A lot of people like to tinker with various stuff around the house, do some minor DIY projects, fix a thing or two and that’s fine. Not only is it fine, being handy is quite good. You can never be too-skilled and versatile. However, certain things around the house are probably best left to professionals. It’s not that you can’t learn how to do various repairs, but if you’re inexperienced on the matter, there could be some serious risks involved. In some cases, a badly done job could lead to additional problems or even injuries. On that note, here are some of the home repairs that you should never do yourself.
1. Electrical Repairs
As you could probably assume – the first thing on the list of things you shouldn’t be doing yourself is any kind of electrical repairs. Of course, by this we don’t mean replacing a lightbulb, a light switch or an electrical socket – we’re not talking about those kinds of repairs. However, that is just about it as far as you should go with electrical jobs and repairs around the house.
Anything more complicated than that should be done by professional. If not – you’re risking it way too much than you should do. All the advanced wiring and rest of the electrical work should not be done by enthusiastic DIY-ers. When dealing with such things you’re risking personal injury, property damage and even death.
Luckily, in a lot of places around the world, you are legally obligated to hire a licensed electrician to perform these kinds of repairs or installations, so whether you like it or not – you have to call a pro.
2. Basement Renovations (Underpinning)
Basement renovations are particularly popular within the DIY community and for a very obvious reason. The basement is not something that you showcase a lot of times. It’s a part of the house that is not used that often and even if you mess things up – who’s going to know? You can easily cover up your mistakes and many use basement as their training ground. Now, we don’t discourage you from practising painting the walls in the basement, however, underpinning is something you should never do all by yourself.
Underpinning is a process of digging out the basement floor to make it larger. It’s done for either improving the structural integrity of the house or just to expand living space. Whatever the case may be – this job should always be done by the professionals. Otherwise, you’re risking damaging the structure of your house and spending tens of thousands of dollars to repair damages or even worse – you’re risking your life. There have been reports of houses collapsing during this process and you certainly wouldn’t want that to happen.
3. Plumbing Repairs
Plumbing problems are easily one of the most common and annoying ones you can experience in your home. According to handymannearme.london, clogged drains and leaky faucets are the most common, yet most ignored household issues. A constantly dripping faucet might one of the worst sounds a human can experience and even with that being the case – we tend not to fix it right away.
Instead, we wait for bigger problems to arise and then we decide it’s time to take matters into our own hands. However, what we seem to forget that leaky pipes and leaky faucet are not the same. Even a toddler could replace a faulty faucet or unclog the drain, but other than that – you’re pretty much dependent on the plumber.
Unlike previously mentioned repairs, these aren’t life-threatening, but they are, however, a potentially major problem for your wallet. If you mess something up, you’re risking flood, structural damage to your home and more. When you take that into consideration, it’s probably best to spend a few bucks on a plumber than thousands on home repairs.
4. Roofing Repairs
It’s starting to look like the leaks might be our worst enemy, isn’t it? Roof leaks are some of those issues that we might not catch up on right away, so they tend to do a little bit of damage first. However, even then, most people just decide to patch things up with some caulk, maybe replace individual tiles or shingles and decide that’s about enough.
Naturally, that’s nowhere near enough and before you know it – your attic is a mess, the roof is in a bad shape, you’ve spent a fortune on caulk and now you have to give a handyman a call. Instead of following in those footsteps, what you should probably do when you notice a roof leak is just dial up a pro and have them deal with it the proper way. You’ll save so much time, effort and money this way.
5. Tearing Walls Down
We’ve all seen numerous home renovation shows or even movie scenes where someone grabs a hammer, puts on a pair of goggles and just goes bonkers on drywall. Granted, that is a lot of fun, especially if you’re dealing with some problems. It doesn’t get much more relaxing than smashing stuff to pieces. However, what you need to understand is that you can’t just whip out a hammer and start tearing down walls at will. Some of the walls in your house are absolutely vital to your house’s structural integrity. So, unless you want to spend a fortune on repairs or even a new home –we’d advise not taking up a hammer until the expert has assessed the home’s construction.
6. Gas Appliance Repairs
Just like it was the case with the electrical stuff, tinkering with gas appliances would not be the wisest decision, to say the least. The risk is just way too high. Any error could turn out to be way more costly than you could ever imagine. Even if you do everything by the book, a simple error due to inexperience could lead to gas leaks, fire, explosions and in the worst-case scenario – death.
So, if you have any problems with the furnace, oven or anything else that runs on gas – call a professional. The cons of DIY simply outweigh the pros in this case.
What have we learned from this? Well, you could say that the bottom line is this – if you haven’t done this before and if a possible error could cause damage to your property or a serious injury to you or your loved ones – just don’t do it. Pick up the phone and let professionals handle the business. Save the DIY-ing for a bird feeder or a new wooden desk for the office.
