I was out to dinner last night with a friend of mine and his wife. He has a job working behind a computer, compiling data or something like that. What exactly he does is irrelevant. Anyway, he bought his first house a year ago and has done/has plans for a lot of work. Every time we meet up he updates me on the work he's done, what needs to be done, etc. I will never do any work for him because I know the type that he is. He wants the cheapest possible price, but then is going to complain when the job looks like crap. And a lot of the work he does himself, and when it looks like crap he says its good enough no one can tell.
Anyway, my gripe and how it relates to trades people is this. He has all these jobs he wants done and wants to do it himself. So he says, I wanna build a deck in my backyard, do you think I could build a deck? I say gee I don't know, but its a little tricky if you've never done it before. He says well my brother in law has built two decks so ill have him help me, what do you think? Yea sure I suppose you could then.
Next thing he says, I need to drywall my dining room, do you think I could do that myself? Again, I explain to him I can't say, it all depends on his skill set, his tool set, etc., but that if he has never done it before he might have some trouble and make it real tough to tape and finish. He figures he can save some money and do it himself.
Next I ask him if he ever got that roof repaired. He tells me he did and the guys did a terrible job but its ok because it's a flat roof and you can't really see it from the outside. So I ask why didn't you call my roofer? Oh his price was too high. Oh ok, so instead you went with the cheap guy and got a crap job. Sounds about right.
Then we talk about the entry and storm door he had installed by Home Depot. Explains that the door doesn't close properly and neither does the storm, but that he thinks if he had the installers back to fix it they would just screw it up even more,
So basically, everything he has paid to have done, he's gone with the lowest price and gotten a crap job and complained. Everything he has done himself, he has screwed up and convinced himself its fine. So how does this relate to trades people being looked down upon?
People like my friend have this idea that because we work with our hands and get dirty, we are basically doing grunt work that any ape could do. A lot of his questions when he's trying to determine if he could do something himself are, well it can't be that hard, right? It's the attitude that skilled labor doesn't take much skill, this strange devalue of a persons biggest investment, their house, and the reinforcement in these people's minds that skilled labor is not skilled by so many trades people working for peanuts fighting for scraps. And as was mentioned above a big contribution to that is big box stores that thrive on the DIY and the DIY shows that make people believe that yes, building a house is so easy a caveman could do it.
It sickens me talking to him. I tell him that he's making a mistake and its not as easy as it looks. I explain to him everything involved in doing the job right to which he always replies, I'm not doing all that I just want it done cheap. Well then don't complain to me when it looks like crap.
It will make a good rental. 
