Do It Yourself and Save Money!

Woodworking has been a passion of mine for years. I first got started doing simple carvings when I was a young teenager. Over the years I would do a simple carving once in a while, but it wasn't until I bought a house, followed by all the home improvement projects, homemade wooden gifts for the kids and the honey-do projects, that I really got into woodworking. Before then I would watch Norm Abram of the New Yankee Workshop chug out woodworking projects from a well equiped workshop. My kids would watch those shows with me and ask if I was ever going to do something like that. I said no because all of the equipment that Norm used made me feel like serious woodworking was outside of my financial reach.

Several years later I wish I had ignored that erroneous thought process and got into woodworking sooner. I learned the hard way the cost for all of the red oak trim I put in my house, bought S4S at the box store. Had I bought all that red oak at a lumber yard in rough sawn dimensions, the money saved from NOT buying it all at the box store would have paid for a decent portable surface planer. The money I could have saved by making the dental molding instead of buying it from the box store at over $5 per foot would have paid for a router. The money I could have saved by refinishing my floors myself the first time I had them refinished could have paid for a portable table saw. But I didn't know. Honestly I simply didn't think about that. Hard lesson learned. Hopefully for some that may read this it will benefit you and you will be the wiser - unless it's too late for you too. But with that said, there's no need to spend the extra money at the box store for things you can make or do yourself.

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