TODAY’S HOMEOWNER’S 5 BEST DIY HOME-IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS

A recent Today’s Homeowner survey found that nine in 10 American homeowners have home-improvement projects planned for 2023, and many are thinking of DIY-ing these projects. This study researched 19 common home-improvement projects and ranked them based on six factors, including average time to DIY, cost savings of DIY vs. hiring a professional, level of skill required to complete the task, potential safety hazards, level of damage risk to your home or materials, and overall project feasibility. From there, Today’s Homeowner determined the top five easiest tasks to DIY.

1. Updating Toilets

For those of us who aren’t plumbers, replacing or connecting a new toilet may seem daunting. But truthfully, it’s one of the easiest tasks for the average homeowner to complete. All you need is a new toilet and a toolkit.

There are no big safety concerns for anyone installing a new toilet. And as long as you shut off your water source and drain the existing toilet (if applicable) before installing the new one, you run a very small risk of damaging your home.

Hiring a professional plumber to install a new toilet will typically cost you $200 for labor plus the cost of your toilet. Considering the average toilet costs between $100 and $150, you can cut your costs in half by choosing to DIY your toilet upgrades.

2. Installing/Replacing Wallpaper

Hanging wallpaper is a pretty low-effort project and has become even more DIY-friendly with the emergence of peel-and-stick wallpaper. It does, however, require a good bit of patience. If you’re using pre-pasted wallpaper, all you have to do is wet the back of the paper and apply it to your wall once it’s tacky. With unpasted wallpaper, you’ll use a paint roller to apply the paste before you stick it onto the wall. Other tools — a smoothing tool, utility knife, scissors, tape measure, and a ruler — will allow you to hang the wallpaper as evenly as possible. The cost of wallpaper typically is about $4 per square foot. Hiring a professional may save time and effort, but it’ll bump the price to around $9 per square foot.

3. Painting Interior Rooms

Painting your interior rooms is another simple DIY task that doesn’t require a ton of skill. It’s also a pretty safe project unless you have extremely high ceilings that require climbing high on a ladder. If that’s the case, you might consider calling in a professional. You should also consider the age and condition of your walls and whether they will need more TLC than a fresh coat of paint. Many DIY’ers may be surprised to learn that painting the average 120-square-foot room takes about seven hours. But this figure takes prepping, priming, and cleaning into account. It will cost about $800 to paint your rooms, but it would be about $3,000 to call in the pros.

4. Adding Flower Beds

Aside from exercising caution when using standard gardening equipment, there’s no real safety concern for planting flower beds around your home. Depending on your vision, the size of the project, and the specifics of your yard, you’re looking at around three to six hours of work and about $1,000 in tools and plants. Hiring a professional landscaper would add roughly $1,000 to the project, so DIY-ing your outdoor decor could lead to significant savings.

5. Update Kitchen Fixtures

Updating kitchen fixtures may include installing a new sink or faucet or miscellaneous parts, such as a pot filler, bar faucet, water filtration, etc. It’s not a dangerous task and will only involve some awkward angles and wrench twisting on your part. But it does require some skill, and the fixtures can end up wobbly, crooked, or fall out of place if you don’t install them correctly. You could flood your kitchen if you’re not careful, but we still think most will be able to tackle this task without a professional. It’ll likely take you two hours to install each fixture, but you’ll save about $135 per fixture in labor costs, so the savings can add up.

To read the full Today’s Homeowner report, including the five worst DIY home projects, visit https://todayshomeowner.com.