We all want to live in bigger, better, more beautiful homes. every homeowner secretly harbours that dream. And that’s why the DIY home improvements industry has exploded during the pandemic. People are taking the opportunity to renovate their properties and turn them into the homes of their dreams.  In this post, we take a look at some of the DIY jobs you can get on with right now, as well as the more complicated tasks which require the assistance of professionals to complete. Here are some of the renovations you can easily do yourself: 

DIY Home Improvements

Repaint Your Rooms

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It doesn’t take a genius to paint a room – just a lot of time, patience and effort. Therefore, it’s something you can easily do yourself, particularly if you have a spare weekend coming up. 

Repainting your rooms can be a lot of fun. And, once finished, it’s super rewarding. You can stand back and say that you did it yourself. 

When it comes to colours, be daring. Don’t be afraid to choose bright tones as these help to bring a sense of passion and mood to your abode. 

Add Crown Moulding

Usually, you’d need a professional to add crown moulding to your ceilings to make them look fancy. But today, you can buy stick-on versions that don’t require the same level of craftsmanship. 

Adding crown mouldings is surprisingly easy. Just buy the kit you need – usually as a set – and then follow the instructions. Place the crown molding around your ceiling lighting, being sure to make sure that it all lines up and looks symmetrical. Usually, the job takes less than half a day. But the results are stunning. 

Repaint Old Flooring

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Tearing up old flooring is a hassle – and usually something you need professional help to do. But simply repainting it is much easier. 

Let’s say that you have an old wooden floor that’s looking a little past its best-by date. Instead of ripping it up and replacing it at high expense, investigate whether you could simply repaint or refinish it to bring it back to life. 

To start the process, sand down the floor, removing any of the existing paint or polish. You can do this by hand, but these days, it’s much better to rent an automatic sander to do the hard work for you. 

Then clean up any dust with some sugar soap solution, wait for it to thoroughly dry, and then start painting. You can choose a white paint. Or you can try to seal it with a beautiful, clean veneer that will bring out the natural character of the wood. 

Fit A Water Filter

The water coming through your pipes might contain contaminants like chlorine, fluoride and others. For that reason, it’s a good idea to install a water-filter on your faucet. This way, you can get clear, taste-free water every time, encouraging you to drink more. 

You can get versions that a plumber would need to install on your mains supply. But there are also DIY versions that are super simple to install and set up. 

For instance, you can now get water filter kits that simply attach to your existing faucets, providing clean water every time. You just screw them into place and they start working immediately. Once the filter becomes clogged, you simply swap it out for a new one. 

Refinish Your Home’s Wood Door

Does your home have a wooden front door? If so, time probably hasn’t been kind to it. Wooden doors can lose their quality over time, thanks to expansion and contraction of the wood. The material can also start flaking, causing chunks to fall off the door, creating an unsightly appearance. 

Refinishing your home’s front door, though, is relatively straightforward, so long as you have the right equipment and supplies. 

Again, all you usually need is sand paper, sugar soap and varnish. Start by sanding down the door lightly using fine paper. Then wash away any dust before coating in a new layer of varnish. Afterwards, the door should look as good as new, so long as it doesn’t have any rot. 

Put Down New Bathroom Caulk

You can call in professionals to lay down new bathroom caulk. But, mostly, it’s a waste of time because it is something that you can perfectly easily do yourself, once you master the technique. 

Go to your local hardware store and buy yourself a caulk gun. Then remove any moldy or tatty caulk from your bathroom and fill the void with the new stuff. When caulking behind sinks or the sides of baths, be sure to put down some decorator’s tape on either side. This way, you can prevent the caulk from spilling out over only other elements of your bathroom. 

Bring Your Deck Back To Life

Winter isn’t kind to deck. During the colder months of the year, freeze-thaw weathering can cause it to wear out, allowing weeds to grow in the gaps, causing even more damage. 

Repairing pine deck, however, is easier than you think. First, power wash it with a high-pressure hose. Then, once you get rid of the surface grit, scrub with a coarse brush to remove anything else that might remain in the wood’s crevices. Then, once finished, clean it again and apply a coat of outdoor stain to protect it from water infiltration. 

Put Down Low-Cost Flooring 

Many homeowners want to put down low-cost flooring in certain areas of their homes prone to dirt, such as their mudroom. Usually, they’ll call a professional. But this is actually a DIY home improvements job you can do yourself. 

Putting down self-adhesive vinyl flooring is the easiest. You’ll need to measure it, cut it to size and then fit it to the underlying floor, but it doesn’t require a lot of effort. 

If you have more experience, you can also try laying carpet. But be careful not to catch your fingers on the gripper strips. 

Professional Home Improvements – where you need skilled help

There are also some home improvements where you will absolutely need the help of professionals. 

Building New Dormer Windows

Dormer windows are attractive windows that stick out from gable roofing and usually have their own individual pitched roofs. Because constructing them involves making modifications to your home, it’s not the sort of thing that you should do by yourself. That could be dangerous. 

Instead, you’ll need to contact a building contractor for a quote. Try to choose a firm that has experience in construction, not just a regular window installation company. 

Rewiring Your Kitchen

If you want to rewire your kitchen, you’ll need the help of a professional electrician.  As far as DIY home improvements go it is important to keep your electrics up to date, and in most countries it is a legal requirement to get a professional Trying to do it yourself is dangerous and might even be against the law, depending on where you live. 

Electrical circuits that serve the kitchen require special attention. They often need to be able to handle the added load of kitchen appliances, such as dishwashers and kettles. 

If you haven’t redone your kitchen wiring in more than forty years, you’ll need to get the job done as a matter of priority. Old wires can crack, cause short circuits and even lead to fires. 

Fixing The Boiler

When it comes to plumbing, your best bet is to leave it to professionals. While it might just seem like a “bunch of pipes,” there’s actually much more complexity to plumbing than you might imagine. Getting everything working the way it should requires in-depth technical understanding. 

Fixing the boiler is a case in point. Not only do you need to understand the basics of water management, but you also have to understand the way gas works as well. If you try fiddling around with it yourself, you could put both you and your family at risk. 

Tiling Jobs

Doing tiling work yourself seems like a great way to save money. After all, how hard can it be? 

Unfortunately, a lot more goes into tiling than fixing a bunch of tiles on the wall.  It is definitely in the DIY home improvements category where you are likely to need a professional to get the job done well. To become a master of it usually requires several months of training. So unless you’ve done it before, you probably don’t have the skills. 

Professionals, though, understand the principles of tiling and can generate beautiful results for both you and your family. They can also ensure that the tiles fit around your doorways and cut them around obstacles, like pipes, sinks and toilets. 

Roofing Work

Lastly, you should never attempt to do roofing work around your home yourself. The reasons for this should be obvious: there’s a good chance that things will go very wrong. 

It turns out that falls from roofs account for around a third of all construction-related fatalities. So if you don’t want to wind up becoming another statistic, get the pros to do it for you. 

Going down the professional route for roofing also helps you avoid shoddy work. Hiding problems on your interiors is quite easy. But covering up roofing mistakes is much more challenging. In summary, you need to make smart renovation decisions. Yes, some jobs you can perfectly well carry out yourself, even if you have limited experience. But others definitely require a professional for safety reasons.

A final word on DIY home improvements

Every homeowner needs to maintain their property. Getting the right help when you need it is critical to getting the job done well. However, be brave on some of the other tasks where special skills or equipment are not necessary. It could save you a lot of money.

USEFUL REFERENCES FOR HOMEOWNERS & PETOWNERS

At Houesitmatch.com we like to offer useful and practical articles on topics for our readers. In this selection we offer you a number of suitable pieces from our own blog on renovating and decorating a home.

Renovating a home for the first time – What to remember

New home features you didn’t know you would want

Ideas to help you establish a new home quickly

Housesitters keep pets safe at home and save money

What a housesitter does – Top 10 responsibilities