I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here, that you really believe this. But the problem is that you’re missing a huge cost: tools. If we assume that, as you say, a house is given (?) to a formerly homeless person, that person is going to need to come up with money for materials, yes, but also all of the tools. When a professional does the work, they are amortizing the cost of equipment over many, many jobs, so that the cost may be fairly negligible for any single job. When you’re only doing one job, you need to include that in the final price.
I’ve done a number of the repairs and renovations on my home, but I’ve also spent likely somewhere north of $20k on tools since I moved here. Some get used quite often, like the table saw, miter saw, the Makita cordless drill set. Some are used very, very rarely, like the framing nailer (esp. since I switched to using structural screws and hangers instead of toe nailing). Some have been used for a single job, and never touched again, like the flooring nailer (I still want to tear up the shitty carpet and do hardwood flooring, but I want to use unfinished cabin grade and sand/stain/varnish myself, but my partner wants something that’s about 5x the cost but faster to install).
Not only that, but if you don’t already know how to do a thing, you’re very likely to end up doing it wrong, e.g., putting flashing under shingles instead of on top. Until you have a degree of proficiency–and you’ll need to be proficient in a lot of things–you are also more likely to have more waste, which raises costs again.
I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here, that you really believe this. But the problem is that you’re missing a huge cost: tools. If we assume that, as you say, a house is given (?) to a formerly homeless person, that person is going to need to come up with money for materials, yes, but also all of the tools. When a professional does the work, they are amortizing the cost of equipment over many, many jobs, so that the cost may be fairly negligible for any single job. When you’re only doing one job, you need to include that in the final price.
I’ve done a number of the repairs and renovations on my home, but I’ve also spent likely somewhere north of $20k on tools since I moved here. Some get used quite often, like the table saw, miter saw, the Makita cordless drill set. Some are used very, very rarely, like the framing nailer (esp. since I switched to using structural screws and hangers instead of toe nailing). Some have been used for a single job, and never touched again, like the flooring nailer (I still want to tear up the shitty carpet and do hardwood flooring, but I want to use unfinished cabin grade and sand/stain/varnish myself, but my partner wants something that’s about 5x the cost but faster to install).
Not only that, but if you don’t already know how to do a thing, you’re very likely to end up doing it wrong, e.g., putting flashing under shingles instead of on top. Until you have a degree of proficiency–and you’ll need to be proficient in a lot of things–you are also more likely to have more waste, which raises costs again.