My dad is a perfectionist, my-way-or-the-highway, do it yourself-er (DIY) kind of man, and whether voluntarily or not, it has driven my brother and me towards becoming a DIY one day, too. I, alongside my dad, have personally helped recreate our basement, our front porch, my grandmother's flooded basement, and the entirety of my brother's house. We have also built an addition to my grandfather's roof, a patio for our neighbor, and a bike shed in our backyard. This week, we have been working 24/7 on building a new stone patio in our backyard, which helped inspire this article.

So, being the son of a DIY dad means a few things.

First, it means that I will one day have no choice but to be a DIY myself, because with such experience watching and helping build these projects myself, why would I ever succumb to paying somebody else to do what I can do? I have learned that it is more cost efficient to build projects myself than to hire a "professional" (whatever that is) to do it for me. Also, this way I get to do everything my way.

I have also shown early symptoms of becoming a DIY after helping a friend build a table at school, and by fixing an ant problem at my house using liquid nails (a somewhat alternative method to caulking).

Being the son of a DIY dad also means that I have, and will forever, find myself waking up at 7 a.m. to work tirelessly for easily 9 hours on the weekend. For example, yesterday my dad and I stopped working on the patio early to go to a family picnic (where I no doubt fell asleep lying on the couch, clinging to the possibility of a nap), after a "mere" 7 hours of moving and laying pavers and screeding sand.

That's another thing, I have acquired a much more diverse vocabulary of things that, when they come up in conversation, nobody else really understands what they mean either.

Lastly, growing up with DIYs and knowing I too will be a DIY helps build your confidence in your own skills. I have learned how to wire an outlet, set foundations for smaller-scale projects (not like a house), put up drywall, fix ant problems with liquid nails, square off a patio using a string and some sticks, and I have come to understand the general process that it takes to build a house, and most other house things. This confidence can help my own pride to build more things when I'm older, but it most importantly will give me and my brother the confidence to help make our family's lives better. My dad works tirelessly to build the patio for the betterment of our family, and to make our lives more pleasant and the house even nicer. It makes me hope that one day my wife will ask me to build something for my kids to play on, or maybe she and I have a dream family room that we want to make a reality, or maybe we want a patio to put a hot tub on or something of the sort. The point is, with this experience now, I can make my family happier in the future.