Once you’ve done your first home repair, you might start getting the idea that you’re capable of anything as long as you have your trusty toolbox and a YouTube video to guide you along. That type of confidence can save you money, but it can also be reckless when you’re dealing with certain kinds of repairs. While hiring a pro might seem like last resort, if you’re dealing with a repair in any of the following areas then you may better off skipping the DIY on this one.
1. Plumbing
How hard can a plumbing job be? I mean, it’s just pipes, right? Wrong. Believe it or not, there’s a lot that goes into constructing and repairing a plumbing system, so anything beyond a simple plunging might be better left to a plumber. If you make a mistake and one of the pipes bursts or cracks, you could be dealing with an even costlier problem in the form of water damage repair. You can find the cheapest local plumbers in your area by searching for the name of your city followed by “plumber” (i.e. – Tulsa plumber).
2. Electrical Work
Anything that has electricity running through it should not be touched by an amateur, no matter how much researching and video watching you’ve done. Electricians spend four years of their life learning how to perform their job safely and effectively. Reading a quick guide and buying a few tools does not qualify you to perform jobs that are meant to be done by an electrician.
3. Roofing
A lot of amateur do-it-yourselfers try to patch up roof leaks using caulk and other shoddy materials. This is never a good idea because it can wind up causing more damage than you started with. Temporary patches might seem like a quick solution, but you could be making the problem worse, and then when you finally do pay someone to fix it, the job will cost more than it would have. Of course, getting up on your roof can be dangerous in itself because about a third of all construction fatalities are caused by workers falling from roofs, and those are people who are trained to be up there.
4. Replacing Garage Door Springs
You might be wondering why you shouldn’t repair your garage door springs, as it seems like an easy enough job for the average DIYer. The problem is, the springs are coiled up under a lot of pressure, and if you release that tension the wrong way the spring could fly off and hurt you very badly or damage something in your garage. Plus, if the garage door comes crashing down, you don’t want to be underneath it – those things are a lot heavier than they look.
5. Sometimes the Cost of Hiring a Pro is Worth it
There’s one thing that most DIYers have in common – they simply don’t want to spend the money paying someone else to do labor that they think they can do themselves. In the above cases, it’s either not safe or not wise to perform these repairs because in the long run you could wind up paying more by messing up the work.