Doing things yourself, especially home repairs, can be a big money saver. The main reason it can be a big money-saver, of course, is because you're putting your own labor into the job rather than paying someone else to do it for you.
I didn't say that it's definitely a big money-saver. A home repair could end up costing more to do it yourself than to have a professional come in to do it, for a number of reasons:
- The repair doesn't last, and must be fixed again. There's usually a few right ways to fix something, and many wrong ways to fix something. Choosing one of those wrong ways will end up costing.
- The repair doesn't last, and ends up doing a lot of collateral damage. Failed repair jobs can just break, or they can break spectacularly and flood the entire county or level a city block. (Well, maybe not that bad, but they could damage a wall or floor, or flood a basement or crawl space.)
- The repair ends up taking several tries, or several trips to the hardware store. This is probably an acceptable level of costing more, because the repair does end up getting done.
We're in the process of getting our old house ready for someone else to live in it. There were a number of plumbing things that we let slide, but for the sake of maximizing the property's value, we want to fix them up. I eventually tackled the flush valve in my new home's toilet, and carried that experience to fix one of the toilets in our old home. Looks like I've won that one.
But there were others that I tried to fix that I felt were beyond what I wanted to tackle myself. Some of the under-the-sink stop valves (ones that control the hot and cold water to the faucet above) were leaking a bit. I didn't think replacing those would be a huge issue, but when I went to the main house water shut-off in the crawl space, I found that it wasn't shutting off all the way. Now, replacing that was something beyond what I was comfortable with. That's one of those things that should be done right. We spent a fair bit of money remediating moisture in the crawl space, and want to keep it dry down there.
So, I found a plumber who could help me with this task. As it turned out, replacing the stop valves under the sink would have been more work than I had thought, so it's just as well I brought in a pro.
DIY projects only pay off if they're executed correctly. If failure would be costly, there's no shame in hiring an expert.
(Thanks to Amateur Asset Allocator for including this post in the Carnival of Personal Finance!)
Great article. As a district manager for a building materials company, I handle all the “escalated” complaints from customers and 99.99999% of them stem from installation (we’re cash and carry and don’t offer installation services).
The first key is to follow all directions and ASK if you’re unsure. Heck, ask to make sure even if you know what you’re doing!
Second, consider hiring a contractor as a consultant. You don’t have to pay him to do the job, but be willing to pay him $40 for some really good advice and tips.
If you do go the contractor route, NEVER EVER EVER pay 100% up front. Pay one third when he starts, one third at the halfway point, and the final third when your satisfied that the job is complete.
I like Ron’s advice about hiring as a consultant. Also, there is a ton of information on the web now about how to do pretty much anything. Videos are a huge help. So you may be intimidated by a task at first, but if you take the time to research how to accomplish it, you may be pleasantly surprised at how simple it is!