With social distancing protocols enforced, hiring someone to renovate, repair, or improve parts of your home can be difficult. You might put yourself at risk, and workers are put at risk too. That’s why DIYing is a popular choice right now.
Some claim that DIY projects can help reduce costs and can assure you that your home is in good hands since you’re doing everything yourself. It may be a great option for doing small-scale projects, such as painting walls or installing hanging shelves. But for other more intensive home renovation tasks, is DIY really worth it?
Find out why you might consider skipping the DIY route and letting the experts handle the job instead.
Higher Costs
If you want to DIY your home renovations to save money, you might have to re-evaluate and check on the costs before you start. While you can save on labor costs, DIY projects can potentially be more expensive on your end.
If you will be doing all the work, you’ll have to buy all the needed tools and materials. For example, say some of your home improvement projects involve woodwork, such as creating personalized cabinets or installing wall panels. To accomplish these projects, you’ll need to buy cutting tools, an electric sander, safety clothing, and so on. Altogether, these tools can cost you a lot.
Thus, in some cases, hiring a professional will be more practical since they already have the right tools and materials to use. This way, you’ll save more money and won’t end up buying power tools, which you’ll probably only use once or twice.
Time-consuming Tasks
Some home renovation projects look easy that you can do them in less than an hour, especially given the way they are shown in online videos and TV. But these projects can take a lot of time.
For example, let’s say that you need to change or fix the plumbing in the kitchen or the bathroom. This task sounds easy; you simply need to unscrew pipes, remove them, then install the replacement. But this process actually takes more steps.
Even though you watch a lot of tutorial videos, if you’re not familiar with the task, it will take a lot of time to complete. You might also end up missing some important steps. So you’ll have to redo the entire process and spend even more time on a single task.
Safety
Safety during and after renovation is another concern in doing DIY projects. Sure, they may look easy in videos online or on TV. But doing them in real life is a different story. In a survey of 2,000 respondents, six percent stated that they got injured while DIYing. Some common DIY injuries include skin lacerations and eye injuries.
You might forget safety tools when you start renovating your home since, well, some of them are quite easy to miss. Some examples are gloves, goggles, and hearing protection, such as earplugs or noise-canceling headphones. Or even if you do have these things, they may not be good enough to protect you, and still end up getting hurt.
Leaving the home renovation projects to the experts is a good idea to keep yourself safe. After all, they’re the experts, so they’ll know exactly what to do and use to keep themselves safe while working.
Disappointing Outcome
Many people choose to DIY for home improvements because of the satisfaction of creating something on their own or completing a task they didn’t know they could.
But sometimes, no matter how hard you work to successfully complete your home repair or improvement on your own, you don’t get the result you expect. This is the case for many people who chose to DIY their homes. For instance, 55% of survey respondents said that they don’t like how their DIY home improvement looked.
If you don’t like the outcome of your home renovation project, then you might have to call an expert to fix your mistakes. This goes back to the first reason not to DIY: cost. Disappointing results mean you’ll have to spend twice on renovating your home. You can avoid this mistake by going to the experts on the get-go.
You can execute some home renovation tasks on your own. But for bigger projects, especially those that involve power tools and other equipment you’re unfamiliar with, you’ll want to call for help from professionals instead. Doing so will help you save some money, keep yourself safe, and save yourself from disappointment or regret.
