The Rise of DIY Home Improvement
Mira Kepler had no intention of paying a contractor $10,000 to convert her smelly, mice-infested chicken coop into an office for her husband. Instead, she borrowed an electrical wiring manual from the library and took on the project herself. The abandoned coop was filled with old hay and mouse nests but lacked insulation and windows. Kepler started by cutting holes and installing light fixtures.
In rural Oregon and across the United States, the cost of hiring a contractor has become so high that even those who aren’t particularly handy are learning to use power tools. Many homeowners are now spending their days watching YouTube tutorials, studying local permitting laws, and participating in forums like Reddit’s r/DIY, which has a membership larger than the population of Australia.
This trend means more people are buying the wrong tools and materials, failing inspections, and pushing their physical and emotional limits. Kepler hit a low point when she found herself picking at a layer of mud, chicken droppings, feathers, and spiderwebs stuck to the coop floor while her 5-month-old child napped. “It was a low point,” she said, and the project had just barely begun.
During the pandemic, many Americans rushed to remodel their kitchens and bathrooms. However, the home-improvement market has been sluggish since then. Economic uncertainty and persistently high interest rates have delayed many projects, especially among lower-income families. Those who are still moving forward are taking on more of the work themselves.
According to the Farnsworth Group, a home improvement research firm, more than half of homeowners are undertaking home improvements themselves or with nonpaid help. DIY rates are at their highest in several years.
Novices are experiencing both success and failure. Daryn Ferreira, who lives in a mobile home in Illinois, wanted to expand his living space by tearing down a small closet. He used a crowbar on the drywall, bought a saw, and tried to install a new wall-mounted storage unit from wooden boards. It was raining that day, so when he heard creaking, he assumed it was the sound of the rain. Then his entire installation collapsed to the floor. “Oh!” he recalled thinking. “That wasn’t the rain.”
Ferreira cleaned up the mess, tracked down new tools, and did it right the second time.
Russell Schafer faced a similar situation when he decided to take on a double-car garage project. A contractor arrived in a Maserati wearing a Cartier bracelet, but the quote—nearly $70,000—was too steep. So the 33-year-old decided to cut out the middleman. He still hired a plumber and electrician but took on the role of general contractor. Unfortunately, the plumber he was supervising failed an inspection due to a water leak.
Despite some setbacks, Schafer enjoys the savings and sense of pride that come with doing the work himself. “For now, and the foreseeable future, I have much more time than money,” he said.
Jeffrey DiScala moved into a century-old house in Virginia last year and faced a mountain of tasks: removing trees, installing a paver patio, tilling the lawn, and washing the fence. The 44-year-old grant manager didn’t have the money to hire someone or the knowledge to do it himself. He and his husband turned to ChatGPT for help.
“I’ve probably spoken more to language learning models in the last two months than to some of my friends,” DiScala said. His journey wasn’t smooth. He got the wrong-size bricks for his paver patio and the wrong tools to cut them. It was an arduous two-month process, but he was pleased with the result.
Back in Oregon, Kepler continued working on the chicken coop conversion. She found large windows at a store in Portland but struggled to fix them to the coop’s walls. For weeks, after putting her baby to bed, she spent hours watching YouTube videos and studying technical specifications from window manufacturers, strategizing a waterproof design for the installation.
She soon got into electrical work. While at the library with her child one afternoon, she spotted Black & Decker’s electrical wiring manual. “This is what I need,” she thought. She failed the first permitting inspection—and the second one, too. “I tend to have a certain overconfidence,” she admitted.
Meanwhile, she was learning—and saving thousands of dollars.
Little by little, the coop started to look more like a home office, and with each small feat, she felt a sense of pride. “I’m actually succeeding at this,” she said, “and making an interesting and functional and beautiful thing.”
Not everyone is as daring. In Columbus, Ohio, John Clendineng is proud of the spiral staircase railing he recently constructed on his own. But he won’t touch the electric. He said that while he values saving on home improvement, “I value my life more.”
