No matter whether you are going to live in it or rent it out, one of the decisions you will need to frequently  make while remodeling a property is deciding whether to hire someone to do the work, or whether to DIY. For example, roofing, plumbing, and electrical are three areas where most of us are going to hire an expert because we just don’t have the skills or the time and money required to acquire them.

On the other hand, I will be putting in the light fixtures in the Clendenin house, and I will be painting the rooms when the time comes because I am more than capable of doing both.

The decision will often come down to weighing the cost of buying the equipment (and teaching yourself how to use it) versus just paying a professional to do the work. Sometimes you will DIY because your work will be good enough and cost less than hiring a pro, and then other times you will DIY because you can’t afford to hire a pro (so instead you decide to spend the time in place of the money you don’t have).

Oh, and hey, before you make a decision to DIY or hire a pro for a particular task, watch a few instructional videos on Youtube. Sometimes you will find out that the task is beyond your abilities, and other times you will learn a new skill. For example, watching Youtube videos convinced me that cleaning the carburetor on a lawnmower was a skill I might never master. I can replace the spark plug, air filter, and oil, but the carburetor is just too complex, so I had to take the lawnmower into a shop.

On a related note, sometimes you will buy a piece of equipment and suddenly realize that you can now easily DIY an unrelated task. That was actually the inspiration for this post.

I recently bought a cordless chainsaw to cut up a fallen tree at my mother’s house. The chainsaw made this task so easy to do that I realized that I could save some money by using the same chainsaw to cut back the overgrowth at the Clendenin house (see the above photo) before putting in new trees and bushes.

I had planned to hire someone, but now I know I can do the first rough cut myself and end up with a passible result. I don’t know that it will be pretty, but it will at least look not bad (plus, if I screw it up then I can always just let it grow out before trying again).