Do your own "grunt work"

Right before we were leaving to visit my husband's family for Christmas, we discovered that the sewage line from our garage was blocked. We had thought it had frozen I will spare you the gross details, but we called out a plumber who discovered the blocked pipe and discussed with my husband what we needed to do. We turned off the water to the garage and left for Christmas. When we got home, we called the plumber to figure out when he could come and fix the pipes for us. We tend to be "do-it-yourselfers," but this was something we felt we needed professional help with. The plumber estimated it would cost $300 to access and fix the pipes and drill another hole in our septic tank. Once we knew when he could come, we let him know we would have it all dug up. So, we took an hour and dug up the two pipes that he indicated we needed to access. Then when he came, I was available to run to ACE Hardware when we the plumber needed extra parts. When all was said and done, because we did our own "grunt work" of digging up the lines and being available to run to the store to get the necessary parts, we were able to save $150.