Why You Should Do It Yourself? Despite what you might think, the main reason people undertake household renovations or construction tasks themselves is not simply to save money (or at least it shouldn’t be). Though it is in many cases possible to save yourself a few bucks by whipping out your tool belt and fitting your new kitchen by yourself, many choose to undertake these projects themselves because of the satisfaction they know they’ll get when the project is done, to learn a new skill or (if you’re anything like me) they are simply a little compulsive and don’t trust anyone else. Let’s take a look at these reasons in a little more detail…
Cost-effective / Save Money OK, so as I said above, it is indeed possible to save a few bucks (or substantial amounts for that matter) by embarking on these projects yourself… let’s take a bookcase as an example, (in my mind) there are x3 ways you can add a bookshelf to your living space. You can go to any furniture store and buy a solid wood, hand-crafted, gold-leaf-treated, dipped in caramel, bookshelf that’s already assembled and have it delivered right to your living room. That’s it, done and dusted; you’ve got your shiny new bookcase. But you’ve spent an arm and a leg in the process. You can give a local carpenter a call and ask him to design and build you one especially. He’ll then come to your home, measure up, sketch a design, go away to source materials, part-build at his workshop, come to your home to fit/assemble and then hand you a whopping bill. Once again, boom, you’ve got yourself a smashing new bookcase… but no longer have a pension plan. Number 3 comes in two parts in my mind, the first option is to nip to ikea buy a generic flatpack bookcase before coming home to spend hours trying to translate the so-called instructions to assemble yourself, once complete you’ve got yourself a nice new bookcase and it hasn’t cost the Earth. OR - and this is without a doubt my favourite of the x3 options, you can actually take the time to DIY… Sketch what you want your design to look like, take some measurements, draw up a plan, get the materials yourself and actually get stuck in! This option is by far my favorite as not only have you got the shiny new bookcase you wanted, you have the satisfaction of knowing that it was your blood, sweat and tears that went into creating it, you’ve saved yourself a few bucks and you’ve learnt a new skill. The benefits really are three-fold.