Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Eight oh six thirteen ten WI b A Madison in
the morning and ask the experts. Brought to you by
Larsen Home Services Online Larsenhomeservices dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
That's l A R. S O N Home Services dot com.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Tellphen umber six so eight five three five forty three
forty three. That's five three five forty three forty three.
Join this morning by Andrew Larson from Larsen Home Services.
And Andrew, we're going to talk DIY versus hiring a professional.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Did I ever tell you my roofing story when I
was in high school?
Speaker 3 (00:31):
No, but I'd love to hear it.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
So, when I was in high school, a friend of
mine's dad bought a house down in I don't know,
somewhere in southern Wisconsin, beautiful home and thought him and
his buddies were just going to redo the roof on
their own. And I was a senior in high school.
You know, a strong young man. I'd be perfect to
help out. I'm like, yeah, I'd love to help out.
(00:53):
I'd love to assist. And uh, I didn't know this
about shingles, but shingles are super heavy and very heavy,
and they set the thing of shingles when they had
them delivered like and the driveway and then the ladder
to get up on the roof was on the others
is like a lake house, so it was like on
a hill. So I would go and I would grab
a thing of shingles, throw it over my shoulder, waddle
(01:16):
down the hill and then run as fast as I
could up a ladder with shingles and throw them up
on the roof. I did this a pallette worth and
I literally I have never been so tired in my life.
I like fell asleep, passed out, and the dudes Dad's like,
I don't think I'm gonna pay you.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
You slept Mostly.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I lways say this Andrew the most most miserable work
of my life. And I do, and I will add
this and this is this is absolute fact.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
No.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Two years later they had to have the roof freaked on. Now,
I did not put the roof on. I just delivered
the shingles.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
I can't be.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Helping getting rid of all killed here.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I am not my fault, not my.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yes, you know, on my list, and it's not just
because it's what we do on my list. Number one thing,
honestly is roofing. Yeah, and not that it's rocket science,
because it's not. But I always talk about critical details,
things getting done properly and honestly. It is one of
the hardest jobs I've ever done. You all you did
(02:20):
was haul the shingles up the ladder, yes, right, touch
anything else they can't when they can't do a roof
drop for us, I've seen the roofers put two and
three bundles on their shoulders at a time and sing
while they're going up the way. Oh my god, I
want to make you feel bad about yourself. But time
we do a roof drop where I crane it right
(02:41):
onto the roof.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
And that's why.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
But roofing is one of them. Real quick story. One
of my sales reps before he started working for us.
He lives over We have an office over in Rochester
and he lives outside of Rochester. They got some hail.
It's like, hey, I need a new roof. He calls
me up. I said, yes, we can take care of it.
He's the best, one of my good friends from high school.
I've known them almost my whole life. And I said, listen,
(03:04):
we'll give you a really really good deal on it.
YadA YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Eh.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
He says, you know what, I'm a teacher and I
got the summer off, so like, I think, I'm just
going to do the roof myself. You know, he did
the math on it, and you know he's going to
make a few bucks. He probably put about four or
five grand in his pocket. I said, justin I get it.
It sounds easy, and your roof is only a four pitch, like,
(03:30):
no big deal. It's first story. Took him three weeks.
Oh no, this is with help. He said it was
the worst hardest job he had ever done in his life.
And he did end up making about five thousand dollars,
but he said it wasn't work. You could have paid
him ten times at he would never do it again.
(03:52):
So roofing, honestly leave that to a professional. There are
critical details that are very important to your roof, not
leaking your friend's house that you did helped with like
they had to have it done two years later because
they probably did it completely wrong and they might have
saved a couple of bucks, but in the long run,
they ended up paying for it twice. So that is
one of them that I say, don't do that yourself
(04:15):
unless you've done it in the past, and you know
what you're doing. Even then it's so difficult, maybe you
don't want to deal with it.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
One of the things, Andrew, I don't mean to interrupt,
but one of the things I've noticed is people who
have done them in the past never.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Do them again.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
They like, they like they've done them once and they're like,
you know what, Like people that professionally worked as roofers
do not do their own roofs. They have they know,
they know better.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
That's a good point. It's a really, really, really difficult job.
And you know, that's why I don't I don't want
to start getting into this stuff. But like the roofers
that we have, the roofing crews that we have, you know,
and we've we've been in a partnership since twenty eleven,
and I'm I'm telling you, it could be ninety degrees outside.
You could have a ten to twelve pitch roof and
(05:04):
these guys are singing mariachi music. I mean, it's just
is what they do. They're phenomenal and they're really really
good at so oh and that roof that that my
soon to be. Then after that sales rep, he quit
teaching and came to work for us that, Like I said,
job took him three weeks, and I said, hey, you know,
(05:25):
justin I don't want to make you feel bad, but
like your house would have taken us five hours. Yeah,
like literally from the time we parked on the road. Yeah. Anyway, different,
different deal. My number two and three are kind of
the same. But like electrical work and plumbing work. Oh now,
there's a lot of people that think they know how
to do electrical work. But here's what I do know.
(05:45):
It is, like the number two cause of home fires
is improperly done, improperly fused. Are improper breakers on electrical work.
I would personally leave that to a professional because I
wouldn't want to burn my house down. Okay, Second, plumbing, plumbing,
(06:06):
you know, unless you're just changing out a faucet or
something like that, but if you're actually trying to redo
real plumbing work, whether it's in a wall or in
a basement, I've done it. I won't do it again
because every time I do it, it ends up leaking and
then we cause bigger problems. So electrical work and plumbing work, like,
(06:27):
leave that to a professional unless it's like really light
work stuff, you know, changing an outlet cover. You know,
you probably do that yourself. Even I can do that
outlet covers, no problem. This one really stuck out for
me because I was doing some research and landscaping. Now
landscaping like what that doesn't seem that difficult, you know,
(06:50):
putting in some edging, putting in some rocks, some shrubs, YadA, YadA, YadA.
Here's some things that people don't take into account. It
is something that we deal with all the day, all
the time, is grade and slope of your yard. And
I can't tell you how many times we've seen or
had people where they did their own like lawn edging
around their house and used improper materials, like they put
(07:13):
down full plastic as weed barrier. Well, what else is
full plastic going to do besides keep the weeds out
and keep.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
The water moving side ground?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Yeah exactly, And then it downs fault dumps right into it,
and the grade is opposite of where it needs to go,
and so you've what you've basically done is just created
a shallow pool. Right, So you put lawn edging out there,
and then you put plastic down that the water can't
go through and the water can't get past the edging
and the water slopes back to your house, and we're
(07:42):
literally creating like a little water slot. It's almost like
a little river of for the water to come right
back to your house. So, unless it's just planning a
few flowers, that's something that I would But if it's major,
I would leave that to a professional or really really
really do do your homework, because we can actually create
(08:05):
more problems than we had before.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
One of the things I've I've kind of noticed a
trend here, Andrew, is a lot of this is to
save a couple of bucks. Things that seem initially like
they may work out end up causing quite the calamity
and become quite costly. You think about water coming into
your basement because of improper grading, You think about having
to redo your roof because of improper installation, or other
(08:28):
issues that you think about, you know, installing an electrical
outlet that Gosh forbid overheats and causes a fire. I mean,
these are significant things that simply hired somebody that knew
what they were doing.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
That's what it is, though, Sean. It is I can
save a couple of bucks. I can do it myself.
I mean, here's the thing, that a lot of people
don't take into account. And if my father's listening, he's great.
This one's going to hit home for him. He usually listens,
but I try to get it through his head because
he's not a spring chicken anymore. He's seventy four, almost
(09:01):
seventy five. I mean, he's in amazing shape and can
run circles around most people half his age. But he
doesn't take into consideration what his time is worth. Well,
I can save a few grand, but what's your time worth.
Let's talk about the mental health and stress of getting
into a project over your head. So quit. My father's
(09:22):
finishing off seventy four years old, finishing off the basement
in their house. I've asked him a hundred times. If
I think I've helped him twice, he just doesn't okay.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
He's very talented at almost everything. He did all the electrical,
he did higher plumbers, but he's good at that stuff.
And when it comes down to the simple stuff, and
this is one of the top on my list, is
doing drywall. Doing drywall is it's not really that difficult.
You can hang the drywall, it's not that difficult. But
(09:54):
what is difficult is making it look good. Taping andutting
and sanding and mudding and sanding and mudding, and I'm
telling you it can go on forever because if you're
not a professional and you don't have the proper equipment. Sean,
why do you think it is that they put a
texture on every single wall that they finish.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
To hide imperfections. I'm going to get.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Exactly to hide imperfections, because if you don't have that
texture and your scene isn't absolutely perfect, you will see
that scene and it will look like trash. So my
dad gets done framing the basement, it's time to sheet rock.
I said, yeah, I will help you sheet rock whenever.
Whenever you're ready, you need me, let's do it. But
(10:36):
if I were you, I would hire a professional. Wow,
we can do it. I understand, we can do it.
We can do a lot of things. Back in the day,
I wanted to start a construction company called Capable Construction.
You know, has a real ring to it.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah, what does that mean?
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Well, it means we're not great at it, but we're
capable of everything. We'll figure it out. I gave for
the construction company that me and my fam we're doing
our own personal side we're capable figure out. But anyway,
he took my advice and he actually did hire someone
to come in and hang the drywall and do all
(11:15):
the finishing and and it looks perfect. So that's that's
another thing where I mean, I've been in places where
they put additions on and I can see all the
seams and it just doesn't look good and it's a dirty,
messy job. How much time we got left shot?
Speaker 1 (11:33):
We could go on and no, I I love hearing
Greg's stories as well as I was going.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
To go into a whole nother story, but I didn't
want to run over.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
I think we're getting tight on tie.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
But I will point out, as this stuff highlights is
the importance of working with not just as you were
kind of ending up there at that kind of pointing
out like good enough. And there's a lot of people
that'll say, even even you know, going away from doing
d I y, there are some people that say, you know,
I work in construction, I can do your roof where
you were. I get the truth is, and I think
(12:03):
I love how much you appreciate your guys that do
roofing is as simple as some I think people that
work in the construction industry may view roofing or dry
walling to get it. To get it right is a skill,
and when you get it wrong, it becomes a major
major issue. And really respecting those folks that it's not
just anybody that can do these things. Well, there's there's
(12:25):
as you point out, a lot of people out there
that can do things good enough, and it'll work for now,
but ultimately, when it comes to your house, and you know,
if you've got a shed and maybe try doing the roof,
there some drywall on your shed, but when it comes
to your house, you probably want to hire somebody that's
doing this stuff day in and day out. And we've
talked about I talked about my experience and your guys
with that roof literally showed up in the morning. By lunchtime,
(12:49):
the roof was gone, the entire roof had been taken down,
the new decking was put in andy by like two
in the afternoon, the entire job was done. It's like,
are you kidding me? They work efficiently?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Well, well it was, they did.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
They did, they had they did have lunch and and
some and and some other things.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
But it was just amazing.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
I'm like, oh my gosh, I think you were telling
me they went off and did another another roof that
day as well, and it was just amazing to see
them work. And that's the cool thing about working with
the folks at Larstorm Services. It doesn't matter you talk
about the experts from the roof up. It doesn't matter
what the project is, whether it's doing the roofs, whether
it's doing gutters, whether it's of course looking looking at
making your home energy energy efficient and improving the overall
(13:34):
energy of your house. These are things that you guys
specialize in in your teams at Larstorm Services really work
day in and day out to perfect and master. That's
a great thing about working with Andrew and the team
at Larstorm Services. Great day to pick up phone, give
them a call six o eight five three five forty
three forty three. That's five three five four three four
three Andrew, it's always great chatting. You have a great
day and we'll talk real soon. I will see take
(13:55):
care and of course say Andrew comes from Larslom Services
that website Larsen Home Services dot com. Kevin ham Hams
Aarbacare joins us next year on thirteen ten.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
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