If a friend or relative (any gender, any adult age) were moving into their first house, what home repair/maintenance task would you most recommend they learn?

23 comments

1. Any they don’t want to pay someone else for.

2. Very basic plumbing. E.g: turning off water in house, unblocking drains, etc

3. Drywall repair is the most common damage to a home, next to floor sanding, staining, and replacing water damage floor.

   But if it’s all in good condition I would just learn how to maintain the home from damage with maybe small preventative and damage proof products.

4. How to turn off the water and gas to the house, and test it out to make sure the valves all work. Do the same for any water lines that you’d want to turn off during the winter like the shutoff valves for your outdoor faucets.

   Mostly everything is just on an as-needed basis. When something breaks, watch a few YouTube videos on fixing it and decide if it’s something you can do yourself or need to hire someone to do.

5. I would start by recommending them get acquainted with finding part numbers.

   Most things in life that are broken, you can find the parts for.

   And parts are typically way cheaper than entire things.

6. Learn where the water shut offs are for the whole house and for individual lines going to sinks and toilets. Make sure that they work too. Sometimes valves get hard to turn or don’t completely close because they get jammed up with calcium if you have hard water.

   When you have an emergency like a water line break, minutes turn into dollars very quickly.

7. Basic electrical stuff. Replacing light switches and power outlets. You can do it quickly and safely with $30 worth of tools and an electrician will charge you $150/hr for it.

8. Buy. A. Plumbing. Device. Will. Save. Your. Life. When. It. Will. Clog.

9. I feel like you learn as you go. YouTube is awesome for this stuff now.

   As for things to check right away though…

   * Make sure water is properly leaving the area around your house. You don’t want it pooling anywhere near your foundation.
   * Look thoroughly for signs of mice, termites, etc.
   * Make sure you understand where your water main and electrical box are and be comfortable with turning off the water and toggling a circuit.
   * Check air filters and make sure you know how to replace them.
   * Check your roof… Physically go up there and check it. You should do that every year or two at least anyway, so get familiar with it.
   * Start a house calendar of basic maintenance things and expected major things. We just do this in Google Sheets for the most part.
   * Check the date on your major appliances and look up their normal life… So like an AC unit is 10-15 years usually… Document that in your Sheet. Ideally, you know a few years out that you’re probably going to have to replace the AC, roof, whatever.
   * Start (or strengthen) your “emergency fund”/savings account. You should always have about 3-6 months of normal expenses in there but, as a home owner, I push it a bit higher. If your heating suddenly goes down, you want to be able to fix it with a check without killing yourself.

10. Toilets and sinks. Basic repairs are pretty easy, but will be exceedingly expensive.

11. Like others have said, find out how to shut off the main water supply to the house and purchase a water shutoff tool if you need one. I close second is how to use a toilet plunger especially if you have kids. Cleaning sink drain traps is useful too.

12. Repairing drywall and cleaning gutters.

13. You learn as needed. Youtube is your friend here. Wait for something to go wrogn and fix it. Or something might come up in the inspection that isn’t covered by the seller. Learn that.

14. Where shit offs are. Water, gas, power. Practice it. Turn em off. Trim back landscape so you can.

15. Cleaning.

    95% of problems go away when things are cleaned properly.

16. the very first thing I’d suggest is that they try every breaker and ensure that it’s labeled properly and there are no surprises. then I’d find the water shutoff valve and make sure everyone knows where it is.

17. haven’t seen this come up often in this thread, but changing the AC/Air/furnace filters

18. Shit offs – where, what, do they work, do they need tools.

    If you’ve water filters, where can you buy replacement elements, how do you replace, does it need tools (there is a filter wrench and a rubber mallet hanging on the wall next to my water filter, there is the two stores in town that stock the filters on a paper stapled to the wall above it).

    If you’ve septic, where are the standpipes for the tank, who can get out to pump you, and when was it last pumped (recommend getting pumped ASAP, then talk to the pumping company about frequency and see if they can give you a septic health report).

19. Start a savings account and feed it monthly for emergency repairs or if unused, roof replacement.

20. Plumbing

21. Yes.

22. Turn on and off water

23. Changing locks themselves.

    Lots of barrels are easy to replace so you have the same keys for your entry points.