Jeff Patterson, Remodeler and Home-Repair Educator
Through social media shorts, this home-repair tutor teaches the basics of fixing and remodeling bathrooms.
With a pleasantly relaxed demeanor, Jeff Patterson says it was his experience as a first-time home buyer that piqued his interest in remodeling work. Later, after acquiring rental properties in the greater Pittsburgh area, he came to fully appreciate the value of building knowledge and skills. Finding quality subcontractors proved challenging. “That’s when I began learning to do things myself, but it wasn’t my thing,” he recalls. “I wasn’t in the trades.”
Jeff worked in pharmaceuticals for years—and finding remodeling work interesting is a far cry from doing it as a full-time career. But for Jeff, it’s straightforward: “Sometimes you start doing something and realize you have a passion for it and a curiosity for how it works. The more curious I got, the more aspects of remodeling I wanted to learn.” And he did—from carpentry to plumbing to waterproofing to installing tiles.
Jeff’s business model is twofold. It includes the 13-year-old Home Repair Tutor, which provides free online video instruction; and Bonafide Bathrooms, a remodeling division serving private local clients. The beauty of this approach is that his on-site work supplies content for his educational videos.
Though hesitant to share the first how-to video he made, Jeff took the plunge and was rewarded with lots of positive feedback and questions. Now, as a one-man operation handling video creation and editing, he makes daily shorts for social media—a platform he finds compatible with his mission to give back to society at large.
Why bathrooms specifically? “They are spaces that everybody uses, so they undergo a ton of wear and tear,” Jeff explains. “If you are going to remodel a bathroom, you need to make it as bulletproof as possible; otherwise there will be problems down the road.” He notes, too, that working on bathrooms requires skills applicable to other parts of a house, like the kitchen and laundry room.
Jeff’s ultimate message is simple but meaningful: “Anybody can learn at any point in their life—it’s never too late.”
— Kiley Jacques; senior editor, Green Building Advisor
From Fine Homebuilding #329
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