Do It Yourself?

When it comes to home remodel and renovation, should you “do-it-yourself”?

Over the years I have had the opportunity to see a lot of do-it-yourself projects. Some look real nice and others scream amateur. If you are going to live with it and don’t care, then amateur is okay.

What about when you get ready to sell your house? That’s when the less than perfect job can become a liability. If a prospective buyer, looking at the surface sees that it wasn’t a professional who did the work, they may wonder what is going on with plumbing and electrical hidden inside the walls.

Sometimes the work doesn’t hold up very well. I have seen a lot of tile jobs, both floor and wall, suffering from premature failure. There are paint jobs that have almost as much paint on the surrounding areas as on the intended walls. In the long run, those types of jobs may end up costing you more than if you had went with a professional in the first place.

As a handyman, I do a very wide range of jobs. There are many times I turn down work because I know that it’s going to require someone else with the skill to do it right. Sometimes that may require the swallowing of pride but I would rather do that than have a job end up not being done right or not looking right. The reality is that no one can do everything.

Just today, I ended up declining some tasks for a customer I was working for. One was a drywall repair on a ceiling. If it was not done perfect, it would always show. I thought it would be better they get a drywall expert so it was done right the first time. If a repair is not done right it can be very hard to do a second time.

So there are some things to think about as you consider do-it-yourself work. Make sure you have the right skill and equipment. Speaking of equipment, there is a big difference between a $2.00 and $20.00 paint brush. Many times that bit of advice would have made the difference between a good and horrible paint job.

Philip