Five Home Renovations You Should Never Do Yourself

When you decide to complete a home renovation project yourself, the payoff is often the savings you can make by bypassing labor costs. But there are some projects that are simply not worth doing on your own. Some of them can cost you more in the long run and look terrible if done incorrectly, while others are downright dangerous. Here are the tasks you should hire a professional for, for the sake of your wallet and your safety.

Electric installation work

Doing electrical work yourself unless you have a lot of experience (and can have a licensed electrician check your work) is a bad idea. Besides the dangers, doing the wiring yourself can end up costing a lot of money. According to the Electrical Safety Foundation , electrical fires cause $1.3 billion in property damage each year. While unplugging a light fixture or switch cover is well within the scope of a DIY project, any wiring that runs through a wall into an electrical box, as well as any wiring for appliance wiring systems, should be left to a professional. avoid costly mistakes.

Pipe repair

Fixing a pipe in an emergency is one thing, but for long-term repairs you need to hire a professional plumber. If your pipes have a crack or hole, a quick patch will only be a temporary solution. The cost of a leak seeping into your walls or floors is much higher than the cost of having a professional fix the pipe before water damage occurs. Since repairing a water damaged home costs on average between $1,300 and $5,600, and hiring a plumber to repair a pipe costs on average around $300, the savings when hiring a professional are obvious.

Laying tiles

Tiling a backsplash can work if you have the patience, but tiling an entire floor with traditional tile and grout isn’t always a good idea. Besides the skills required to lay tiles correctly, trim tiles to fit doorways and other obstructions, and clean grout properly so as not to leave sand marks on the surface of the tiles, laying tiles takes time. If you’re doing it yourself, plan to spend more than one day working on the floor, and then let the grout cure for at least 24 hours after laying the tiles before walking on the floor to avoid cracking. Even if you have the patience, proper installation of tile requires a level surface, a tile board or underlayment, and some installation planning. Between removing the debris, preparing the new tile, and laying the tile itself, hiring a professional to repair tile that you weren’t able to finish yourself can cost up to $12 per square foot. will cost about $6 per square foot to begin with.

Window replacement

Replacing your windows can save you money in the long run, but trying to do it yourself is not a good idea. First, you’ll need to remove the old windows, which in itself can be a daunting task without the right tools. Once you remove the old windows, the windows themselves will cost on average between $200 and $800 each, and the tools to install them can cost around $400. Repairing water damage due to improperly installed windows can cost up to $5,000. Hiring a professional costs an average of $300 per window. Since proper installation is critical, you should not attempt this project yourself unless you have experience.

Demolition of walls

While it’s the most fun part of any DIY home show, tearing down walls isn’t the best DIY project. First of all, it’s dangerous. Unless you have someone with engineering knowledge to tell you whether a wall is load-bearing, you shouldn’t risk tearing it down yourself. Even if you are sure that the wall is not load-bearing, demolition is dirty, hard work and not nearly as fun as it seems on TV. Renting a dumpster for trash removal costs on average about $440, and that doesn’t include dumpster removal. You can also expect huge repair bills running into the thousands if you accidentally knock down a load-bearing wall. Hiring a professional to remove a wall costs about $3,100, although load-bearing walls cost more. This price seems like a good deal when you consider the cost of doing a poor DIY repair.