@KittyBoarder – you probably would go nuts then wearing a laundered hospital gown…

And we all judge a book by its cover. There are too many books for us to read even if we do nothing but read all day, every day, and that is why publishers spend a great deal of money getting the right cover art.

About trying it yourself: my husband and I once looked at a house in which the former homeowner had done his own “projects.” Every one was a bad job, and we were NOT interested in having to redo his bad work.

When you do bad work in your own house, you are creating a nightmare when you go to sell, and will probably have to lower your asking price considerably. You need to factor in the cost of having things redone at higher prices down the road or losing money on the eventual house sale when you do the number crunching.

Also, you may well find out that you needed a building permit for some of the projects, and when you go to sell the house you’ll really be hit hard because of a lack of permits. In many cases, you’ll have to pull out what you did, remove drywall so inspectors can look at the plumbing and electrical work, and so on. And if they reject the plumbing and electrical work, you’ll have to hire professionals to do the job right (and in a hurry so you can get the place on the market), plus pay a huge fine for doing the work without permits. This is actually a best-case scenario. In the worst case, you will burn your house down, risking killing people and pets, or get a mold problem because of your amateur work.

BTW: if you go to pull a permit and get told you don’t need one, MAKE THEM SIGN A LETTER SAYING YOU DON’T NEED A PERMIT FOR THAT SPECIFIC PROJECT! Otherwise crooked city officials can come back later and claim you need a permit.

I do that a lot but there are a couple of problems:

1) You need to invest in tools. Few tools = bad job, so my earlier work before I accumulated a base number of tools was garbage.

2) Even if you are fast learner you learn on the first job. If that first job is your own house then it’s going to garbage. Of course, when I help my friends then their projects are better than mine.

One time my friend and I worked on each other’s fences. Thank goodness we worked on his first. Took twice as long as mine and looks worse :)

Carrying yourself with self-confidence and having clean, well-fitting clothes are key to looking good.

What’s difference between used and secondhand, once a garment has been worn? Who’s to know your clothes came from a thrift store unless you tell them? (Or unless you run into the original owner, which can happen…but that’s a fairly remote possibility.)

And, as has often been pointed out in these very posts and comments, good thrift stores often have brand-new garments with the tags still on, at a rock-bottom price.