Hiring painters to cover an entire house can run into the thousands, so one homeowner decided to do the job herself instead, completing the whole exterior in 10 days. She documented the project on TikTok as @howshome_ — along with an honest admission that she has real regrets about how she went about it.
In her video, she walks through the physical toll of prepping, priming and painting an entire house solo over just 10 days, a pace that left little room for rest between stages. The estimated savings compared to hiring a professional crew are her own reported figures, and they should be read as an estimate rather than a guaranteed benchmark, since professional quotes vary widely by region, house size and the condition of the existing paint.
What makes the video stand out from a typical DIY success story is the honesty of the follow-up: rather than presenting the project as an unqualified win, she’s been candid that the compressed timeline and solo labor came with real costs, physically and logistically, that she wouldn’t necessarily choose to repeat given the chance to do it again.
That kind of candor is relatively rare in home-improvement content, where the finished result tends to get most of the attention and the process, especially the parts that didn’t go smoothly, often gets glossed over or left out entirely. Her willingness to name specific regrets gives the story a more complete, useful shape than a simple before-and-after would.
Solo exterior painting is a genuinely demanding undertaking, involving ladder work, sustained physical effort and exposure to the elements over consecutive days, and her experience is a useful reality check against the assumption that any DIY project is automatically the smarter choice simply because it costs less upfront.
The Takeaway
Before committing to a large DIY project purely to save money, weigh the real cost of your own time, physical strain and the risk of burning out partway through against what a professional quote would actually run. A compressed timeline like a 10-day solo paint job can save real money, but it isn’t free, it’s a trade of cash for physical effort and personal time that’s worth being honest with yourself about upfront. If a project of that scale feels overwhelming, consider a middle path, hiring help for the most physically demanding parts while handling the rest yourself.