Without Skill DIY Projects Will Make You Question Your Sanity

If You Want a Thing Done Well, Do It Yourself
Choosing to do a DIY project can be motivated by many different factors. Maybe you are on a tight budget, you like to do things on your own, or you are trying to prove to your wife that you are just as skilled as the professional. It starts out innocent enough. You're just a homeowner with a small toolbox and a dream to be self-sufficient. The next thing you know, you're in a Home Depot nightmare with a cart full of tools and supplies that cost twice as much as the handyman was going to charge you. At least the How-To videos you pull up on YouTube aren't going to cost you anything.

Don't Open that Can of Worms

The biggest problem with any DIY project is that they always seem to be a lot more difficult than they appear in the beginning. Like an onion, the problems just seem to be layered on top of each other, one after another. I once bought a house, and it had a wobbly toilet. I decided that I should change the old hardware holding it to the floor. I then noticed that the hardware coming through floor was bad, so I decided to pull the toilet out to change the bolts coming out of the floor. I realized that there had been a leak, and the subfloor had rotted once the toilet had been lifted off of the floor. Needless to say, a quick and easy job that needed four nuts to be changed out turned into a week-long bathroom renovation.

Damage Control

Hopefully, the only thing that gets damaged in a DIY job is your pride. Luckily any mistakes you made on one DIY project can usually be fixed by another DIY project. YouTube is a great resource for learning how to do anything from patching a hole in your drywall to flushing the coolant system of a 1998 Jeep Wrangler (video below). Just remember to always "measure twice so you can cut once." Otherwise, you may find that you "measure once and cuss twice."

Is DIY really worth it? That depends. On the one hand when people compliment your new subway tile in the kitchen you can brag about you installed it yourself. On the other hand, by the time you were finishing buying supplies, hardware, and specialty tools you could have paid the pro twice his asking price.