The toolbox beckons the eager mind and the restless hands. Three decades after the popularized American sitcom Home Improvement starring Tim Allen aired on ABC, people have been inspired and fixated on fixing and renovating their abodes. The glorious rewards of completing a do-it-yourself job at home are as fulfilling as it is engaging for the dedicated homeowner.
If you had a big budget to renovate your home, do you have any idea what you would do? Many people often have a list, and they often include renovating the floors, the kitchen or even adding another bathroom. But you need to know that some renovations are much more feasible, especially since they could increase the value of your home.
True enough, the deliverance of a completed home improvement task marks a hallmarked improvement in the value of the property as well. Still, owning your own place, whether it be in a furnished house and lot unit, a part of a condominium project, or a humble fixer-upper, warrants that inevitable itch to tinker and to tweak. Maintenance, repairs, and renovations, whether whim or necessity, evokes that sense of welcoming upon entering the realms of your dwelling, making it a much more pleasant place to live in.
The houses that we shape and the houses that shape us.
“We shape our buildings, and afterward, our buildings shape us,” British statesman Winston Churchill noted. Furthermore, prominent architect John F. C. Turner wrote that “housing is a verb” and that “taking a creative role in housing yields benefits for all.”
Indeed, the benefits of personalizing the home are undeniable. However, the next best thing to consider is drawing the line on where to put the projects set for one’s intent to finish and the ones to leave to the capable hands of the professionals. American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who was famous for his Prairie style designs, once lamented that it was easier to make changes in the planning stages since you only use an eraser on the drafting table, but you need a sledgehammer on the construction site. Some wonderful ideas come with delight in the planning stages but become hard to install in the actual run. The very reason why some projects are better left for the professionals to work on.
Hammering down the points.
The most obvious way to tell whether you can do a work by yourself without the help of professionals is by identifying whether the work is safe enough to do alone and requires less strain than what is expected. Take into account handling wiring and heavy fixtures such as cables and lighting, gas pipes, and appliance installations that may prove a warranted expert equipped with knowledge and safety gears in dealing with the complexities of how these devices work. Tightening and loosening work is often regarded as the easy ones and falls in the territory of the ones that you may try doing yourself. You can find screw and fixing supplies and buy them in bulk, in case you need to do some repairs in the future.
In other cases, it is a matter of individual scenarios and predispositions. For instance, consider cleaning gutters and drain pipes. Are you comfortable on a ladder? Then go on ahead and pull up the ladder and grab a broom for your gutter. Drain pipes deserve a much preferential touch since it entails heavier work and likely messier work, especially if it affects the interior walls. But, if it’s leaking kitchen pipes, a good old easy DIY tightening of the knobs and bolts would be easy enough. This is to say that if you aren’t up for the task at the back of your mind, do not press yourself at it.
Final building thoughts.
Some noteworthy and often mistaken for trivial home improvement jobs come in simple tasks on paper but would prove that a relished touch of the trained would be better. Jobs such as the unwitting paint application could prove innocent, especially mere tables and chairs. But, if you are moving outside the exterior house, the task could prove draining if not unfit. Most house exterior painting work is laborious because it expects one to be out under the sun’s heat and requires equipment and finesse to be done right, and the paint job would last as expected of it. These are things that only a seasoned worker could provide.
Pat Summit once said that “Success is a project that’s always under construction.” Needless to say, the task of building a bright and cheerful home is a work that never ends but delights the one undertaking it.
