Five home improvements you should leave to the pros (and five you shouldn’t)

DIY home improvement projects can be a great way to add value to your home and make your home more attractive. It’s equally possible that the opposite can happen. Some home improvement projects are best left to professional contractors who have the necessary licenses, equipment, and training. What follows are five projects you shouldn’t attempt yourself and five you can.

Garage door installation

While it might not seem too difficult, there are lots of moving parts, including powerful springs that all must work perfectly. Since it requires special tools and since the tiniest mistake can result in a garage door that doesn’t function or is dangerous to use, this is one project to avoid doing yourself.

Refinishing wood flooring

Sanding down and refinishing hardwood floors may seem doable, but unless you want to spend days on your hands and knees, you’re going to need a commercial floor sander. Run the sander a few seconds too long in one location and your beautiful hardwood floors are irreparably damaged.

Structural changes

Any project that will change the structure of the home should be left to professionals. After all, how are you supposed to know if that wall you just knocked down was load-bearing?

Electrical work

While swapping out light fixtures is within the scope of the average homeowner’s abilities, homeowners shouldn’t go much beyond that when it comes to electrical work. Don’t try to reroute any electrical wires or extend or add electrical circuits as serious injury, death, or a house fire may result.

Ladder or scaffold work

In any given year, close to 50,000 people will be injured in a work-related fall badly enough to have to miss work. Approximately 600 will die from these falls. Professionals have safety equipment to minimize the risk of such injuries.

Repainting

So long as you take the proper precautions to tape off and cover everything that’s not supposed to be painted, painting the interior of your home is a pretty low-risk project you should be able to handle alone. Or you can enlist the help of family and friends as well.

Peel-and-stick wallpaper

Traditional wallpaper is a pain to apply and remove but fortunately there are peel-and-stick alternatives that make wallpapering a very simple task that allows you to transform the look of a room in almost no time at all.

Baseboard radiator cover installation

You can quickly transform the look of an old, outdated-looking baseboard radiator system by installing snap-on covers. Simply measure how many feet of covers you need, order the materials, and you can have the job done in minutes.

Resurface kitchen cabinets

While you probably don’t want to tear out and replace kitchen cabinets, you should be able to repaint or re-stain and swap out the knobs or pulls of all your cabinets and drawers in just a few hours. You can do the same in your bathrooms as well.

Window treatments

Replacing old and broken blinds or shutters and hanging new curtains or drapes is a job you can probably do in an afternoon.

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