DIYers fall mainly into two camps: those who are doing DIY because they want to learn new skills and gain knowledge of their home – and there really is no better way to understand the idiosyncratic characteristics of a house than by working on it – and those who are self-renovating out of necessity (usually financial) and with varying degrees of reluctance. For this latter group, the question of which DIY jobs they would never do is frequently met with ‘all of them, if I could afford not to’. Happily for them, there are some jobs it could work out cheaper to get a professional to do. Others are too dangerous to try yourself (and all require you to get an asbestos survey before work begins). Some require a skill level that you’re unlikely to master on your first try, meaning unless you want your own home to be a living testament to your gradual increase in proficiency, maybe call in someone who can get a good finish first time.
Here a group of seasoned DIYers share the jobs they just won’t attempt themselves and – if you are really determined to try them anyway – how to do them well.
Work that requires a certificate
‘Anything you need a certificate for, such as gas works and any complex plumbing and electrical works, will need to be certified by a professional anyway, and they will likely just tell you you’ve done it wrong and charge you to fix,’ says Will.
Indeed plumbing is among the tasks that most of us prefer to avoid. ‘If it could harm me or my family, it's just not worth the headache,’ says Tash Redcliffe, who, along with her husband Ben is doing up their Victorian country house @thejollytownhouse. ‘If you end up flooding your house because you’ve taken on a plumbing job that you can’t handle then you’re stuffed and you won’t have the insurance to rectify it.’
Anything to do with your party wall
‘If it could affect your neighbours, you really want to have someone to blame who isn’t you to come and fix it if something goes wrong,’ says Will.
Sanding
It seems so simple, right? Hire a sanding machine, run it over your floorboards – voila! In fact this is one of the jobs you might be better off outsourcing. ‘Sanding floorboards is really labour-intensive, messy and actually quite hard to get a good finish,’ says Emma Jane Palin, interiors stylist and designer turned founder of Our Curated Abode, a DIY store and advice hub. ‘It’s also relatively low cost to get someone to do it and you’re never going to get the finish that someone who does it every day can get.’
Time is also a factor to consider. ‘When we were sanding our upstairs floors it took us four weeks, during which we were sleeping on the sofa, whereas a professional would have done it in two or three days,’ says Akilah Cohen, who documents her north London home renovation on her Instagram @kilahgram.
Added costs in doing it yourself include hiring equipment, especially if you naively spend a bundle renting inadequate tools for the job. ‘In the end we used a specialist company because we discovered the sanders you can get from general high street tool hire places weren’t good enough,’ says Akilah. ‘We found Floor Sander Hire which provides Bona sanders, which seem to be the best, and offered a lot of support. Plus they deliver and pick up, which is great because sanders are heavy and I don’t drive.’
Laying parquet
‘There is only one DIY job that’s gone wrong for us,’ says Tash. ‘There’s a herringbone wood floor in our study upstairs and because it’s an old, wonky house, getting the angles right where it meets the wall was the most frustrating experience. We were measuring forever and none of us could work it out, it was just a nightmare. I’m amazed our marriage survived.’
Tash and Ben ended up having to call in the experts, something Akilah hopes to avoid when she lays parquet in the downstairs of her house. ‘We’ve got a carpenter to do the cuts and edges and we’re going to be laying it in collaboration with him, doing the easy bits, while he’ll be overseeing the job.’ A brilliant compromise, this should save them some labour costs while ensuring there’s enough expertise in the room to get it right first time.
Plastering
You are probably not going to harm anyone if you try your hand at plastering but you are unlikely to get a good finish. It is a skill that really requires experience and practice, so much so that Tash describes it as ‘wizardry’. She is not the only one who defers to professionals. ‘If you want really good results then you’ve got to hire a professional,’ says Emma. ‘I would say even some of the professionals aren’t great at plastering but if you want that high-end finish you need to get someone who knows what they’re doing.’ After all, ‘you can’t hide bad plastering’ points out Akilah.
Painting (without adequate prep)
Painting a room is absolutely something most DIYers can handle themselves. But preparation is probably the 'largest part of the job', says Emma, who frequently sees customers at Our Curated Abode looking to fix bodged paint jobs. ‘They’ll have used wall paint on the woodwork and it’ll be chipping, or they don’t understand what they’re painting on to,’ she says. Those who live in a in a specialist property such as a Georgian home may not realise that they have lime plaster, for example, which needs breathable paint. ‘If you use a modern emulsion on those walls the likelihood is it will just flake off a few weeks later,’ she says. Instead they should be using an old-fashioned linseed oil-based paint which, Emma says, is applied with a very specific technique. ‘Get a skilled decorator in who knows how to treat period buildings. Otherwise chances are you’ll end up spending double the money because if it does go wrong you’ll have to re-buy your paint and probably have to consult the specialist anyway.’
Tiling
A backsplash or small area above a sink should be within the capabilities of most DIYers but for anything more, Emma recommends not just paying a professional, but paying slightly over the odds to get someone really good. ‘I’ve seen amazing tiling and I’ve seen really bad tiling (and that’s just in my own house). It’s worth paying a little bit extra to get the good stuff. Get examples of their previous work to make sure their finishes and standard will match up to your vision.’
And if you’re still determined to tile yourself, think big. ‘Any tiling I do in future I’ll make sure to pick big tiles rather than small ones – it’s the difference between laying five tiles and 500,’ says Will.
Tips for successful DIY
- Play to your strengths, pay to your weaknesses
- Push builders to itemise their costs really thoroughly and then strike a line through anything you can easily do yourself if saving money is a major concern. Or else offer yourself up as a labourer for specialists such as carpenters to save on labour costs
- Get to know your property – the more you understand your home and the less mysterious you can make it, the more likely you are to make smart, appropriate choices
- Don’t let DIY influencers encourage you to be too gung ho. Do lots of research into every job, make sure you have all the right tools and prep prep prep!
- Be realistic about how much time you are able to devote to DIY
- If something is going to take you significantly longer than a professional then it might be worth paying to get it done – especially if you are freelance or paid by the hour. Time is money and your own time has value too
