Do-It-Yourself Projects Can be Darn Daunting
posted on 29 August 2011 | posted in
Home and Garden
Sometimes you have to make a tough decision about whether hiring a contractor makes sense. In these tough economic times, there isn’t a lot of extra money for those little do-it-yourself projects that are piling up around the house. Some jobs can be tackled by amateurs more easily than others, such as painting, installing blinds or even pulling up or laying carpet. However, areas such as plumbing or electricity can be daunting, so it might be best to leave those jobs to professionals. Also the jobs where you need to know your hardwoods from your softwoods - where sheer experience is necessary - you have to hand those to the professionals. I found that out the hard way, when I decided it was not going to be very difficult to replace some plumbing components under the kitchen sink. How tough could it be? Turn of the water, unscrew the old pipe and screw on the new one. Maybe 30 minutes of work at the most, right? Wrong! This do-it-yourself project turned out to be a nightmare. In addition to the $29 I spent on the replacement parts, I ended up shelling out an additional $375 when I accidentally broke of an adjoining pipe and punched a hole in a tube that somehow connected to the dishwasher. After cleaning up buckets of water that spilled onto the floor, I realized that I needed to call in a plumber to fix the original problem and repair the rest of the mess I made. In the future, I think I will keep my do-it-yourself projects to painting walls and pulling up carpets. I refuse to touch another plumbing project and I won’t even go near the circuit breakers. Sometimes money is well spent, even though it doesn’t seem like you’re buying anything tangible!
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