Do-it-yourselfers do it
themselves regardless of whether they own or rent.
As long as I can
remember, the American dream was to arrive at that place in life where you were
able to own that home surrounded in the front by a picket fence. However, since
the housing bubble a few years back, the housing market, interest rates, and the
economy have called that dream into question. More and more people found it
necessary to rent, because they could no longer meet the requirements for
homeownership and nor were many folks willing to take the risk associated with
owning a home - the American dream began to lose it luster.
Renting
In sort of an unintended
way, many folks who were always busy and didn’t have a lot of time to maintain
their homes discovered an alternative to owning a home. Renting became a
convenient lifestyle. If you rent, in most cases, major services are the responsibility
of the landlord. If the heating or air conditioning breaks down, or the
plumbing or roof leaks, it is no doubt an inconvenience, but both the having to
coordinate the repair and the economic burden belongs to the landlord. In
addition, many rental communities also have wonderful amenities; gyms, cooking
classes, lectures, and other community services for their residents.
Homeownership
There can be, of course,
financial benefits to ownership. Condo living is that financial step up from
apartment living with a minimal increase in responsibilities. You may be the
kind of person that prefers not hearing the elevator or a door slam each time a
neighbor comes home. There is always that major step up to owning home,
particularly in terms of responsibility. It is all yours, especially if you are
into roof repairs, replacing hot water heaters as necessary, maintaining
heating and air conditioning, driveways and walkways, and other major
appliances perhaps--homeownership is for you.
Having a backyard and
space between you and your neighbor may be a good thing, many folks also rent
homes, especially if you are into gardening and maintaining a manicured
yard—but again, as a renter, it can be the landlord’s problem.
Do-it-yourself
Most do-it-yourselfers
do it themselves because they find the projects they tackle both challenging
and satisfying, regardless of whether or not they own the place in which they
live. It is also a fact that living is costly and we all wish to save
money--doing-it-yourself saves money.
Whether you live in an
apartment or own a home your abode needs to be decorated, painted, and cleaned.
As more and more people began to rent, and renters began to consider their
apartments as homes, renters began to invest in personalizing apartments in ways
that had been typically left for homes that were owned. I think as a
consequence the sophisticated skills of do-it-yourselfer, once the provenance
of the homeowner, have now become ubiquitous.
Tools
and Skills
For the most part, the
tools necessary to decorate and the skills required to do-it-yourself are the
same. Walls need to be painted and decorated. Shelves need to be put up
straight and level. If you like to garden as I do, most apartments today have a
patio or a deck and instead of a yard and lawn, you can take up container gardening.
Moral
of the Story
Obviously home owners
are responsible for everything, and they may, if they have the desire and
skills, choose to tackle major problems such as leaking pipes and roofs,
repairing driveways and walkways, and designing and maintaining landscape.
There is, however, something to be said about not having those
responsibilities.
Today, with advent of
the style of apartment-home living, the do-it-yourselfer regardless of whether
they rent or own, needs many of the same tools and skills that had previously
been the provenance of the traditional homeowner.
