These days it's common for both members of a family work 50 or 60 or 70 hours a week, making them extremely time-poor. With such limited free time, they choose not to spend it getting their hands dirty doing manual labor, and instead just pay to have it done.

(For the record, I'm 31 and thoroughly enjoy doing as much stuff myself as I possibly can. Last week I put a new alternator, starter and rear brake shoes in my older car for about 1/10th the price I was quoted, and it took me about 3 hours on a sunny Thursday evening after work. I can't wait to once again take a long hiatus from work so I'm not as time-poor as I am now)

EDIT: for anyone that wants to work on their own car, checkout the prices on http://rockauto.com - it's insanely cheap and they ship worldwide. I have no affiliation, other than being a satisfied customer.

Please point to the part of the graph that backs up your claim that people in the past worked substantially fewer hours, and that people today work substantially more.

Don't forget to divide the numbers by 52 for the weekly number of hours worked.

Most employers report a normal 40 hours per week on paper, but that is usually the minimum expected.

Yes, I am doing it myself. No, I've never done it before, but how hard can it be? I've got the Internet, and that what I can't learn online I can learn from friends or by calling family. While I already feel like my house will never be done, and I will never be quite satisfied, I am extremely happy that I get to learn all kinds of new things I wouldn't have otherwise had the opportunity to learn.

My grandpa, on both sides of the family, were always fixing things, building things, and engineering new solutions to problems. I hope that even-though I have become a software engineer I never lose touch with the physical side.

When learning a new skill or craft, especially one that involves finish work, one principle I follow is to start with the most hidden areas first. Oftentimes, people will jump into a task on the most obvious, most exciting and most frequently observed areas of a job first, learning and making their beginner's mistakes front and center. Then their workmanship becomes more expert by the time they get to the least frequently seen parts of a project. So try not to fall into that trap; In the case of flooring, you want your best work to be in your living spaces, not your closets. :)

One thing I have learned, though, is not to say "How hard could it be?"

Still, go for it...

Honestly so far I am surprised at how easy it is. The only difficult part is with a jigsaw cutting out the various holes and shapes for the vents and whatnot. Besides that it has been smooth sailing.

Underestimate? No, I know how awry things can go. In our first house I noticed a leak in the basement under the toilet above. Wax ring, easy fix and cheap. Except it had been leaking a while, meaning a good piece of the subfloor had rotted. Up comes the carpet (who the hell thinks carpet in a house with men is a good idea in the bathroom?), might as well put in new linoleum on top of the new sub flooring. Since the floor's coming up, there's no better time to put in that sink the wife wanted. Somewhere in the process we discovered the wet drywalling under the shower stall. To the Depot for new drywall and shower stall! Weeks later I finished the job.

All because a sixty-nine cent wax ring failed.

Even if the house doesn't have men, it presumably has women who bathe, or children who splash in the bathtub and aren't great at always making it to the potty, or toilets that occasionally clog, or any number of other ways to get gray/black water on the bathroom floor.

The other place I can't stand carpet is the dining room. Food has a way of finding the floor -- whether it's crumbs, meatballs rolling off the plate, or kids flinging spaghetti because it's funny.

> "That's why you have a friend help"

Yeah. Every time my father in law visits, it's home improvement time. There are a lot of projects I do on my own, but certain categories of projects, I want to be able to call on extra experience.

While not everyone has a job that's hourly, people still have a strong sense of their time's worth. Maybe working extra doesn't directly translate to X dollars at the end of the month, but it may mean you can negotiate a larger raise, or a bonus.

I didn't grow up watching anyone fix things. I didn't particularly enjoy shop class in sixth grade. But I've fixed a bunch of stuff in my house just by reading a couple of pages in an old fix-it book, a webpage, or the instructions that come with the replacement parts, and then trying.

It doesn't surprise me, either. My father was very much that type of father. I luckily picked up a lot of the skills on my own volition, but already I choose to pay someone else to replace my radiator when I could do it myself, even though I am yet unencumbered by family duties.

I'll be damned if I chip my nail polish on manual labor these days. Not because I'm "above it", but because I hate it with a passion. If I can pay somebody to do it for me, awesome. If they actually enjoy their work (and many contractors do), it's a win-win, as far as I can tell.

As for family time, and I say this as one without kids, if the kids are old enough I can't think of a more valuable way to spend time than teaching your kids to build something.

Well, this firstly requires the kid is interested, secondly that the task at hand is approachable by a kid (e.g. painting instead of transmission work), and thirdly that you have the time to tutor them while you make the repairs.

Not to say it should not be done, oh no! But it is not always an option.

I feel that the lack of free time is attributable to a large number of "ills" for society, from the lack of participation in civic duties, to lower voting rates, etc, etc.

Just remember to let your car cool off before trying to replace it. Made that mistake a couple times!

Then again, I grew up in a traditional family from a rural area. Self sufficiency was highly valued there. Specialization tends to be more highly valued in urban/suburban areas.

How much actual work gets done? that usually depends on the personal employment situation. Both, "do I have enough work" and "how hard is the boss pressuring me to work more" - from what I've seen it's more about how much free time is available than any calculation of how much they get paid per hour. (I mean, I usually do the "how much could I be making during this hour" calculation, but I'm a /lot/ more comfortable hiring people than most of my friends.)

If anything, I think the bias is too much towards 'I will do it myself' where I am, I've seen solder/heatshrink repairs on products that literally cost $5. I mean, done by fully-employed folks. I've got prime, I'll order you another.

Considering how many of these folks are introverts, I think there is a huge untapped market for someone to buy one of those self-storage places and add outlets. Especially if it was open 24/7? man, that would be really popular with my crowd. The problem with hackerspaces is that first, they are social (which is good for other things, but not for introvert work space) and second, that you generally have little to no storage space, and certainly can't leave your project on the workbench while you have a busy week at work.

On the subject of Grandpa fixing things, my favorite grandpa quote is "Always test a wire like this" (holds hand with palm inwards, two fingers out) "and never like this" (pretends to grab wire with both left and right hands outstretched)

It doesn't always work out this well. The heating element in my dryer broke. A new element would cost almost as much as a new dryer, so I got a new dryer.

Just get stuff like that online.