Should You DIY that Home Improvement, or Hire a Pro?
When you’re a homeowner, you’re the one responsible for repairs, maintenance, and home improvements. And they can get expensive — the average homeowner spends $1,105 on home maintenance each year, and about 30 percent of homeowners are forced to spend an average of $1,206 on an emergency repair in any given year.
If you’re handy, you could keep a lot of that money in the bank by saving on labor costs. Even if you’re not very handy, you can still build skills by doing simple home repairs and maintenance chores with help from online tutorials. As time goes by and you gain confidence and experience, you can tackle bigger and more complex jobs.
For those jobs that are beyond your skill set, you can use a home services company like Candu Home to find just the right service professional for the job. But how do you know which jobs are okay to take on yourself, and which you should hire someone for? No matter what level of experience you have at home repair and maintenance, it’s important to know your limitations, but that’s just part of the equation. Hiring someone to do a home repair or improvement can be worth the money if you care about getting the job done fast, getting a higher quality of work, or adhering to safety standards.
When to Do It Yourself
Usually, homeowners want to do their own home repairs to save money, although some enjoy painting, carpentry, or other similar tasks. If you want to do your home repairs and renovations because you enjoy that kind of work, you’ll get more out of it than just saving money, which is a mark in favor of handling it yourself.
As you’re building experience with home renovation work, stick to jobs that are small and simple enough to learn quickly. You can learn how to do just about any home repair or renovation online, and many jobs — restoring a deck, installing a paver patio, painting a front door, or changing a toilet, for example — are simple enough for even a beginner to do if you’re willing to learn all the steps and have the patience to stick with the project even when you make mistakes. You should also be willing to accept that your work won’t be perfect, at least at first. But if you want to do it perfectly then Paver Installer Las Vegas can be a perfect choice.
When to Hire a Pro
Usually, you’ll need to call professionals for specialized work, like plumbing, electrical, masonry, and carpentry. If you can’t learn the skills needed quickly, or you’re just not quite there yet, then the job is too complex for you. Larger jobs tend to have more potential for complexity. And even if you’re capable of doing some parts of the job, like painting and cleanup, you should still hire professionals at least for those parts of the job that require their skills.
Even if a large job doesn’t require skills, you may find that the amount of money you save by doing the work yourself isn’t worth the time you’d need to complete the work. You can assume that, as an amateur, you’ll probably take longer to complete the work than a professional would need. Sometimes, hiring a pro means getting done in a week an amount of work that would take you several months of evenings and weekends to complete yourself. For labor-intensive jobs, like installing a new sod lawn or putting in a paver patio, hiring a pro can mean saving your back as well as your time, even if you can technically do the work yourself. Many homeowners also prefer to pay for a higher quality of work than they can produce themselves.
If a job requires a permit, it’s a good idea to hire a professional who not only knows how to get that permit, but how to complete the project so that it conforms to local building codes. If you could get hurt doing a job, it’s best left to the pros — that means it’s best to hire someone for any job that requires extensive electrical work or roofing work. And if messing up the job could damage your home or create unsafe conditions, you should definitely call in a pro. For example, new plumbing installed improperly could slowly leak, waterlogging walls and floors and eventually leading to their collapse.
Doing your own home improvements can really help you keep costs down, but it’s not always the right call. Sometimes, it’s worth paying more to have the job by a professional. It may be a little harder on the wallet, but you’ll get the work done faster, and most likely get better results, too.
