When to NOT DIY

If you've been reading this blog for a while then you know that I'm no stranger to a good DIY. Most of my weekends are spent trying to sweet talk Jon into a project that needs to get done on our own, because it will save $$$.

I've never really out sourced anything other than sewing projects in designing my own home.


However a couple of weeks ago after I painted my floors:




I started feeling like the ceiling (the always forgotten 5th wall) was looking too BORING! So, I think decided that I wanted to put grass cloth on the ceiling and no one was going to talk me out of it.

Jon agreed that it would look great, but the idea of putting it up was exhausting to me. Grasscloth wallpaper does not come pre-pasted and it is heavy and overall just hard to work with. We used it in our dining room and I swear I think both of us threatened divorce at one point. It was not fun. It's hard to line it up, the glue is never sticky enough so it tends to move, and end of story we just weren't up to it.

At this point of the story I did something I've never done before I told Jon we needed outside help. I got a quote from my normal wallpaper hangers and they wanted between $450-$600 to paper one ceiling!!!

That is madness. If you are in a situation like this make sure you call lots of people and get different estimates. After calling my go-to guys I just started calling people from the yellow pages. The magic number seemed to be $450. When I discussed this with Jon we both decided that $450 was too high and that to save that $$$ we would suck it up and do it ourselves.

Now here is my little secret to getting it done for the price I wanted. When I originally started to look for someone to hang the paper I called people from the yellow pages, but also called people that offered their services on CraigsList. CL people were still giving me quotes in the $450-$600 range. I had all but given up, but decided to try one more thing.

Under CL's gig section I placed an ad saying I was looking for someone to hang grass cloth wallpaper on a ceiling in a room that was approximately 9' x 12' and that I needed it done that week and wanted to pay $250 for it.

It was like magic. I received about 20 emails within the hour. I got a whole range of people. Some where handy men that simply told me they could figure it out, but had never done it before, others were wallpaper removers and simply hadn't fully read my post and a bunch of them were actual professionals in the field. I had one man email me and provide me with references and a website and told me right away that normally he would way more for hanging paper, but that he would accept my $250 payment!!!

Woo hoo!!! For $250 we knew it would be worth it. The man arrived on time and bought all of his own supplies, got to work right away, and finished in 4 hours!

It would have taken us much longer and while he was doing that I was working in my office and Jon took care of lawn work. It was a win/win. I will totally use him again and he even got a me a meeting with a potential new client!

Of course it's a bit overcast today so the pictures aren't perfect, but behold my new ceiling:



I took a bunch more with flash this time since it is so dark in their this morning:



Close up:



We are so happy with the results. We knew that we wouldn't have finished the job in four hours and since we used craigslist to negotiate our price we didn't have to worry about an estimate coming in at more than we could pay.

Plus now Jon realizes that the we need crown molding in the kitchen something that I've been wanting for the longest time.

Win, win.