dudley, you've been listening to around the House.

Thanks for spending time around the house with Eric G. Your expert guide to upgrading your home like a pro.

Today, we gave you the real world tips and pro secrets to tackle your next project with confidence.

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