If you’re a homeowner who is good at DIY and looking to spruce up your home, then you might be asking yourself whether you should tackle home jobs yourself or whether you should hire a professional instead? If you’re willing to take on jobs yourself, you can do a fair amount yourself, but there are some projects that are best left to the professionals.
DIY: Buy Materials
An easy thing that anyone, even with little DIY experience, can do is buying their own project materials, equipment, and appliances. You can get started on buying things like tiles, cabinetry, and doors yourself.
You can ask your contractor for recommendations for the best places to buy materials at a good price. Expert advice on choosing can be useful, but do the buying yourself. Ask your architect for advice about how much or what size you need. Many homeowners make the mistake of not ordering enough materials for renovations.
Go Pro: Gas, Electricity, and Plumbing
Will your renovation project involve work on the gas, plumbing, or electrical? These jobs require a professional. This is partly because some of this kind of work requires particular permits. Getting the right permits can be complex and time-consuming, and this need will be much easier done by an architect and expediter.
If you get it wrong, work on these areas can be very expensive to put right, and you might find yourself forking out for water damage restoration after your attempts at moving your pipes have gone horribly wrong.
Go Pro: Structural Repairs
You should stay away from making any structural changes to the house yourself. Older homes might have structural wear that will need to be worked on by a professional architect and a contractor, or a structural engineer.
If your house was divided into multiple units at some point, then there may well be repairs that need to be done on the structure of the home. If you’re working on an older property in your renovations, you need to be prepared for some surprises. You never what you might find when you start work. Whatever you come across, you will need the proper help to handle it so you don’t do further damage to the property.
DIY: Light Demolition
Nobody ought to take a sledgehammer to their own walls without a professional, but if you need some light demolition done, then this is possible to do to yourself without causing too many problems. Leave your walls alone, but you can do things like pulling out old cabinets, appliances, fixtures, tiles, moldings, floorboards, or carpeting without a professional.
Do this carefully, piece by piece, and avoid structural jobs. If you have a lot of light demo work that needs doing, why not ask some friends to help you. After this work is finished, call a contractor so they can take over the work of anything structural, such as knocking out walls. You will need a team for large-scale demolition projects so they’re done safely and correctly.
