If you are good at DIY, it is a lot cheaper to do your home maintenance work yourself than pay a professional to do it. Things such as painting, tiling or carpet laying are simple tasks to carry out, and they can improve your home immensely. However, there are some tasks you should never carry out without the help of a professional. Here are the top four maintenance tasks you shouldn’t tackle as a DIY project.
Roofing
Roofing can seem quite easy. It is easy to see the signs of damage so you climb a ladder and patch up the roof using something you brought in a DIY store, right? However, you can cause more damage than you fix if you do not know what you are doing. At best, you are likely to find a temporary fix to a problem that will keep coming back. The worst-case scenario is that you must spend a lot more money than you might have done getting someone to fix the damage you have caused yourself. If you do not know how to stay safe on a roof, there is also the possibility of falling off and causing yourself serious injury. Roofing is best left to the professionals.
Electrics
You should never touch electrics if you are not a qualified professional. Electricity is dangerous and you run the risk of injuring yourself badly or even killing yourself if you do not know what you are doing. Even if the work you have carried out looks ok, there is a chance of you overloading the system and causing a fire later. It is not worth running the risk of putting yourself and your family in danger just to save a few dollars, so call an expert and don’t touch it yourself.
Plumbing
Some plumbing jobs are relatively simple, but this, unfortunately, leads people to a false sense of security that could be catastrophic for them and their homes. Causing a flood in your home will cause thousands of dollars of damage, and even a slow leak could cost you a lot of money if you do not notice it for a long time. For large-scale plumbing work, it is better to pay someone else to do the work than do it yourself.
Knocking Down Walls
There is something very satisfying about the idea of knocking down a wall with a sledgehammer. However, this feeling will soon fade if the ceiling collapses on top of you. There is a huge risk of a dangerous accident if you do not know what you are doing. You can not be sure if the wall is load-bearing unless you hire an expert to check. They will know the best ways of carrying out the task and if you need to use any other way of loading the weight of the house elsewhere. You could end up in a pile of rubble or worse if you attempt to do this yourself.
If in doubt, it is better to stick to simple DIY tasks and leave the rest to the professionals.