The Craft Trap

I am going to make it/do it myself and it’ll be so much cheaper!

I think we’ve all fallen into that trap on occasion. And if you haven’t, congrats, but you’ve missed out on a prime opportunity to invent new curse words.

I say this for both of us, with all of our years of experience as incorrigible DIYers. Doing it yourself can be an effective way to save money. Doing it yourself can also be a way to spend way more money (and time) than you originally intended. Caveat Emptor, my friends.

So the question is, how do you tell which projects will save you time and money? Which projects will save you money but not time? Which projects will save you time but not money? And which will save you neither? And if so, do you really care, because the cost is worth the experience?

Before we get into this topic, my friend, Mr. Freddy Smidlap has an outstanding blog on the value of your time. I highly recommend reading it. https://freddysmidlap.com/2018/11/26/not-all-time-is-created-equal/

Time and money? Very few DIY projects will save both time and money, so if you’ve found one you’ve found a unicorn and should brag about it at any opportunity.

Which projects will save you money but not time? This is the sweet spot for most folks who DIY, where you’re trading your labor for paying someone for theirs. Painting a room, tiling a floor or a backsplash, mowing your own lawn, reupholstering a beat up curb find, replacing a light switch, making your own beehives, pretty much anything that you can find a YouTube tutorial on that you’d otherwise have to pay someone else to do. This is where you possibly spend your Golden Hours to save a few hundred to a few thousand bucks. And it’s the value call, is it worth me spending my time doing this thing or should I just pay someone else to do it? How valuable are those Golden Hours? And will that change over time?

Time but not money? This is a tricky one. This is where some pricey tools come in to play. This is the realm of “we spend according to our values” and “you can have anything you want, you just can’t have everything you want”. The chainsaw mill and the log-splitter come to mind in these cases. They both save us time, they both cost cash. But we hope that in the long run they’ll both pay for themselves in stuff we don’t have to buy and also goodwill from the neighbors.

Neither? And here we have the craft trap. This is the realm where knitters, crocheters, woodworkers, quilters, craft brewers, and other hobbyist artisans and dreamers reside. It starts innocently enough, a trip to Joann, Home Depot, or the local craft brewery. You buy a few things, you start, get a fairly decent result, and now you’re hooked. Now instead of the giant one pound skein of no dye lot yarn for $12 plus a 40% off coupon, you’re in the no joke local yarn store lovingly caressing 5 oz skeins of yarn that start at $25 that you’ll need 5 of to make that sweater. Or you’re beyond the milled oak or pine at Home Depot and are at the local small lumber yard looking at the live edge black walnut or mahogany sold by the mysterious foot and depth calculation. And there is nothing wrong with this. Crafting is going to save neither time nor money, but it’s one heck of an experience. . . if you use the stuff you buy. However, that is the subject of an entire follow on post another day. It’s one thing to spend according to your values and use what you spend money on. It’s a completely different thing to keep buying materials hoping that one day you’ll get around to using them. That’s a financially dangerous road to start down.

Neither also includes the botched DIY call. It looked simple enough, but now you’ve spent every weekend for 2 months working on it, it’s cost twice as much as you would have saved, and you’re looking at your significant other wondering whose stupid idea this was. Avoiding these is the key to a successful DIY journey. The biggest tip I have for avoiding those is to be able to realistically estimate your relative skill level and don’t overstretch it. Of course you want to stretch, that’s how you get better. But don’t try to go from a successful room painting endeavor to ripping out a wall and expect it to go well.

This whole post was a lead up to one of our recent projects. The buzz around the hive was the buzz of the sewing machine and one heck of a lot of staples.

We have a dog problem. Not really. There aren’t really any such things. We have one dog who is very old and just wants to be left mostly alone. We also have one dog who very conspicuously does not.

HI! I LOOOOOOVE YOU!!!

Sir Griff likes to visit while I work. Sometimes intrusively.

Don’t mind me. Your hands should be petting me not typing anyway.

Enter the idea for the loveseat office chair! Room for me and one velcro dog, on wheels, with fabric that will stand up to muddy paws and not show dog hair. This is an idea that could be brilliant or it could be a great idea that actually sucks in practice. So we didn’t want to spend a lot of money. We ventured over to Habitat for Humanity Restore to see if they had anything that would work. It needed to have low arms, a tight back, and good support in the seat.

Take a look at this ugly thing and be glad that your monitor isn’t scratch and sniff

We actually found a good candidate on our second trip.

Many staples later and voyola! A naked seat.

Seriously. So. Many. Staples. There are plenty of YouTube tutorials on how to remove the upholstery from pretty much anything so I’m not going to go through a step by step. But if you’re going to try this at home, TAKE PICTURES! Take pictures of how the fabric is attached before you start removing it. Take pictures of how the pieces are oriented while they’re still on the furniture. And do yourself a favor and don’t cut the fabric, remove it whole. It’s a template for the replacement and a way to determine how much fabric you need. And dismantle all of the parts. Reuse any zippers, piping inserts, etc. Document the order that you removed pieces. It’s the reverse of how you’ll put them back on. Write on the fabric that you removed, what it is and the direction it was oriented in.

Buy swatches of the fabric and test them before you commit. This project only saves money if the fabric you replace it with doesn’t need to be replaced in a few years. The tests that I ran were, dog hair visibility, dog hair removal by vacuum, and stain removal. There was a front runner through the first two tests. And then it came time to remove a stain and the fabric started to pill. If the fabric swatch pills, the fabric itself isn’t going to last through daily use. And I work from home, so this chair is going to be used for 9-10 hours per day. Consequently, the backup fabric ended up winning and that stuff is bullet proof. Also, if you leave your fabric in your online shopping cart, sometimes the store will send your a coupon. So leave it overnight before you purchase.

I can’t stress enough the importance of doing a test fit.

Test fit anything you sew to make sure there are no needed adjustments. Also, those green things at the back of the seat are foam wedges to help me sit forward rather than sinking back into the love seat. Don’t be afraid to make adjustments for purpose. But be wary of adding a foam where it will be visible once it’s upholstered. We inadvertently added wrinkles to our arms by adding foam where there wasn’t any before.

All finished. Not perfect but not bad for a first attempt.

Total cost was about $300, $50 for the initial loveseat and $250 for fabric, foam, pillow inserts, and casters. The new feet were made from scrap wood from a different project. A new loveseat starts at $900 at your generic furniture store for their regular fabric. I looked up one with the fabric that we used, Crypton, and it was about twice that much. I consider this one a success, because even if it’s an eventual fail on the office chair, which I hope it’s not, we can use it elsewhere in the house. And it wasn’t that bad from a level of effort perspective. Count on a solid two days to remove all of the old fabric (freaking staples), and a week’s worth of evenings plus part of the following weekend to sew, reupholster, and add feet. Would do again.

That’s the buzz around The Hive. How about you? Have you ever been caught in the craft trap? What was your best DIY effort from a satisfaction level? Cost savings level? Do you consider DIY a valuable use of your free time?