Ep 16: What to Expect When You’re Expecting a (DIY) Project

Welcome back to How to Handyma'am! This week's episode is dedicated to Samantha's sister, Sandy. Not only are their golden retrievers literal sisters, but Sandy is also one of our biggest cheerleaders, sharing every post and supporting us as we try new and scary things. This one is for you, Sandy!

We kick things off with a brand new segment: "3 Minutes of Chaos," where we each get exactly one minute to talk about whatever is on our minds. Emily professed her love for cute-but-stinky bears , Arly reviewed the newest season of Bridgerton , and Samantha declared Cavatappi as the superior pasta shape because it holds so much cheese and doesn't get mushy!

After the chaos, we have some huge updates and a massive masterclass on how to plan your next DIY project. Let's get into it!

We Were on Live TV!

We officially made our live television debut on New Day Cleveland!

• We taught viewers how to paint like a professional in their own homes, including how to get rid of roller fuzzies, how to caulk trim, and how to cut a clean paint line without using painter's tape.

• The production team, especially Mackenzie, was absolutely incredible, and the host Natalie was delightful.

• In a hilarious "small world" twist, we found out Natalie's co-host is the brother-in-law of a client whose mailbox we were fixing that exact same week!

Girl Scout Toolboxes

Arly recently taught our very first in-person class to a local troop of 10-year-old Girl Scouts!

• In just one hour, every single girl learned how to properly use a drill and an impact driver.

• They learned how to pre-drill, countersink, and assemble their very own wooden toolboxes.

• We stocked their new toolboxes with mini paint cans, estate sale screwdrivers, and tiny levels we've been hoarding for this exact moment.

• The biggest takeaway: Never underestimate the importance of snacks (like Cheez-Its) when teaching 10-year-old girls!

Handyma'am Approved Products

We have tried so many products in the field, and we only want to recommend the ones we truly love. Here are our current favorites:

• RTA Wholesalers: "Ready To Assemble" cabinets out of Carson, CA. They have outstanding craftsmanship with real wood, and because they ship unassembled, the shipping is much cheaper. They offer custom sizes, come fully painted (like white), and their customer service is top-tier!

• Schluter Epoxy Grout: This two-part epoxy comes in a dual-chamber caulk gun tube that perfectly mixes the parts as you squeeze. It has very low odor, is completely non-porous (so it won't stain), and is perfect for seamlessly joining outside corners of tile.

• Gorilla Glue 2-Part Epoxy: The ultimate heavy-duty fix. Emily used this to reattach the wing of a fairy statue after superglue and construction adhesive failed (and melting it just set it on fire).

• Valspar Signature Paint & Bonding Primer: If you want a great mid-tier paint without spending $90+ on a premium gallon, this line at Lowe's is a fantastic, budget-friendly option for homeowners.

What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Project

If you are planning to tackle a sizable DIY home repair, here is how to mentally and practically prepare yourself:

1. When to Call a Pro

• Ask yourself: Can I live with the potential consequences if I mess this up?

• Changing a light switch might be fine, but if you mess up a major electrical job, the consequence is a house fire. If you mess up a plumbing job, the consequence is a flood. Know your limits!

2. Prepare for the Hardware Store Shuttle

• You will go to the hardware store way more times than you expect.

• Even professionals experience this! Samantha once bought a pneumatic nailer, realized she needed an air compressor, went back to buy the compressor, opened the box at home, and realized she had to go back to the store to buy the hoses. It's a rite of passage!

• Arly's Plumbing Hack: When doing sink drains, go to the store and buy one of everything you could possibly need, and just return what you don't use later. It saves you five trips!

3. Plan for Who You Are

• You need to plan your project for the person you actually are, not the person you wish you were!

• The Linear Planner (Emily): Write down every single step in order, and then list the exact tools and materials needed for each specific step.

• The Chaos Gremlin (Samantha): Do a massive brain dump of everything on paper. Then, group those chaotic thoughts into a logical order on a second piece of paper, and finally create a daily to-do list from that.

4. Know When to Walk Away

• The hardest part of DIY is the last 10%.

• You have to learn the difference between being frustrated because you don't know how to do something, and being fatigued because you are just exhausted.

• If you are tired, hungry, or making the same mistake five times in a row, the right thing to do is clean up and walk away for the day. Do not ruin a beautiful project by rushing the finish line just because you want it to be over!

Time is going to pass whether you work on your project or not. Even if you only have 15 minutes a day, just work your plan and you will eventually get there!

If you want to join our community and be the first to know about our upcoming in-person weekend intensives, go to howtohandymaam.com and sign up for the email list!

Episode Transcript:

Welcome back. We missed you, beautiful. We're heading. Singing to the we're. Starting with singing right up front, we. Didn't really sing in this episode, so oh you'll. Be sing at the meeting of every side quest so. Yeah, but this isn't a side quest, this is an episode, so it has to be included. Welcome to Had a Handyman with the podcast where we tell you what to expect when expecting a project. We're pregnant with a project. We can have a baby. I'm gonna make it weird. In this episode, we talk about our experience on live TV for the first time. New Day Cleveland. Arley taught some Girl Scouts how to build a toolbox, which is super cool. And then we tell you how to prep, plan and execute your projects at home. So I'm Emily. I'm Arley. And I'm Samantha and this is had a handy ma'am. And this week's episode is dedicated to my sister Sandy and I. Well first of all, she's my sister and we both have a golden retriever and our golden retrievers are sisters, so I think. That's pretty cool. And our dog, the. Cutest Our dog's name is Winnie, and it's Winnie the Pearl. Shout out to my dad for that means it's very cute. So my sister Sandy, since we started the podcast, I just really want to just say how thankful we are for how much of A cheerleader that she's been for us. So, you know, when you're doing something that's scary and new and you don't know if it's going to be successful, it's really hard. And she shares every single post we have and she comments and gives us like cute little animated emojis on every post that we do. So I really appreciate her being in our corner and being willing to be real public about, hey, here's some cool stuff that's happening. This is my sister, so this one's for you, this one's for. You. Sandy, yes. Thanks so much. Love you. Hey, let's get into it. All right, let's do it. OK, it's time for three minutes of. Chaos. 3 minutes of chaos, Are we ready? Who's going first? Arley went first last time. You don't have a topic. So all right, I'm. Going first, you go, OK, my topic today is bears, and I want to tell everyone that firstly, I think it's really cute how bears ears are shaped. And I think it's kind of mean that they're not pettable with ears shaped like that, but I just find that they're really stinky, and I don't know how that makes me feel about the bears. I feel like you keep like a healthy distance from them, it doesn't matter. But I don't want to keep a healthy distance from them, which is like the thing. But anyway. This is you and your daydreams. This is me and my daydreams. Anyways, there is eight types of bears in the world. I've only seen like 3 in person and that's kind of like I was thinking about it this last week. That's kind of my new like bucket list thing is to see each type of bear while they're in a zoo. Preferably in the wild, but. Or not in the wild. But I went all the way to Alaska and I didn't see a single grizzly bear in the wild. You didn't see any bears? There I saw a black bear but. Puppies are little, aren't they? Yeah, they're only like 150 lbs or something. Oh Dang. Oh, that's it em. I do have to say. That's your time. Reflecting on it, it really shouldn't be allowed to have cute snuggly ears if you are a man eater. I know I just want to be like no you got a boogle buddy I could give you for your listeners. The scary noises I just made were accompanied with squishing of cheeks. Yes, OK. All right, Arlie, it's you. OK, let me know when to start. You start right now, 3 seconds ago. Well, I watched the last half of Bridgeton last night and it was so good. I it broke through the Zoloft. I love. I know I talked about this the last time that we talked about Bridgeton, but I love Agatha in Charlotte and Agatha in Violet to them being friends and just, I just love it. And then I think about Samantha. Earlier you said something about Queen Charlotte, like that she was annoying or something. What did you say? I don't remember. Oh, I think I said she was kind of AB word. Oh, she is kind of a word. Charlotte is. But then I was like, I was like, to be fair, her life is kind of sad, like. 10 seconds. Rap her out, girl. Well, this Queen Charlotte should have been able to have a choice whether she should be a handyman or not. That's what I'm saying. And whether she should have been royalty or not, I feel like that's kind of a human rights violation. I wonder how much of the story that was put out in the Queen Charlotte season, which is like the prequel. I wonder how much of that is true. Not obviously they're trying to go over the wall story, but did she get forced to come and marry the king and didn't want to? And did they actually fall in love? And. I don't know. I'm not going to find out whether it's true or not. Yeah, it's kind of like how with the show Rain that I loved, I looked up what happened in real life and it was not fun. Yeah, we really don't know how the need to know how the sausage gets made. Yeah. And also it breaks the delusion if I see like pictures of Bridgeton cast like. Oh, I'm fine. With that housing and stuff, I'm like, they don't exist outside of the show. That's all I can accept. Onto your topic. You said you didn't have. I don't have a topic. I have a topic. OK, what is it? I would like you to tell us your favorite pasta noodle shape and why. I know this. You think you do, but I don't even know my favorite pasta noodle. Shape. Do you want me to give you some? I never bet a noodle I did not like. What about bow tie? I know your feet. Not bow tie. Cavatappies you. Cavatappies for the wind. I forgot about Cavatappi. Oh it's so good. It's like so much noodle and it doesn't get mushy because of the way it's made. I suppose you could boil it long enough to get mushy, but some of them like like elbow noodles will get mushy real fast. But cavatappi is a little hardier than that and you get so much like either sauce or cheese on it when you eat it. It's super yummy. And yes, it's also really good in pasta salad. Oh yeah, the only bad thing about Cavatappi is that it hides boiling water in it. All noodles are guilty of that, Hong Kong. Did you like your topic I chose? That was a good topic. It delights. Me, I knew that right away. You're like, I don't know. And. I might have a topic. We're like, we need to get on topic. I'll think of 40 things to say. But if it's like now you have a set aside time for it. I'm like, I have nothing in my brain. OK friends, we are done with our off topic, but we had a very big week this week. It was so. Fun. Goodness. I'm going to give the two bullet points and then you guys can find out who gets to talk about it first. But this week we were on New Day Cleveland, which is a regional morning show. Samantha kicked ass and took names. She is great on TV and Arlie did her first class ever, our first class ever, but specifically Arlie's time to shine. She did it for the Girl Scouts so you guys can fight about who talks about you. I want to hear you talk about Girl Scouts. Well, we oh, it's so fun. I've been wanting to get in with the Girl Scouts for a while because a lot of their mission to educate and get young women and girls like independence and like autonomy and. Entrepreneurial skills. Yeah, they have like so many tracks for women and I don't know like a whole bunch about the organization, but I know that they stand for a lot of really great things and a lot of similar things that we do. And I also used to, sorry guys, I might sniffle a little bit. I've been congested today. Anyway, So the one of the thing, like I used to work at a summer camp and I loved working with kids and I loved like working in my groups and like introducing kids to like new things and having them try hard things. And it's so much easier to be like adventurous and brave when you're a kid then it is when you're older. And if we stardom young, then like there's a confidence inside of them that maybe stays a little bit more alive as they get older and things get harder and stuff. But we, I went to a client's house and I was talking to her about how we're doing the podcast and how I want we wanted to do in person classes. And she was like, I have a Girl Scouts troop And I was like, no, I was like, I've been trying to get in. And so then she was like, I have times available. Like next. It was like, I think this was in December or something. So it, you know, she was like next year. And so we set up a little time and then I decided we would make tool boxes. Everything was like pre cut and yeah, 10 year olds and miters so. Yeah, gotta be age appropriate, yeah. Maybe if like their parent, like every kid had their parents permission and their parents there, yeah, maybe we could tackle some of that stuff. But. And plus we only had an hour with them. Yeah. So it's hard to go over all those things in just an hour, but then we got like little goodies. We got little measuring tape and put our logo on them and we got little children's safety. Glasses, My God, they were so so. Cute. And we had a lot of fun. A lot. All of them learned how to use a drill and all of, I think almost all of them were using it independently with very little help. By the end they learned how to use a drill and a driver. So they learned what pre drilling was, what countersinking was, and how to screw in and unscrew like what screws. Our girls were really good at countersinking. They were, yeah. Yeah, they a lot of them did really good. There was a couple of like pieces of wood that got cracked, literally murdered. Yeah. But you know what, like that's happened to us before. And it is, it's a really good considering there was probably only three girls that had cracked boards, maybe 4. But it was better for them to experience that and know what could go wrong in a sync environment than doing yeah. And I'm glad that I had them countersink because I was like, this is kind of a lot, but mine cracked slightly and I was being really careful. Yeah. And then so I did the next when I was putting together like my sample box, I, I was able to do the countersanging. That helped a lot. So I'm glad that I went with that, even though I thought maybe this is a little ambitious, but I'm glad that I did that. It was so easy. It was so easy to put together. We needed like 12 screws, a little bit of wood glue, a dowel, and like, I don't know, was it like 2 feet? Per kid of. Primed wood You use any kind of wood, really. Oh my God. And then Arlie got them little tiny paint cans. Oh yeah, there's. They're the exact same shape as a as like a giant as a normal paint can, just little like. They have the same lid, the same like proportions, only they're tiny. Imagine if they had tiny little handles. Yeah, that would have been really cute. Yeah, they're smaller than like those little mini buckets that you get from Lowe's and Menards and stuff, which are my favorite buckets. They're. Kind of a little bit smaller than like a milk carton in a school cafeteria. Yeah, yeah. They're like a pudding cup basically. Yeah, they and then we put our sticker on them and then we found some we get a lot of. I mean, first of all, we're addicted to estate sales, yes. So we have 5000. We're like. We'll take all of those. Screwdrivers. Yeah. So we had, there was enough pairs of Flathead and Phillips head screwdrivers to give each of them a pair. And then we got, but we get small wrenches and like the flat wrenches and a lot of things that we assemble, we assemble. And the levels come with those two. Yeah, the baby levels, we gave them wrenches and then we gave them these little tiny levels. So we've been hoarding for a reason, yeah. Yeah, we have. Productive hoarding. Now and I had so much fun. It seemed like a lot of the girls had fun. I offered them all jobs. Most of, well, one of the girls was like, I want to stay in school. I don't want to quit my job and go to work. And I was like, I just have to do a job. Then another one was like, OK, yeah, she's like, I'll be a handy man. I'll tell my mom. Yeah, I don't go to school. Where are my 2 takeaways from Girl Scouts? That you're a phenomenal teacher and that you absolutely killed it. And I meant to do this and I'm not going to keep talking because I nearly start crying. And then #2 that snacks are really important to 10 year old girls. I got to say, snacks are important to every age. OK, but I remembered to put the snacks out and I didn't quite know how important they would be. They were extremely. They yeah, I'm glad that you remembered because I had forgotten. I had. I think I'm probably would have been bummed if I had forgotten, but the 2 gallons? Went over, had 6 bags at you. She was like and I was kind of like, not my circus, not my monkey. I was like. Are we really like if they were like 5 year olds, we maybe should have been like, Are you sure? Maybe you should ask your mom. But they're 10 years old. They understand. What they're doing I am sad though. I don't know why I did this but I put our last two bags of Cheez its out and I shouldn't have done that. Pom pom. So the shops try to cheese its. I couldn't remedy that. It was really fun and a lot of the girls seemed really happy. And yeah, I'm excited to do another one and I'm excited to move on to adults because a lot of the moms seemed really excited about doing in person classes. And I, I love it because Girl Scouts sign up to kind of learn a whole bunch of different things. So it's kind of a perfect first group to try that on. But also what we're doing is a skill that is useful to anybody, and it is knowledge and practice that will never go to waste, so I feel really good about it. You did a phenomenal job. And if you have any Girl Scouts, any Girl Scout troops within, I don't know, 30 minutes to an hour of here and you want us to come teach? Let us know. Let us know HTHM at my handyman.com to pitch your group to us. Yeah. And it's a great it's a great like trial run for our first like grown human one. Can we tell people that we're having them? I just. Did we can If you want to sign up, go to We now have a site friends the best. Thing you can do is. So much has happened. Oh my gosh, it has. Emily to talk handyman at dot com used to lead to our construction website with a page but. Now. Now. Our community has its own home, that's right. But. I was saying that because we should talk about. Juicy. Good stuff. Go. Check out the website, it'll get better in the future. It's perfectly. There's a skills library. Yeah. But anyways, I'm saying it that you can go to our website, sign up for a newsletter because we do have some tentative plans. We have some tentative dates. No, they're concrete, but we don't quite know the location. But we do know Lansing and we do know the three dates. But if you want to know about events. If you join the community, the community will get the early registration access. Yeah. And you can join the community by going to how to handymam.com. And then there's a button that says join the community and you just have to give us your e-mail address and then you will get notified first. And when you're on our e-mail list, you get lovely emails twice a week from Arley and you'll start getting emails from Samantha. But that's where you're going to hear about stuff first. Yeah. So when we eventually have merge, we just have lots of exciting stuff, but I think our last exciting topic before we get to our main topic of the day is New Day Cleveland. New day, Cleveland, yes. So our initial focus has been in the Midwest because it's, you know, within driving distance for us. We're Midwest. Gals born. In Midwest gals, yeah, but we love everybody else too. But for practicality reasons. Oh. Oh. That's a whole nother issue. Oh, we just. The episode that we just dropped today talked about Midwest hellos instead of Midwest goodbyes. Which is this kind of a little baby version of a Midwest hello. But we went on New Day Cleveland. So we have been reaching out in the Midwest because it's if people don't know you exist, then they can't join the community and take advantage of everything that we are working to offer. So we are trying to start in the Midwest and if any TV stations are interested in doing segments, then we will go there and do that. And we were able to show people the segment was how to paint like a professional in your own home. And we gave three really cool, really basic tips about how to not leave the fuzzies that are on your roller cover on your walls, and how to cock so that your trim looks amazing. And then how to cut a clean line without using painters tape? Welcome back. This one's for the ladies. Although I do think there are men who could learn from this too. I for one am very excited about this because I need some lessons and what she's about to throw down. Specifically the ladies who own their homes. And maybe you've been told, oh, call someone when things go wrong. You don't want to mess with anything. No. Here to teach us how to use those tools safely and make smart repair decisions and maybe make those repairs ourselves is Samantha Pearl from how to Handy, ma'am. I love it. I love the final words. It's so good to see you. Thanks. She drove from Michigan to be here today. Women everywhere need to know how to take care of their own homes. I love this. So you are the majority of your business is female. Yes, yes. Which is amazing. And I have always said I want to take a class. I want to learn how to do this, and then I just don't do it. But you and your team teach online classes so we can learn from you. We do here. We don't have to go to Michigan. That's right. Oh yes. So cute. It was very exciting and the people at New Day Cleveland were so. Mackenzie was the producer we reached out to and we're already scheduled to go. Back go back in May. Yeah, we're excited, but it was our first lot. Like we've done a number of stories before and my previous life running a free clinic did a few news stories, a few video news stories, but none of them were live. So this was our first live experience and we didn't quite know what to expect. But Mackenzie made it super easy. She made it super easy for us and it was really cool. Natalie was the host we were working with. She was delightful. She was amazing. She was amazing. And the world is so small. So we have a construction company called My Handyman and we're fixing someone's mailbox this week. Today, today, today. And she goes, no way. You were just on New Day Cleveland. My brother-in-law is a host. And we're like. He's Natalie's Co host of New Day Cleveland. What? Who just happened to be on vacation the week that we weren't. But it was like, what the how? Is that even possible? Such a small. World so if your brother-in-law is the Co host of a morning show and would like. A family, yeah. Yeah, I just. Know also I do want to say shout out to the ladies over there because they have a 5 producers and they're all women and it was such a great experience. We went in there and we were like welcomed. It wasn't really intimidating. It was super nice. It made it so. Easy. The control room, Yeah. They invited us back and chit chatted with us. And watching Mackenzie, we should have Mackenzie on the podcast sometime because watching her do her thing was like watching Tony Stark in Iron Man, like do his like stuff where he's stuffing. You know, I said. Not my circus, not my monkey. That is literally her circus. Yeah, that's her circus in her mind, and she's amazing. I know she was killing it. She's like mid conversation 2 minutes ago and then we did this and this and this 30 seconds. Let me just pull that up. I. Was like how are you talking to us and keeping track of this? Cuz I'm like. She's got us in her ears and them in her ears and talking to us and talking to them. I don't. Know. And she was like, sorry to us. We're like, excuse me, that's your job. Yeah, I was like, I'm like, sorry, sorry, sorry that we're here. Yeah. It was an amazing experience. Really nice and it's just so great to see other communities of mostly females taking over little areas and there was. Performing at a really high level. But it's nice to know that there's other pockets of women being supportive of over there women out there. And that's what we're here for in and they're being handy mams in their own way. And theirs is on the on the TV Internet area, whatever you call it. How old are you? I am. Harley is a 24 year old Luddite. Yeah, I am. But they're out there on the universe waves, sounds and radio, and they're just women supporting. There's women supporting women. It's just amazing to see. Yeah. And you know what, If you guys are listening and you are part of a little community like that, you should like, comment somewhere or let us know. We can give you a little shout out because that's special to us. We know how special. Tell us. About your little communities of awesome women. Yeah, you're mini cult. Yeah. And also we should thank you guys because you guys have been watching us and supporting us and hyping up our numbers. And that's how we're getting far, you know, like getting you guys to listen and be supportive. And then we're getting opportunities elsewhere because people see that there is a void in education for women in this area and we're trying to fill it. And you guys are helping by just listening. And the single best way to help us is to rate, review and subscribe to the podcast specifically, but also follow us on every platform we're on, which is many. So we just, the more you interact with us, the more people our content gets showed to. So it might feel like you're just one like or one comment, but it's. It makes it. Really important. It really does. Plus we literally see every single one. Yeah, we. Do yeah, We talk about every single one too. We get excited. Well, and we celebrate comment we make one of. You sorry, we celebrate every like edition of two subscribers on this platform and five subscribers on this platform because it all adds up. Like as of today, our numbers have like 6002, 100 and some community members. Basically, if you look at the subscribers and the followers in the e-mail list, we put that all together, which is pretty remarkable. Yeah, it is. I wanted to say something that I immediately forgot. Oh, oh, oh, I can't remember. Darn it. I don't know. I don't know what it was. Oh, I remember now. OK, So I just wanted to remind everybody, if you haven't listened to every single episode, which probably most of you have not if you're just finding it that the reason we started this podcast is because it has a purpose. And the purpose is to build the community large enough that we can attract partners that can help us deliver in person education. So the vision, all, all of the things that we're doing is in service of the vision, which is to deliver in person education to women so. We're thinking about that. Do you have a question before we do P Break? Also have a question. Yes, I do. OK, so we're gonna take a listener. Let me answer this as briefly as we can. Yeah, OK, let me pick a simple one we're working on. It What's the best way to repair drywall paper that was torn by a three M strip? Sorry, I was having war flashbacks. For a second to. My. College dorm. So I would say is it, I'm assuming they're referring to the paint part has come off of the wall and you see like the brown paper. OK, So this is what I would do. I would take primer and if you don't have access to primer because maybe it's just a little spot in apartment or something and you don't want a whole like can of primer first of all. Well, I guess you could borrow something from body and they also have like smaller quart size cans, but you could probably take any kind of paint and paint over that area. And what the purpose of that is to kind of create like a layer of like? Seal protection. Seal that paper. Of that paper, because if you put like drywall mud or spackle over that brown paper, it's not sealed at all. So it's gonna like kind of get like how if you leave like a tea bag on what on like a piece of paper, it gets kind of wrinkly. That's what that paper does unless you seal it first. So you could use like modge podge or I mean you could really use anything to seal it. Nail Polish I guess small. Yeah, small. I'm assuming like a command strip size area. You can definitely do that. Like a little rectangle. And then you can put mud on it. You could put spackle. It's not going to work out as well long term as mud wood because it's better for like those shallow areas. And then you can just sand it and paint right over it. Prime first. But if you don't have primary, well, we know, yeah, you just do your best. But. Yeah. So I think that's that's a great approach. OK, so. Today. We, you already know because you saw the episode announcement and the episode title and the beginning where we talk about it, but we are talking about what to expect when you're expecting a project. We're pregnant with a project. We're pregnant with a project, so if we're doing our job correctly, we have probably inspired you to think about tackling your own home projects. And the first thing I would say is tackle something small, like fixing your door lock or adjusting one of your cabinet doors or something like that. Something that's small that'll take like maybe an hour. OK. But let's talk about what to expect when you're expecting a sizable project. So something that might take an entire day or maybe multiple days or maybe. Yeah, but anything, anything a little bit bigger. So I have a couple of questions for you guys. All right. We're ready to kind of. Is it a game? Can I beat Emily? No, it's more of just like interview questions all. Right. Sorry one. Of my clients is calling me All right OK, So what is what would you guys say is the difference between doing a project yourself and what to expect when you're having a project done by a? Pro, I think having a project done by a Pro is about asking the right questions and making sure that they communicate back to you both the spirit and the scope of the project so they understand like this is how I want to feel when the project is done and these are the specific things that we expect to be included. I think that's what's the first there. Obviously there are lots of steps. That's the first step. I think when you're doing it yourself, the important thing to understand is just even just on paper, like before you go any further, what's the project going to require in terms of human resources, financial resources, equipment resources and materials resources? Because then you can evaluate before you put anything into it. Like if you go out and buy beautiful tile and then start planning your project, you might be like, yeah, turns out this is hard, you know? But I think if you think about it ahead of time and you make a list of the things that you'll need to put into the project, then you'll know going. You'll know yes or no. And if the answer is yes, you'll know going in kind of what to expect. I. Loved the answer you gave on New Date Cleveland this week. Natalie, the host, asked Samantha. How should we know when to call a professional? Or when to do it ourselves? My answer was if you cannot live with the potential consequences of doing it yourself. That's a great answer. So like I do minor electrical in my house, I swap light switches and light fixtures. I don't really touch outlets. Might eventually, but because the potential risk is lighting my house on fire, I'm not really comfortable with these consequences. So it's kind of like what you decide if you're gonna do plumbing and the consequences are flooding and you're like, well, that sucks, but I can handle it. Go for it. Yeah, yeah. And I think for some people it's important to know yourself because for me, I like, I like things to look beautiful, but they don't have to be perfect. That doesn't diminish my enjoyment. But there are people who know themselves well enough to know that if something isn't like pretty darn near perfect, it will bother them. So if you are that kind of person and you know that you're unlikely to be able to deliver those kinds of results, and then you'll have still have spent the money and the time and the emotional investment and not be happy with it. That's just something to think about as you make your decision and certainly something to think about. Really be carefully before you hire somebody else. Yeah, yeah. And another thing maybe to think about is the, there's a kind of a, a time difference when you hire somebody else to do it. Some, I mean depending on the person, but like you get it done when like you are probably out working, you know? You get, well, there's a defined start, middle and end. Yes, you'll know it's going to end where sometimes when you take on projects yourself, it's like you'll get to it when you get to it, which could sometimes be never, but. Then there's also the upside of not having to like be home when when these are in your house, if you know you want to be there, if you're doing it yourself, you don't have to worry about that. So those are kind of things to think about. OK, So what is our first steps when we are like, OK, we're going to take on this project, What's the first steps that we take? Samantha grabs a legal pet. That's valid. She 100%. She grabs 5 legal pads because she needs all. I go through more legal pads than anybody I've ever met. I think it's important to know for us that first step happens before the customer even accepts the job, because as part of estimating for a customer, because the a lot of the projects that we do have multiple steps in moving parts, it's important for us to understand what those steps are in order to accurately give a cost. And So what we do before, like in prepping the estimate, so before we even start the project is to know what, and I'm, I'm a very linear person. So I'm like, what is the very first thing I'm going to have to do? So if it's like you're, you know, putting new tile for a backsplash, I'm thinking about how am I getting the old backsplash off, you know, and what kind, What do I need to protect the kitchen? What am I going to have to take something to the dump? Or is it enough that it can, you know, a small enough amount it can fit in our dumpster and, you know, just all of those kinds of things. How do I get out of the house without making the pathway out dirty depending on what it is? So all of those steps go into US deciding how much time a project is going to take. And so I think, yeah, that's the first step really is for us to understand, I guess to turn it around for us to understand both the spirit and the scope of the project. So we we are very good at what we do. We are not perfect. So there are sometimes when we meet with a customer and we understand that they're what they're really looking for is perfection. And maybe there are humans out there that can deliver that, but that's not us. We're pretty normal humans. And so in that case, we're probably just not the right contractor for somebody. So yeah, I think for us, understanding the spirit and the scope of the projects that accurately captures what the customer wants. And what if those promises are kept? We'll leave them delighted in the end. And then writing out every single step of the project in a linear fashion. That's for me. How about for you, Emily? I'd say I'm gonna do it from the homeowners perspective. So if I'm doing a project at my house, I'm gonna start by making a list like I do for estimating. But I need to build another garden box this summer, so I'm gonna write out the steps and the steps allow me to then to start planning materials time, how long I think. But it's also kind of like that research stage. So if you start with planning before you've bought anything and you get to like learning how to do it and the steps and you're like. Yeah, I'm stuck. Here, then you can start doing one of two things, deciding not to take on the project, just I guess one of three things, decided not to take on the project, not to like learn how to do that part you don't know how to do or three, find someone who can either do the whole project or that part of the project. And so I think really like it doesn't have to be formal, especially for homeowners, but like if you're doing a backsplash, if you don't already have a backsplash, you're good, you're golden. You can kind of just throw. Tile up on the wall. If you already have a backsplash, you need to think about what is the current backsplash material. Is it wallpaper or beadboard? Like could I just pry this off the wall and have generally good enough walls for tiling? Or do I need to remove tile? Off my wall. Which is then like kind of a bigger deal and understanding then what could happen when you start doing that. Like some tile you can pry off the wall and the drywall looks fine underneath. Some tile it will literally take the drywall with it whether it wants. To or not, so I like to. I do like thinking linearly and I think it helps. You know at this step I need this tool, I don't have that tool. How much is that tool? What do I need to do for it at this step? I need this material. And how much does that cost? And just looking at it that way, before you start the project, if you've never done the project before, like stuff like painting, if you're familiar with painting and you have a can of paint in your basement, just go ahead and paint whatever you want to paint. You don't really need to, like, do a whole process. But this is really like a backsplash, a floor project, a Borge project, Yeah. You want to swap out your ugly baseboards for nice looking baseboards. Yeah. So I just really, I do think of it linearly even as a homeowner and stuff. And then you can kind of spot the pitfalls. Prior to doing, and I think for a homeowner too, if you haven't tackled the project before, you might not have realized actually how many tools and how many materials go into doing how much. Materials might be because the first time I used muscle bound, I was like, this is so cool, it's so simple, whatever. And I was shook. Yeah, $200 worth of muscle bound later. I know it's incredible amount for muscle bound and I say that which is a tile adhesive mat. Yes, we do have some videos about it on our website and on our social media. If you want to look to look and see what muscle bound is, but it is like totally worth it. I think absolutely I would have been. Shocked you don't want to be. Surprised. I was shocked when, and I was buying it, you know, with the company card and I was still like, whoa, I was like $40.00 for a roll of it and it's like 15. Square feet or. Less. Yeah. Well, and I think especially like a lot of times there's like pretty cool materials at the Habitat Restores. So somebody might go in and fall in love with a tile, for example, because they'll people donate like excess tile from a job there and then they bring it home and they're like, I'm gonna tile. And then thinking I got this cheap tile. And then by the time they're done with like either muscle bound or mortar and then grout and then caulk and then renting a tile saw, you know? Tile Saw buying a tile snapper. Yeah, don't. They don't. They might not realize that you're like $15 tile just turned into a $500 job, which might still be manageable, but it's good to know ahead of time so you have the choice. Once you start something, it's harder to say no. You're kind of stuck on a lot of projects. So it's good to know ahead of time if you have the time and the money and the emotional stability to take on the project. That's an important. One, yeah, we might get to it. You might have this in your notes. But if you're going to do projects at home, what to expect? When you're expecting a project, you can expect something to go wrong. I do have it in here. Yeah. I mean, let's go to that one, right? Let's do it. Yeah. OK. So how to keep going when things get hard? Because there are times when you get overwhelmed or you're finding problems or you start to get discouraged. And this happens a lot. It happens to us. And we're, we do this stuff every day, but there's almost never going to be a project that you don't encounter problems because we don't know what happened when people were building this room or building this thing. Maybe they didn't have the right materials that day. Maybe they didn't know what they were. Doing. Maybe they were. On drugs, Yeah, maybe they were on drugs. Maybe they were incredibly pregnant and finishing stuff up right before the baby got there. Yeah, you never. Know maybe they have experience. With that, yes, ask me how I know. So but on days when either, you know, you have to work on something, even though it's in like me, you might relate to this more. I mean, maybe you too. But when you're doing stuff in your own home and you're like, oh, I just got done working like, and this thing is hard to do, how do you breakthrough that thing? Cuz we talked before about how the hardest part of DIY is the last 10%. How do we get them? How do you get yourself the rest of the way? I'll cry a little bit. It's OK. I agree with that. I agree with that. Sometimes you just like I am not like a timer, but I almost allow myself to grieve and to be upset for a moment. Yeah. And then I'm like, OK, now problem solving mode, like I just have to like acknowledge the suck and then I move forward. So I think that's a good thing. But also utilizing the resources you have. Call a friend who might know. Ask us, send us an e-mail. But also my thing, I love A to do list. I'm very type B, but I love A to do list. So even if I already have one whenever and I worked in the field, she would be like, why do you have 17 To Do List right across the table? But every time I'd get to a problem, I'd be like, OK, well, I can think through it on paper and I'll feel better. And so then I just started breaking down the steps. Like tiny, like cut one of a room, cut 2 of a room one of a room, roll 2. Of a room, cross things off. Start getting kind of dopamine hits as you cross stuff off and that's the best way for me to push through the process there's. Also kind of a, there's a nice thing about A to do list, which actually we are going to talk about To Do List a little bit more. There is something nice about A to do list if you like. Cuz there's sometimes where I come to a job and I'm overwhelmed and I look at my To Do List and I'm like, this is an easy thing that I can get out of the way. Yeah, Yep. And some days I'm like, I'm ready to get into it. I I feel energetic and I feel ready for it and I tackle something big and maybe something I've been dreading. And so if you come home after a long day and you're like, I really should do something on it, Maybe you look over your To Do List and see what you are capable of doing that day. And if you're not capable of doing an entire thing on the checklist, maybe break that thing into little or parts and complete once one part of it. Maybe one day all you have like left in your tank is just to remove the outlet covers so that the next time that you're in that room, you can cut, you know, Yep, cut the room and and paint it. But then you have a tiny bit of it done, you know, maybe, maybe that's all you have room for in that day. That's fine. I agree with what both of you are saying, so I won't repeat what you're saying, but couple additional things. First of all, I try to identify is the problem that I don't know how to do the next step or that I am fatigued and overwhelmed because there's a different answer for that. So if I've got some energy left but I'm frustrated because I don't know how to do it, I'm going to look for. I'm going to look to turn to my resources if I'm overwhelmed or fatigued or it just seems like too much. Or hungry. Yeah, sometimes for me, a snack actually is the thing and you're like. Everything's. Great now, but I wanted to say that there will be some days when the right thing to do is to clean up and walk away and that's. A hard thing to learn, I got to say. It is and you will recognize it because the you will continue to work harder and get less and less return for for your work. And there are just sometimes we're human. So there are times you're trying to, you want so bad to get it done and then clean up. And then like tomorrow you'll won't have to do it again. But then you start, we have this with tiling a lot where we start making poor cuts and you're like, I will try it again. And then you like cut it wrong five times. And you're like, you know what? I think we're done for today. Yeah. So you start to think like it, Like it's not what I wanted, but like it, it's not. Right, Right. But if you're asking yourself that and it's really close to the end of the day, or you've been working on it for a while, that might be a timeline. It's time to yeah. And it's not like, oh, I failed. It's like, no, you successfully identified when it was time to take a break. And I think that's part of being good at finishing DIY or just, you know, construction or, or design projects. Burn out, then you're not going to finish it, No. Then it like when a project's hanging over your head like that, it just feels kind of. Yucky well, and imagine this you've spent four weeks like prepping and getting ready and doing your tile in like the first three weekends you, you know, you did like 1/4 of the job each time and the tiles are like chefs kiss perfect and they look beautiful. And then you have one more weekend and then like you don't know when you're going to have time next. And so you're like you're just going to finish it like no matter whatever, I'm just going to finish it. And then you're going to spend five years looking looking at that last 25% and like hating it because you're wishing you had taken more time. So I think it's important to recognize when you no longer really have the energy or like you're not fresh mentally and it's just time to take a break and that's OK. It's easier to take longer to do it the first time than do it a second. Oh, a lot easier and cheaper. Oh yeah, yeah, that's true. What's next on our list? OK. So well we talked about, well, we'll get back to to do lists, but I want to know what do you think might surprise our listeners about taking on a project yourself? What aspects do you think would surprise you or surprise them? You will go to the store a lot more than you think you will. Oh, yeah. It doesn't matter how well you plan ahead. And my brother Lou knew how to do so many things and he would help us with projects. And it would be like, how many times are we gonna go to Menards and Lowe's? Like I feel like there are like 12 receipts for this job. And I'd be like, something is wrong here. And then. And I was like, well I must know somethings wrong, you know? And then I start doing this for a living and I'm like, oh. Some of it can be mitigated by by the like planning, but sometimes you you just gotta go get it. Yeah, I. Mean you cannot plan for what is on the inside of a wall that you have not seen that's true, or haven't touched or smelled or. You might experience shut off valves work perfectly fine and then you go to try to turn off. You think you're just changing a faucet, but instead you're changing a faucet and you're shut off valves. Yeah, how do I I install a valve on pecks? Oh shit. With pecks you need. And then you gotta go to the store and buy all the pecks. Yeah. And then it's like I need a stiffener inside the table we. Seriously just did this like. Three weeks ago, it's like, I, I need a valve that does this, huh? Like, yeah. And then you're like, oh, I need Then you get home and you're like, all right, I have everything. And then you start watching the pecks video again and it's like you need a PEC specific crimper. Like you didn't tell me that you should probably have to be getting in that video. I can tell. You a funny story related to that. I won't let it. It is work related Thomas. I won't let it go too long, but I bought when we were first starting. I didn't even know about about battery powered tools, which is so dumb in retrospect. I just not dumb. It's just I thought they were like manual plug in or they were pneumatic. That's what I thought. Nobody, nobody disabused me of this notion. I went to the local hardware store and I'm like, I need like, I need some power tools and I'm like, so I got a nailer, A pneumatic nailer, and then went home and didn't know I needed a compressor. To provide. The air to my pneumatic nailer and then so I go back to the hardware store and I go buy this like little pancake compressor. And then I come home and I'm like, I have it. And then I open the box and I'm like, there aren't any hoses here. And I go back to the hardware store and they're like, we have to buy the hoses. I'm like nobody told me. Yeah. And it seems dumb now, but just a great example of how you don't always know. You don't know why you're going to end up at the store a bunch of times, but just know that it's pretty normal. I have a quick one too. So I think handy maiming it kind of you start to involve a lot. So for high school, high school, college graduation, my husband Lucas got me a record player because I had one that sounded like my records were being played underwater. So all the record players had before have built in speakers and you might now be able to tell where this story is going. But we get this record player out-of-the-box and I'm so excited and we're like it needs speakers. So then cuz I got married at a child right age and so then. Stop saying that. I think it's so funny. I got married at 22. It's fine. But, and so then for our wedding present, my lovely father-in-law got us a sound bar and then speakers for my record player because Lucas is like, well, we don't have this. OK, so we take these out-of-the-box and we're like, oh shit, we don't have speaker wire. It's your compressor story. It's my compressor story. OK. It still goes on though, unfortunately. So we, we lived in an hour, worth the time. We walked down the little hardware store and we get speaker wire perfect. We come back, we needed a transmitter to transmit the speaker wire to like from the record to the transmitter to to Daisy chain the speakers. Oh my goodness. So it's like then. We're like, now we have to get a transmitter and so then we like go to hook it up and then we have the wrong speaker wire, so we had to go. Get that? Speaker wire again and then we're like, we don't have wire cutters, so we had to go to the store again to get wire cutters. Needless to say, we figured it out. It was a great test of an early marriage and and now I have a working record player that we've since added speakers to and you know what? We hear this story and we laugh about it because we're not like, well, we were learning and we're not mad at ourselves, no. Or like, demeaning ourselves. And you need to make sure you don't let anybody else do that to you too. Because if you have to go to the store 6 times because you don't know that compressors need hoses, well, when you're done with that sixth trip, you'll know. Yeah, well. And it was just like, those stories are always so funny because you're like. And then you're like, we're done. And then you go home and you're like, Nope, in fact, we are not done. Nope. So you have to be willing to weather those. But honestly, we laugh so we don't cry. Yeah. So it works. And if you cry, you can laugh while you're crying. And that works too. Yeah. I I think it is maybe important to look for maybe some outside encouragement and we can encourage you are a little bit discouraged. Because sometimes it's hard to keep going when your project is like you're always finding difficulties or you almost keep finishing, but you're not finishing and it looks great, but it's still not done. And like, I just had a project like this and I loved it. It looks so beautiful, but like I wanted everything to look so nice. And I love this client so much. And we have such a good relationship with her that I wanted to make sure that everything was perfect. And so it went longer than it was supposed to. And it was hard because I knew that we needed to move on to other projects and like every day that I want there that I was like, I can finish. I couldn't it but it you know, like maybe earlier in it's not. Me. No, it's me. Sorry. My phone keeps continually, like, repeatedly buzzing. I apologize. But. I finally finished. Stopping at the end of the day instead of keeping going because I did have to make a decision whether I was going to keep going and pushing through while I was hungry and tired and getting like a lot of overtime. And I was frustrated because I still wasn't finishing and I still have work to do. Like I could have finished maybe in that first day, but it would not have been the same the product and. The quality may have the little tiny details. Yeah, yeah. And so it was worth it to take that extra time. And a lot of the projects that I look back at that we were there for too long. They are so beautiful. And it's like, of course, this took extra time and I'm glad that we spent the extra time to do it because it's permanent and now it's. Beautiful. And it's gonna be perfect forever. Yeah, but one beautiful thing about DIY. So something some people don't seem to know this which is totally fine about construction and hiring someone friends. Labor is the most expensive part and I will keep saying that for another human being to spend their precious time on this earth doing something at your house is going to cost more money than if you were to do it. It's not materials plus $5.00 an hour. It's materials plus whatever the day rate is or day rate, hourly rate we bid by the project. So labor is going to be a lot of money. And so if you think once you start making your project more complicated, if you want this really high level of craftsmanship, if you want like non painted wood shrimps, you want this beautifully carpentry with like coked corn corners and like you want like Cheerio halfway up the wall, 3/4 up the wall, then you want crown molding. You, if you learn how to do it, can get a very high level of craftsmanship and you can trim out your house beautifully, add extra embellishments, things like that. Maybe I don't love accent walls, but maybe you want to add an accent wall. It's much cheaper for you to paint on your own because painting's laborious. Once you Start learning to do those things yourself and you get better and you get more confident you can get, that's where the savings start to happen. You're also gonna realize that this people that do this for a living. Definitely require the amount of money that they charge and it's hard sometimes to understand that, but like you're not just paying for their time, but you're also probably paying like to help keep their insurance to pay for their ladders. To pay for all the tools that they've invested in, for their experience and. They have to take off workshop employees. Exactly. There's a lot of stuff that goes into the project and it may be, I don't think always that people understand that because some people are pretty surprised and sometimes even offended when we give them our estimate and we are expensive. We we range mentally the cost. Is commensurate. Commensurate, whatever that word is. I. Don't even know. What we're doing with it, it aligns with what they're getting. So you, you can always find someone more expensive than us and you can always find someone cheaper than us. But for the experience that you get and the quality that you get and the warranty that you get on the work, like it's not expensive, it's the correct amount for the value you. Get This is a great tip for when you what to expect when you're expecting a project. Maybe before you have someone over for a quote, look up the price ranges of what something usually is because it can tell you like you may find someone under the average price range, like the Google AI will give you a price range. But it might be really helpful for you to start like kind of thinking about the range in which your project is going to be. Yeah. Because then you might decide it is worth it for me to buy this tool and learn it myself, or I want to add tile everywhere in my house so I might as well take the. Time pay once to get the skills, yeah. And then you can do it a lot, yeah. And hopefully we can be the ones who provide you the learning for those. Right? Yeah. OK, I have one more thing that I want to talk about and this is an important one and I learned this when I first started working here. But how do we make our to do lists so our To Do List and then also like our packing or materials list? Let's talk about that because we, I think all kind of have a little bit of a different approach to it. For me, I do it in a very linear fashion, as I mentioned before. So I'm going to have step one. And then the way I plan for is it every step, I'm identifying the tools and the materials that I need for that step. Because it's, you know, I could look at it 6 steps and be like, I'm going to need about, you know, whatever. But about doesn't help you with your project. You need to know. Like a painting project, you have to open the can so you know you need a can. Yeah, I think of it that way. I'm like, open the can, stir the can, pour it into a pan with a line. Or you know, I think that way about painting. For a second pan can. That's what I do. But yeah, I think understanding what you're going to need at each of those steps is the best way to know. And and if we're looking at budgeting while we're doing that project, also the cost at each of those steps. Yeah, that's how I do it. I'm kind of a chaos gremlin frequently, so Arlie's like. Yes, Yeah. Well, I respect the fact that you OK. It took me a long time to understand that I actually was not type A and I'm very type B. And I would deny that fact, which was in fact not helpful because I was trying to be something that I wasn't. And so I wasn't developing skills to get to a place I needed to be because I was trying to ignore the fact that I had this. This was the way that my brain worked and I wanted it to work a different way. So I was just struggling. But you figured out that you are a chaos gremlin and I am a chaos. Oh, I've. Known, I've met. From. Day one you. Found a way to work with it and I took a little bit longer to accept and get there, but I respect, yeah, I respect it, the. Reason I have 17 To Do List is because this is my process. So I would like to think that I occasionally have this gonna sound awful, but like how people with dementia have moments of lucidity, I have moments of type AI so. Wow, I'm so identifying with that. Yeah. So I have moments of clarity where I'm like, my brain thinks linearly and it's self-made Adderall somehow or something. But normally it is Jeremy Barry, me, if you watch a good place up in my brain. And there is possibly filing cabinets, but there's also a pile of papers taller than Mount Everest that I dig. In a bin and a reusable grocery. Bag with a fire happening across. The road, yeah. So that's welcome to the inside of my brain. It's a fun kind of scary place. But anyway, so I do a brain dump paper and I'm a paper and pen gal because chaos and pen to paper, good brain connection. So I do that. So when I first did all the projects, my house I brain dumped and then I went on my little brain dump and I numbered stuff. So I'd be like 10 things down that should actually be #1 So then I had another piece of paper. This sounds so ridiculous. Explaining. It but I had another piece of paper that then I start putting stuff in order and then I have another piece of paper where I start. So one of the projects would be like I need to paint this room before I do this flooring before I do this. And so now on my other piece of paper, it's the breakdown of the project. So cut 1, cut 2 prime patch, those kinds of things. Those are the nitty gritty. So I kind of have a three-step system. Then the 1st paper that was just chaos can go away. Now I have a work plan and then I have a daily To Do List is how I do Yeah, yeah. So that's how I wrangle the squirrels that live in my brain. I think I can probably sum up our episode, unless you have something else you want to talk about. Have just the way that I do it is I try to think linearly through my roject, but then there will be moments of clarity like you're talking about where I remember things and I. Immediately need to write it down. And then that will be like, like the lower half of my paper becomes chaos because it is things that I want to remember. Like sometimes I'll be like, you know what? I want to remember that when you we go to this place that I want to bring this thing because I saw this and I think it might be a little bit difficult. So let's bring this thing and it's not maybe in my normal sheet, but maybe I saw something in a picture before we went and then I have a little bit of chaos happening there. And then my To Do List, I usually don't make a materials list until I make my To Do List it. I can't always think of all the things that I need before I do that. And then sometimes my packing list or my materials list is a little bit chaotic because sometimes we go to places where like we don't really know what we're going to expect. So when we go to do plumbing, when we do sink and kitchen drains, I have developed this process where I bring the entire plumbing bag, the entire plumbing bucket and every other piece of plumbing equipment that we have. And then I go to the store and I buy at least one of everything. And then we return what we don't need because I have learned time and time again that I cannot successfully do drain plumbing with just the things that I will need because it's always oh, I need this, but like just a little bit longer. I need this thing, but but like I, you know, whatever it's the angle isn't right. So I just bring absolutely everything so that it's there. And that's, I mean, I don't put that on a list. It's just like I'm, I just write and I grab everything and I know I'm only going to use like 1% of it because I bring like a boatload of stuff. But I that's one of the things that I do. Sometimes. Then you're not going to have to run out multiple times. Yeah, which usually I do still, but you know, I at least I have a little bit of a plan. Well, I would. Just say to wrap it up, what to expect when you're expecting as you're making your plans. You need to plan for the person you are, not for the person you wish you were. Oh. That is great if you. If you're a person who cannot handle chaos in your home, you cannot start painting 5 rooms by cutting all 5 rooms in. You need to work on one room at a time. If you're someone that like doesn't like to do step one five times, you want to do all the step ones at the same time, then that's the way you need to plan your project. So again, just make sure you make your plans for your project knowing who you are and what works for you. I have one last OK, so I've said it before and I'll keep saying it. Time is going to pass no matter what you're doing. So if you're worried you don't have enough time for a project and your sister's great at this. She does a lot of projects after she. Does like micro sections micro sections? The time is going to pass whether you have 30 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day, 2 hours a day to do the project. But if you really want it done, just know that you have 15 minutes a day to work on it and just work the plan. We always like to say if you make the plan first, then you can do your doing without thinking. That's what you should do. So if the time's going to pass no matter what, when you have a nine to five, when you have an abnormal schedule, but if you just pick away a little bit at a time, even if it's half a percent a day. Eventually you'll get there. Eventually it'll get there. Well, I just want to close up by saying that you can do it. You can do it and it might be challenging and you might have to learn what kind of DIY are you are. Might take a little bit of figuring out about the best way for you to do it and maybe the thing that is hard for you is technique and not planning. For me, I find that I struggle with planning a little bit more sometimes and sometimes technique. Maybe I struggle with all of them and neither of them at the same time. But it's going to take a little bit of time. Have patience and grace with yourself and find a couple of people, like in our community or in your community at home or online or something that might be good cheerleaders to help you problem solve or just help, you know, you see, like, how far you've come. Take some more pictures. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. And hang in there. And you totally got it. And also, it's fine if you don't want to do it and you just want to hire somebody else to do it. Yep. Pinterest lies. Most of them don't show you how bad the clock lines are or how bad the paint cut is. Yeah, if it's from far away and you're like everyone's projects looks perfect with the right lighting. Yeah, but it doesn't need to be perfect to be beautiful. And most things that you're going to do yourself are relatively OK to redo if you mess up. Yep, that's it. You can redo cock, you can redo flooring, you can redo your walls. It's not always easy and sometimes it's a little bit expensive, but. As the mom of the group, I'm going to bring this Midwest goodbye to an end. All right. So thanks for joining us today. And you can find us at How to Handyman on most platforms. And don't forget to listen rate subscribe. And join the community. Don't know community All right. Thanks, lady. Bye. Bye.