When DIY Isn’t Worth It

Growing up, we weren’t rich by any means, but we weren’t poor either… I guess we could have been considered lower middle class. Anyway, to save money, my mom pinched pennies (No Name Brand food, etc.) and my dad did stuff around the house. His thinking was “Why should I pay somebody else to do it when I can do it myself”, and I agree, to an extent.

My father was a very handy guy, but he didn’t know everything, and he certainly didn’t look into future requirements and costs when he put stuff together. For instance, one year, he decided to take the empty spot under one half of our deck and create a storage area out of it. Sounds like a plan right? It’s not being used, let’s put it to use. Of course, he wanted to make it accessible from the basement in the house so we could put firewood in there and access it without going into the blistering cold winters.

He decided that it would be best to enclose the outside foyer at the back door, essentially extending out basement hallway by about 10 feet, to give us more room there and provide an area to access the new storage area he was planning. It was a great idea, and it sounded sane at the time, until winter hit.

Because he extended the basement hallway into the garage, and did not make the wall standard width, we ended up having to close this area off from the rest of the house due to the added cold that was coming in from this area. It didn’t really seem like an issue in the middle of summer, but it sure came back to frost-bite us during November!

While we saved money on the initial construction costs, it cost more than the original quote from a contractor in the end when we had to go back and redo things (It was still done DYI, but with more insight and costs). My new motto for DIY is ‘Whats is going to cost me later?’. If I think I can do it myself, I look at all the possible problems and costs I could incur in the future before making a decision.

Saving money is great, but you always have to weigh the professional costs against the DIY costs from all angles. Don’t stop doing it yourself… unless it will cost you more in tools and resources than to hire a professional!