Common DIY Mistakes to Avoid

With DIY becoming increasingly popular, there is now also a greater number of amateur DIYers who are trying their hands at menial home improvement tasks. To make it a bit easier for those first-timers (and also for the more experienced ones), here are a few tips, tricks, and common mistakes to avoid on your next DIY job.

• Lack of Preparation

The devil is in the detail. With that being the case, it is of utmost importance that you have a detailed plan of what you can expect – emotionally, financially, and in any other kind of way.

So before you do anything, go through the entire project step by step. Write down what tools and materials you need, what everything will cost you, and find out how exactly to “do-it-yourself”. If for instance, you are changing your door hinges, familiarise yourself with the process of how to remove your old door hinges and replace them with new ones.  

• Overestimating Your Abilities

There is nothing wrong with being confident and believing in yourself. After all, there is little point in doubting yourself at every corner and being timid. However, there is a huge difference between confidence and over-confidence.

Confidence is when you trust yourself and your abilities and believe that you can build a bookshelf or paint your walls. Overconfidence is when you think that you, a budding DIYer, can build a garden shed from scratch.

While it is good to be enthusiastic, know and acknowledge your skills and limitations. So if there is a plumbing or electrical job to be done and you have never even changed your door locks, remember that there is no shame in asking for help!

• Saving in the Wrong Places

The main reason why people opt for DIY is that they want to save money. They want to keep the budget of the project as small as possible.

Luckily, there are a number of places that offer a wide range of qualitative, yet affordable fixes and types of furniture, such as bathroom door handles and door knobs. So spend your time finding the right deal for you and your budget.

However, while there is a right and smart way of saving money, there also is a wrong way of saving money, and that is when it comes to your tools. It is true that in emergency situations even a shoe or a frying pan can be used to hammer in a nail. When you start your DIY project, however, you do not want to do it without the right equipment. So do yourself (and your house) a favour; spend a pound or two and get the right tools for the job.

• Safety First

One of the things every DIYer should own — however experienced or inexperienced — is the right safety equipment. You might think of yourself as a hobby DIYer, who only does a bit of hammering and cutting wood on the weekends. You might therefore also think, “Why waste money on things like safety glasses, helmets, or dust masks if I don’t use them that often?”

But whether you’re a construction worker, a constructor, or a home DIYer the safety rules are the same for everyone. So treat every DIY job, no matter how big or small, in a serious and sincere manner, and make sure you have the right safety equipment along with the right tools.