Aug 19, 2025

Just go build it!

Looking back at the past couple of years of homeownership, it’s crazy thinking of how much stuff I’ve done myself. I can count on a single hand the amount of times I had to have someone come in and perform work for me: water heater fixing, dryer fixing, kitchen countertop installation, car maintenance. Yeah, that’s it.

The list of things I have done is quite large in comparison. I don’t think I’ve actually itemized them yet, but here it goes:

replace some deck boards
stain the deck
repaint the entire house
build an outdoor sectional sofa
demoed a bathroom
renovate a bathroom
demoed a kitchen
install kitchen cabinets
tile a shower
tile a kitchen backsplash
tile a floor
install a heated floor
plumb in a few sinks
install laminate flooring
build and tile a shower niche
plumb in a shower stall
move an electrical box for a ceiling fan
paint spray several closet and regular doors
clean out a faulty freezer’s drain
rebuild several windowsills
paint an entire condo
run ethernet cables through several floors
build a few standing planter pots
polish and wax my car
paint an entire cottage
furnished an apartment for rent

Prior to owning my house I’ve only ever done some of the following tasks and their difficulties: deck staining (easy), installing laminate floor (easy), demolition (medium), and some light painting of rooms (easy), framing (medium). I did all of this with my family, who was also figuring it out as they went, as no one was in the trades. That’s probably where I got the seed to be a DIY’er, and the frugality of having someone do something I could likely easily do myself.

Incrementally learning

I didn’t have all the skills needed to even consider doing all these new tasks. When I bought my place I knew I wanted to paint my own unit and renovate the other unit, which was in major disrepair. Painting my unit was an easy start, I at least painted a bit in the past, probably several years earlier, but knew I could do it.

As soon as I gained possession I wanted to start changing the colour of the place. It was simple to go and buy the necessary tools: brushes, rollers, naps, paint trays, drop sheets, painters tape, extender poles, and paint. Then when I started, I quickly found that I would need a ladder, handheld paint bucket, a very bright light, and technique! Oh the technique. I started delving into YouTube videos while exhausted late at night to discover some quite amazing channels dedicated to the different trades or DIY in general. Technique can take you from what might feel fast and accurate at applying an even layer of paint (but in reality quite slow and not great application), and open your mind to how the pros do it: with speed, accuracy, and efficiency. It’s not always having better tools that makes the difference, a lot of it is in the way you load up your brush or roller and get the paint on the walls or trim. I quickly learned quite a few techniques that helped me paint, but it took time to master them and hone in on it. I can look back at my own unit and pick out several techniques that I either didn’t learn early enough or just didn’t master yet. The proof is there, and when you know and have performed these techniques properly, they stand out. But that’s just something else you pick up from learning from these professionals: a high attention to detail.

The biggest takeaway I have for any current and future DIY’ers is watch a lot of professionals on YouTube. There’s so much that can be learned, and many videos that directly explain the task you may be tackling next or potentially in the future. For example, I had no idea what would be involved for painting crown molding. Lots of places were pointing to having to use some significant chemicals to dull the sheen of the paint so that the new layer of paint will adhere correctly. In reality, no one is going to be touching that crown molding, so a quick clean of any potential dirt off of it will suffice before applying a fresh coat of paint. I would never have known this unless I was consuming hours of professionals share their tips on how they paint crown molding.

Some recommendations for professionals that I’ve learned quite a lot from (read: watched dozens of hours of their content) are:

Vancouver Carpenter - mainly for their caulking, painting, drywalling, and drywall mudding, and drywall repair content. He’s Canadian, a tradesman running his own business, and has been making great videos for a few years now. I’ve learned most of my drywalling, drywall repair and caulking skills from him.

Paint Life TV / Idaho Carpenter - mainly for their caulking and painting content. The owner of this professional painting company gets across a lot of information about how a professional painter team would paint a room, or entire building, and how someone by themselves would do it too. I have learned so much technique to my painting that has greatly helped with my cutting and rolling abilities. I now consider myself quite fast and accurate all from his technique.

Home RenoVision DIY - Jeff is great - but don’t hire him to do your job. The internet praises most of his content for being quite helpful and entertaining, but he has apparently scammed a few people when doing their renovations. He’s a professional handyman who has taught me almost everything I know for many subjects: tiling, plumbing, and renovations in general.

Some of the folks that were more for entertainment purposes are the YouTube shorts of HydroNYC and Replumb - both plumbers doing funny videos.

Geeking out on technique

There’s several categories of DIY that I’ve grown a ton at. Much of that was due to watching and reading tons of content, as well as hours and hours of practice. Here’s several categories which I need to nerd out over. Hopefully it’s relatable or a trick or two is taken away.

The art of painting

Where to start. My favourite part of painting a house probably has to be rolling walls to an immaculate, streak free, textured finish. Some of the key techniques to get there are:

Make it easier to clean the roller nap after by running water over the nap and then wringing out most of the water by spinning the nap on the roller. Do this in an area like the outdoors or in an area where the floor is protected since the water droplets can contain trace amounts of paint. This works by embedding water deep into the fibres of the nap to prevent the paint from embedding itself in there instead. Make sure there’s no lingering water or else that will have an effect on the paint.

When loading up the roller with paint, run it back and forth in the tray for 20 seconds or so to really load it up into the fibres. You’ll want to do a few lines with the roller, and go back to smooth them out since the roller wont be applying the paint evenly. Once it’s properly broken in after a few lines on the wall, you’re good to go.

Painting quickly and effectively means getting a decent amount of paint up on the wall (or ceiling) such that it’s not too thick or thin of a coating, and that there’s no lines between strokes. Paint Life TV taught me this critical technique that I’ll never forget. It starts with loading up your roller. Then you’ll want to roll straight down the wall, starting at least 1/4 away from the top ceiling. Roll back up and down once or a few times to get the layer looking fairly even. Now load up your roller again and do the next line, having a 1/3 to 1/4 overlap. Repeat four or so times. It’s okay if there’s slight paint streaks between the lines that were just rolled. It’s now time to load up your roller with 3/4 the amount of paint to give the wall its final texturing. Start at the very top and have the roller apply light pressure to the wall, and let gravity bring the roller down. This should have the effect of adding a lot of texture to the wall, without removing the paint you just put on. If there’s smudges or no texture spots then go back and do the texturing again. Do this light texturing over the four or so lines you just painted to add texture and clean up any slight lines that were left. Doing this should yield evenly coated walls that blend together with a perfect amount of texture. As you get good at it you can load up a fair bit of paint and reduce the amount of coats you have to do by going for a heavy first coat and a light second or third coat. Just be careful not to cause the paint to drip or slide on the wall as it dries, it’s quite hard to recover at that point.

Using a double-wide roller (a 18” instead of a regular 9”) is an absolute life hack. It’ll save you so much time if you’re confident in your 9” rolling abilities. There’s a small learning curve with maneuvering a large roller like this, but if you have many walls or ceilings to paint, it’s easily worth its cost and time to learn. My last painting experience was painting an entire cottage over a few weekday evenings and a weekend. It flew by with the double-wide roller. I haven’t yet figured out how to speed up cutting, but lets get into that now.

There’s quite a few considerations when it comes to cutting walls and ceilings. Brush size, how much paint you load the brush up with, the direction you cut in, how many coats you do, whether to also use a roller, etc. I like to use a high quality 4” brush since it can hold a fair bit of paint, as well as comfortably cover a decent amount of wall, ceiling, or baseboard with speed. That, paired with a paint pail allows me to conveniently work while standing or up a ladder. Cutting walls and ceilings is at least a two-coat process. The trick that makes the biggest difference with getting a properly textured corner without any sort of streaks in the corner is first painting in the corner with the brush, then using a small roller to put more paint on, and add the necessary texture. Try getting as close as you can to the adjacent wall with the roller so that the texture part covers over any brush strokes and blends in with the corner. A second coat may just require a second rolling if the paint brush got enough paint into the corner on the first coating.

Similar to the paint roller, the paint brush can also be run through water before painting to make it easier to clean at the end of the painting session. Make sure to spin or flick as much water as you can out of the brush, otherwise the lingering water will cause some water to drip from the top of your brush while painting.

The order of cutting the walls, ceilings, baseboards, and even crown molding (if you have it) can make the painting process quite quick or painfully slow. Cutting the baseboard into the already painted wall is an exercise in pain to get the top 1/4” covered if this is the scenario you’re in. Likely learned from Paint Life TV, the best order to paint in is doing any sort of trim first, then the ceilings, then finally the walls. This order allows for overlapping the trim paint onto the walls, for example, which guarantees that there’s no gaps showing unpainted surfaces. If the paint you’re using allows you to overlap the trim/wall/baseboard paint, do it, it’ll prevent any gaps from being missed. With doing a slight overlap when painting the ceiling, when you go to cut the walls into the ceiling, it’ll be a clean edge. Same with the walls cutting around the baseboards. I’ve wasted plenty of my time painting in the wrong order, especially with the crown molding present in every room of my house. Lastly, since at least two coats need to be applied to each surface, the order of the first coat doesn’t really matter. The second or further coats only matter for making it easy to cut and preventing paint splatter from the ceilings on to the walls and trim.

When painting any sort of trim with paint that has a high sheen/gloss, it’s super easy and likely frustrating how many brush strokes show. Too much pressure or not enough paint exacerbates this. The trick of reducing the brush strokes is getting good at loading up your brush with a fair amount of paint, almost too much, and painting from the unpainted area into the painted area with an even but light amount of pressure. I find that having the brush on quite the angle, almost parallel to the wall, helps a lot with this. The first few strokes are to just get enough paint on the trim, to get it evenly covered. At this point you probably noticed a lot of brush strokes going in different directions, and spots where the brush stopped or started at. To do the finishing touches the general technique is to make some very light and long strokes. This has the effect of evening out the lines, and getting rid of any other lines going in different directions. Another technique is the landing and taking off method where when the brush starts to touch the trim the brush is already moving, resulting in a cleaner start. Same goes for ending the brush stroke by continuing to move along the trim while lightly lifting the brush off. With some practice that should have the effect of hiding the point at which the brush stopped quite nicely.

Another trick with painting high gloss trim is to use a bit of paint extender in your paint. This stuff is great since it makes your paint less viscous which helps to hide even more brush strokes. Since the paint runs more, it can be harder to handle and if the paint is applied too thick, then it can run. Whatever you do don’t use actual water, since the paint extender is actually formulated to be added to paint.

You should be able to get quite a few lifetimes out of roller naps and brushes with the proper cleaning techniques. Key to this is not letting any paint actually dry on them. So if you’re taking a break, make sure the naps and brushes are full of paint, and the paint trays or pails are covered with a plastic bag. When it comes time to clean your brushes, assuming it’s acrylic paint, turn the sink’s water on and run the brush under the water. Use a wire brush to scrape through the bristles to remove any stuck on paint matter and to help get the running water deep into the brush. Also dab the brush’s bristles on to the bottom of the sink to continue to get more paint out. Keep doing this until the water running out of the brush is white. Now flick or spin any extra water off of the brush. It’ll take a few minutes, but the brush will be just like brand new after. For cleaning roller naps, using one of the painter’s 5 in 1 tools is very useful. There’s a round part to the tool where you can run it along the roller to squeeze off all the paint that the roller is holding. Squeeze off that extra paint into the paint tray before taking the roller. While the nap is still on the roller, run the tap so that water pours onto the nap. Use the 5 in 1 tool again to squeeze off the water saturated nap. Keep doing this while rotating the roller, and flip it upside down a few times until the water coming off of the nap runs clear. Take the nap off of the roller and clean out the inside of the nap and the roller itself from any paint that may have leaked in. Put the nap back on and spin the roller fast to wring off any extra water. Leave the nap either hanging or standing up to dry. Depending on the sink you’re using to clean the naps and brushes the water coming off while cleaning can leave some marks. Be careful if it’s a kitchen sink. The best place would be a basement utility sink where making a mess doesn’t matter as much.

The art of tiling

The tiling process can be quite dirty and finicky. It’s also harder to undo mistakes compared to painting since tiles would be coated in mortar or stuck to the surface already. Even grouting can be unforgiving if some spots are missed. All this to say that it takes more preparation and double checking of your work at each step.

Laying out the tile beforehand to get a sense of where cuts need to be made, lines would end up is critical to prevent an edge being just a bit too short on one side for a second tile to fit in. It also prevents any large expanses of grout covering a large area.

When tiling a floor, if there’s any sort of unevenness on the ground using floor leveler to create a level surface is quite useful. It’ll provide more support and a smooth surface for the tiles to be attached to. You can even use the floor leveler after installing heated floor wiring to create a smooth surface over the protruding wires.

When placing the tiles, make sure not to push it too hard on to the grout - you really only need a firm amount of pressure to seat the tile into the backing mortar. Pushing more than necessary can cause the mortar to push up around the sides, which is something to avoid since that will get in the way of the grout. You’ll want to scrape out any of that mortar within the cracks since it can poke through the grout and look terrible.

Grouting can be quite messy, but the results look great and signal the end of the tiling process. I would recommend using a grout that has a built-in sealer since it removes the extra step of sealing the grout. People say that this is a more advanced type of grout since it has a shorter working time, and will ruin your tiles if it’s not applied and cleaned off the tiles quick enough. For example, the sealant will leave a permanent haze on the tiles if this grout is not fully buffed off after. In reality, it’s not that hard. Working in sections, having all the supplies for all the steps nearby, and having someone else to help makes it pretty easy.

The art of drywalling

Drywalling can be pretty fun. Being able to shape walls from rough, barren 2x4s to a seamless surface is almost as satisfying as painting. Even patching holes, filling over cracks, and smoothing out bumps can be pretty decent. Drywalling definitely has a bit more of a learning curve, and can be more messy than painting because of all of the dust.

Having some of the pink premixed drywall compound is useful for small knicks and patches, while also investing in a large bag of dry compound is great for fixing several small things or for any job larger than the pink compound would work for. The great thing about having the big bag of proper stuff around is that you can use as much or as little as you need, at the right consistency, and you don’t feel bad about wasting any compound since it’s cheap.

When applying drywall compound I find that having an assortment of drywall knives helps greatly with being able to use the right sized tool for the job. Small 1” knives for the smallest of areas, a 4-6” one for the larger patches, and a 10” for large areas which require more control over applying compound evenly all the while feathering the edge.

Speaking of feathering the edge, being proficient at applying compound such that it blends in with the rest of the wall or ceiling takes some handy knife or trowel skill. The goal is putting pressure on the outside edge of the tool to cause the compound to blend into the surrounding drywall. If you were to look at the wall and where the compound was just applied, you’ll want a very smooth transition from drywall to the compound. Feather the edge all the way around the area with the compound and you’re set. The Vancouver Carpenter taught me everything I know about drywalling, and his feather the edge comments throughout most of his drywalling videos helped.

When applying the compound, avoid pushing too hard since that can make it more difficult to sand the compound later. Applying enough force to get the compound to stick and spread is all that’s needed.

When it comes to filling in areas wider than an inch or two the difference between noticing the wall was patched from a distance and blending in completely when close up comes down to how close you can match the level of the patch with the rest of the wall, how smooth the compound blends in with the surrounding wall, and the paint job afterwards. Imagine patching a big hole like a wall switch. The drywall is attached, and when it comes to applying the drywall compound, apply compound that’s at least twice as wide as the hole being patched. This allows the compound to smooth out any bumps or ridges by gradually merging the patch into the surrounding drywall. Having a large putty knife such as a 10” one makes it a lot easier to smoothly apply the compound. Sanding can remove mistakes, but the more effective at applying the compound you are, the less sanding is required.

With small patches it’s possible to perform some sanding before the compound has fully dried. Commonly called wet sanding, using a damp cloth or putty knife to very lightly smooth out the compound makes it possible to remove ridges or take away excess compound. This method is great for when filling small holes since not much putty is needed in the first place, saves time, and results in no dust.