Avoiding a Do It Yourself (DIY) disaster.
Do it yourself projects are a great way to spruce up your house here and there. The Lawhead Team would like to share some do it yourself tips to make sure the job gets done correctly – all disasters avoided.
Some of us figure out our talents early in life; others take longer. But for the majority of us, those talents have nothing whatsoever to do with the construction sciences, so to speak. Nonetheless, tight budgets and hours of home improvement television watching, shelter magazine perusing and Pinterest board-fixating have stirred up the jones to do-it-yourself in many a homeowner. The widespread perceptions that contractors charge exorbitant amounts and are difficult to manage have only increased the sense that doing home improvement projects ourselves seem like the way to go.
The fact is, there are many home projects that are fun and smart for a home owner to try their hand at. But do it yourself project veterans can attest: do it yourself is by no means the no-brainer way to get every type of home project checked off your to-do list. In fact, a bad project can turn your experience of your home from an exciting project to a mortifying money-pit in the blink of an eye. Fortunately, whether your home improvement project goes swimmingly or scarily is well within your control from the very beginning – and hinges largely on making the right decision for a given project about whether to hire a contractor or go it on your own.
Here are seven questions to ask yourself as part of that decision-making process, in order to avoid a do it yourself disaster:
1. What’s the project? Define the do it yourself project, in writing, as completely as possible. This will equip you from the very start to outsource some or all of a project that is beyond your skill set, rather than running to a contractor in a panic in the middle of a project (when you’d certainly be charged a panic premium price). Depending on your aptitude level and the time you have, what seems at first glance to be a highly DIY-able room refresh with paint and new wood floors can snowball beyond the realm of reasonable DIY-dom if you add in a lighting or plumbing project.
To do this, sit with your project, your magazines or your Pinboards for a few days, weeks or even months, keeping a running list of the things you want included in your project as you live in your house and your desired post-project lifestyle changes come to mind.
2. Does your do it yourself project require permits? Generally speaking, electrical, plumbing, major renovations, erecting new walls and structures and adding square footage are all projects highly likely to require permits. Hint: if you use the word “gut” when describing what you’re planning to your friends and relatives, chances are good you’ll need a permit. If you’re not sure, a quick website visit or phone call to your City’s Building Services or Building Permits Division should clear things up.
Building code requirements can be exceedingly arcane, and the process of applying for and obtaining permits if you’re not well versed in them can be tedious, stressful and time-consuming. It can also be full of unsuspected pitfalls, like doing one home improvement that triggers a City requirement to add a slew of new outlets or a new sewer line.
Call the city and/or talk to a couple of licensed contractors as soon as you’ve fully defined your do it yourself project – but before you’ve started any work – and get a good sense for whether it will require permits to stay in good graces with the City.
Cities are required to grant permits to homeowners, but the more complicated the permitting process gets for a given project, the more sensible it becomes to have a professional contractor or at least a professional permit expediter involved to avoid running afoul of the city, incurring penalties for unpermitted work and to maximize your ability to get an increased resale value for your home as a result of the upgrades.
3. Are there health and safety issues? High decks (i.e., decks, balconies and similar structures that are tall enough that a collapse would cause injuries to those standing on it), additions and gas/electrical work are things home owners should rarely do on their own. Now, it doesn’t mean you can’t install track lights or change a light switch to a dimmer. Rather, if you’re doing work in these categories beyond that level, calling a contractor can avoid a disastrous outcome.
4. What are the relative hard costs? Just because you can do a project do it yourself, doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily the smart thing to do. It also doesn’t mean that the hard, financial costs of doing it yourself are necessarily much cheaper than hiring a professional.
Don’t automatically assume that doing a job yourself is the cheap route to go, or that it will save you scads of cash. Until you’ve actually gotten 3 bids from reputable contractors or vendors, based on the full scope of the job, and have compared that with the cash you’d spend to do it yourself, you cannot know for certain which is the less expensive way to go. They might qualify for bulk discounts on materials that you can’t get, and you might have to rent a truck, equipment or tools that they already own. In any event, calling contractors out can be educational in terms of understanding every element of the job and troubleshooting things you might not otherwise have anticipated.
So, unless you’re uber-handy and just love to do projects, or know for certain the project will be uber-cheap for you to do, get a few pros to come out and give you real bids for what it would cost (including supplies, labor, any subcontracting, permits – soup-to-nuts), and compare that to your own do it yourself cost estimate.
5. What are the relative soft costs? Cash is just the beginning of the resources required to get a home improvement project done. They also take time – which some might see as opportunity costs. Ask yourself the question: what could I do with the time I’ll have to spend on this project?
There are also the energetic and emotional resources involved. Some people simply have sharp mechanical and logistical aptitudes, have the spare time and love to use it bettering their homes and have infinite patience for figuring out workarounds when the project doesn’t go as planned.
6. Is it really DIY-able? Remember, the ‘Y’ in do it yourself stands for YOURself. The decision whether to do it yourself or call a contractor in for a job is not based on whether your Dad, your neighbor down the street or Bob Vila made a similar project look simple. Rather, it needs to be made based on your own, personal:
- skill and experience level
- aptitude for whatever sort of work you’re completing
- patience level
- frustrate-ability
- spare time available for the job, etc.
If you’re not excited about the prospect of doing the project, and you can afford to have someone else do it, don’t let the wanna-be handypeople in your life talk you into biting off more than you can chew.
7. What could go wrong? If your project is uber-simple, like replacing a toilet or painting a wall, there are a limited number of worst-case scenarios which might be annoying and inconvenient, but are far from the end of the world. The kitty-cat wallpaper might be harder to get off than you thought – that sort of thing. But as the project grows larger in scope or more complex, the more potentially disastrous your worst-case scenarios are – and the more costly calling someone in to fix a DIY-gone-wrong will be.
When it comes to home improvement projects, the many moving pieces and relative inexperience of the average home owner suggest that an abundance of caution is just plain old smart. If your project’s do it yourself worst-case scenarios conjure up visions of bodily harm to your family members, buckets catching the rain or virtually anything caving in think long and hard before you take it on yourself, versus calling in a pro.