DIY is More than just DIY

“You Did What This Past Weekend?!”

“You did what this past weekend?!” a coworker asked, eyes wide as we stood by the office kitchen on a Monday morning.

“Oh, just spent the weekend installing oak flooring in my friend’s home up in Ballard,” I replied casually, as if this was normal behavior.

Apparently, it wasn’t.

Back then, I didn’t think much of it — weekends were either for home DIY projects, heading into work, or spending money on food and alcohol. At least with DIY, I ended up with something to show for my effort (and fewer hangovers, more or less).

From Clean Hands to Calluses

The irony, of course, is that I’d never done a DIY project in my life. My dad was a car mechanic, but I was the kid indoors dismantling PCs, not engines. Anything involving dirt, dust, or power tools was “not my thing.”

Yet there I was — painting walls, jackhammering concrete, hanging drywall, installing plumbing fixtures — basically a YouTube tradesman before YouTube even existed. My soon-to-be best friend grew up doing this stuff, and I tagged along, armed with a Bing search bar and blind faith and enthusiasm.

We’d work from morning till night, taking breaks only when hunger (or beer) demanded it. It wasn’t just construction; it was a full-contact bonding ritual. No topics were off limits for two young men working on home improvement projects together.

The Great Chimney Incident

One Saturday stands out. I showed up at my friend’s place, climbed onto his roof, and was handed a hammer and chisel. My mission: remove the brick chimney.

I was the designated “muscle,” which was optimistic. After a few hits, the entire house started shaking. Eventually, a 40-pound chunk broke loose and slid down the roof, miraculously missing everyone and everything valuable.

We took the whole chimney down to the basement, patched the holes, and somehow installed a skylight that didn’t leak. (Still one of my proudest DIY moments.)

That project taught me two things: one, structural engineering can always be improved; and two, there’s no better feeling than building something with your own two hands—and surviving it.

Leveling Up

That early chaos led to bigger projects later. My backyard, for instance, started as a grassy, often wet wasteland. I wanted a patio, albeit a fairly large one. Simple idea, right?

Four hours into digging, I realized the previous developer had buried most of the current house’s leftover construction debris under the lawn. It was basically a fossil site made of concrete chunks with a thin layer of soil and grass.

Solution? Rent an excavator, a conveyor belt, and order 50 cubic yards of gravel. Add three couples, my wife, and a summer with zero rain. Every weekend from Memorial Day to Labor Day, we worked, sweated, swore, and barbecued our way to a finished patio.

Sure, it took a small army, but I probably saved tens of thousands of dollars doing an even better job than so called professionals. And we even got the drainage gradient right—no flooded basements, thank you very much.

Lessons From a Summer of Sweat

Those projects taught me a few surprisingly profound lessons:

Tangible beats theoretical.
Working with drywall and tile is the perfect antidote to staring at a computer all day. It’s messy, frustrating, and real.
Manual labor builds friendships.
You learn a lot about someone after 100 hours of problem-solving together—especially while covered in dust and sunburn. It’s the ultimate team-building exercise, plus morale events.
Production > Consumption.
Making something—anything—is infinitely more rewarding than another night of drinks or Netflix. You don’t have to always be productive, but swinging a hammer beats scrolling a screen any day.
Embrace mistakes (preferably small ones).
DIY teaches you humility. You’ll mess up, learn, fix, and repeat. Over time, you get better—not just at projects, but at life.

Looking back, maybe I’m romanticizing it. I’ve conveniently forgotten the sore muscles, blisters, and endless Home Depot runs. But those weekends taught me how to create, how to collaborate, and how to keep curious.

Every project left me a little stronger, a little wiser, and a lot dustier.

And honestly? I wouldn’t trade those crooked tiles or that “experimental” skylight for anything.

For #ELF#