Newspaper do-it-yourself features and glossy house magazines are chockablock with photographs of successful home improvement projects, their beaming perpetrators standing beside or in front of them.
But are there some jobs better left to the professional?
Almost anyone who`s ever become involved in a home improvement project that ballooned in the cost and/or time required would answer in the affirmative, even when it`s something as easy or cost-effective as stripping oak trim. There`s nothing quite as discouraging as looking, at one in the morning, at another mile or so of woodwork obscured by three-quarters of a century of paint jobs, your arms aching, your mind reeling from the fumes, when you`ve already made too definite a start to change your mind about the whole project.
Some marriages have emerged stronger from a long-term rehabbing project;
more are shaken by it, and some don`t survive (anyone who`s lived in a gentrified area can supply horror stories from memory). Even something as simple as painting a room can be a mistake for the true klutz, and sometimes the savings in money is not worth the investment in time.
It`s not hard to find someone who regrets a badly conceived home improvement project, although it can be difficult to find people willing to talk about it for publication.
”I painted my garage door myself-it seemed like a no-brainer, says one reasonably competent northwest suburban do-it-yourselfer who prefers to remain anonymous. ”But to do all of it right-the scraping, the sanding, the filling and then, finally, the painting-takes a lot of time, especially when you`re not used to it. I spent a whole month`s worth of summer weekends on it when I could have been doing other things. My wife was ready to kill me. It would have been smarter to hire a professional, who would have had it done in a couple of days.”
Hazard alert
Even if time is no object, say a host of experts in the home improvement field, there are some things that even the dexterous and careful are best off not tackling themselves-unless they happen to be contractors. Some jobs can be hazardous to your health, mental and physical.
”The one thing I would say that no homeowner should ever do-unless it`s something they do as a living-is asbestos removal,” says Nina Moroz, home safety specialist at the National Safety Council. ”It`s just too dangerous. If you live in an older building and you have asbestos, you ought to have a professional service come in.”
Other potentially dangerous situations-electrical or gas line repairs, knocking out walls-can be attempted, ”depending on their knowledge and ability. But it`s advisable to have a resource manual, the right tools-including protective equipment, such as eye covers, gloves and a hard hat-and someone experienced to help.”
Homer Lundeberg, managing director of the Professional Remodelers Association, sees two other pitfalls for would-be do-it-yourselfers: licenses and psychological problems. ”Various cities and towns have their own requirements for licenses to do jobs; in the City of Chicago, you have got to have a licensed plumber and a licensed electrician, licensed by the city. The homeowner who wants to do something that involves water has to get a permit, and he can`t get one because he`s not licensed.”
As for the psychological problems, he could do that, provided he has patience and a tolerant family. He pulls out the cabinets and waits for supplies to start coming in. He`s working on weekends, of course, and after about five weeks there begins to be a psychological situation between husband and wife, because she`s tired of eating out of cans. The homeowner usually ends up getting a contractor anyway. The intelligent thing would be to get the contractor in the first place. If it takes too long, the family generally has internal problems.”
Outside, Lundeberg cautions, ”jobs where homeowners have to climb on ladders or get up on roofs are very dangerous. These are professional jobs. The major jobs-adding a room onto a house-are not within the province of the homeowner.” Where measurements have to be precise, like putting in a new door, he says, the job shouldn`t be attempted.
”Homeowners can put up storm doors, they can replace windows; they can do landscaping, put up a simple fence or fill in the cracks in the driveway. But if they want to get into anything fancy, they should get a professional.” Just do it
Mike Tipps disagrees. Tipps, the merchandising manager for Edward L. Hines Lumber Co., headquartered in Itasca, has worked at all levels in various Hines stores, and is a dedicated do-it-yourselfer. He contends that there`s almost nothing that the informed, experienced homeowner can`t handle himself. ”Anything that involves structural work should be looked at with a degree of caution,” he says. ”You`ve got to have a certain amount of knowledge about what you`re doing. I would say you should watch out for projects that involve working from heights if you`re working alone.”
Tipps` personal betes noires are painting and putting up drywall, because he`s just too meticulous for those jobs. ”When you`re taping drywall, the ideal is to slap (the bonding) on, walk away, let it dry and put on another coat. But I can`t leave it alone. I`m forever working on it, feathering out the edges.”
Tools of the trade
A need for specialized tools and the benefit of experience are cited by Craig Nelson as two good reasons for neophytes to stay away from more difficult flooring procedures. Nelson, owner of the Tile and Carpet Center in Oak Park, thinks the simpler things, such as basic vinyl tile, can be done easily enough by the careful amateur. ”But sheet vinyl is definitel, and you`ve ruined the entire piece of material.”
He also makes a distinction between regular vinyl tile and ”luxury,” or solid, vinyl tile. Luxury vinyl tiles, he says, require an expert, because instead of troweling mastic, then setting the tiles, the tile has to be set right away and it has to be right the first time. Setting marble and large ceramic tile is also ”nothing for a homeowner. You have to be able to set a floor that`s flat and level. They`re harder to cut; you need special tools, and you have to know how to work with tile. You`ve got to know what you`re doing.”
A bug in the rug
If you think you can get around that by laying down carpet yourself, guess again: The same problem of expertise-or the lack of it-applies. ”You have to have the tools,” Nelson says, ”and you have to know how to stretch carpeting, or you can end up with ripples, bubbles or wrinkles in the carpeting.”
The same thing goes for hardwood flooring, whether glued down or nailed in.
Moving from floors to walls, ”the most dangerous area is structural work,” cautions Larry Schwartz of Bosi Construction in Bridgeview. ”People take walls out to make rooms bigger, and they don`t consider whether those are load-bearing walls, or whether the house is strong enough. The house won`t fall down, but sooner or later, it begins to sag. We get a lot of calls to repair that kind of damege.”
Schwartz also thinks do-it-yourselfers should limit their brickwork to tuckpointing, again because of structural concerns. ”If your brickwork is deteriorating, you should probably have somebody come out and look at it,” he says. ”You might think it just needs patching, when it`s holding something up.”
Up on the roof?
When it comes to shingling or reroofing, Schwartz says, you should at least have a home inspector take a look to see whether it`s all right to put shingles over the existing roof, or if a tearoff is in order. ”Shingling is not difficult if you`re not afraid of heights, but if you need a tearoff, hire someone,” he says. ”Sometimes there are rotten boards that need to be replaced. But the big issue is time. You can`t spend a lot of time on a roof, because if it rains, it will ruin your house. We have 50-by-50-foot traps, and a crew of four to six guys; we can have a house buttoned up in 15 minutes if it starts to drizzle. A homeowner, working up there alone or with one other person, wouldn`t have a chance if it rained.”
There are some projects from which even the most dedicated and experienced amateur rehabbers shy away. Gina Frost of Lincoln Park is a highly capable do-it-yourselfer, skilled at laying tile, painting, hanging drywall and other home-improvement projects. Her one nightmare job is sanding floors. ”It`s an awful memory,” she says. ”It wasn`t so much that I wanted to save money. At the time, Bob Vila was doing it on `This Old House,` and it looked really easy. It wasn`t easy. It was loud, noisy and dirty, and we ended up gouging the floor. It was one of the worst experiences of my entire life.
”I will never sand another floor as long as I live.”
