I think you underestimate how much of a time sink fixing the first leaky plumbing fixture can be. There are a dozen things that can go wrong, and a dozen things to think about that someone who has never done it will discover by trial and error, with each iteration requiring a trip to the hardware store. If you didn't gain such handy expertise incidentally to "helping" someone else, every such task can be a comedy of errors. The worst is if you manage to mess something up badly enough that it requires far more work and material to fix than the problem you started with.
That's why you have a friend help. They can point out the eighteen ways it can go wrong. I mean, yeah, you could go it alone, and the internet is helpful, but it can turn out exactly like you say. I've helped friends with home projects where it turns out a trip to the hardware store is in order. More times than not I'll mention that "it looks like we'll need a whattzit and a hoozsnoggle while we're there" because the need for those items won't become evident until you come back home.
Underestimate? No, I know how awry things can go. In our first house I noticed a leak in the basement under the toilet above. Wax ring, easy fix and cheap. Except it had been leaking a while, meaning a good piece of the subfloor had rotted. Up comes the carpet (who the hell thinks carpet in a house with men is a good idea in the bathroom?), might as well put in new linoleum on top of the new sub flooring. Since the floor's coming up, there's no better time to put in that sink the wife wanted. Somewhere in the process we discovered the wet drywalling under the shower stall. To the Depot for new drywall and shower stall! Weeks later I finished the job.
> "who the hell thinks carpet ... is a good idea in the bathroom?"
Even if the house doesn't have men, it presumably has women who bathe, or children who splash in the bathtub and aren't great at always making it to the potty, or toilets that occasionally clog, or any number of other ways to get gray/black water on the bathroom floor.
The other place I can't stand carpet is the dining room. Food has a way of finding the floor -- whether it's crumbs, meatballs rolling off the plate, or kids flinging spaghetti because it's funny.
> "That's why you have a friend help"
Yeah. Every time my father in law visits, it's home improvement time. There are a lot of projects I do on my own, but certain categories of projects, I want to be able to call on extra experience.
