DIY VS Using a Professional Builder
DIY VS Using a Professional Builder
DIY VS Using a Professional Builder
DIY v BUILDER
DIY is a great way to refurbish your house for a fraction of the cost of a professional tradesman. But despite all the great suggestions DIY is not always the best answer! Learn when to do the job yourself and when to call in a builder.
Perhaps your house is suitable for your needs but you really feel its layout or facilities could be improved, or perhaps it's in need of a full overhaul. What are you going to do?
Quick Building Jobs
In general terms; there are some simple jobs that may be completed easily with basic skills and a straightforward toolkit. Take the doors in a room, for example. Would it be more convenient if one opened outwards into a hallway as opposed to into a room? Could a sliding or folding door as opposed to a hinged door save valuable floor space?
Such jobs, involving some skill in the use of tricks or plasterboard needed to block off a doorway or basic screwdriver and chisel work to alter the sort or operation of doors, cost quite little to do. Even blocking off a window to produce a complete wall for extra storage requirements isn't going to over-tax your purse or your DIY abilities!
Larger Construction Work
The level of difficulty you'll face in altering walls will depend on whether they're of a partitioning or load-bearing nature. The former, especially in a modern house, where lots of interior walls are of plasterboard construction, is straightforward to remove. On the other hand, a brick wall serving as a partition might be a daunting task for anybody not used to heavy work.
If the brick wall is load-bearing, i.e. a supporting component of the home structure above, then it demands expert building knowledge to choose on the right replacement support to insert prior to it's demolition. With any work of this sort you need to get professional on-the-spot advice prior to you doing anything.
Conversely, if you want an additional room, it may be possible to partition off a large room to produce two smaller ones. In this case, building a plasterboard wall is essentially a 'hammer and nails' carpentry job that most capable people can undertake. The issue with planning alterations on this scale is being able to take a detached, clinical view of a house you might have grown used to. It's sometimes impossible, for example, to imagine that cupboards or a significant piece of furniture could be moved to an alternative location in a rearranged layout. We tend to become very comfortable with familiar surroundings and reluctant to change them.
Planning Correctly
Before paying for the advice of an architect or surveyor, you should get all your ideas down on paper. In other words, make a scale drawing of the complete floor region you want to alter. This does not have to be elaborate, but it should be accurate - so use graph paper and work to a convenient scale.
On the plan, mark the outside walls of the home and the position of all doors, windows, drains and other service pipes and cable runs. The interior plan really should show whether walls are load-bearing or not. In fact, put down all significant information and facts as you think will be relevant.
It is only when you have the facts spread out in front of you that you are able to truly begin to understand the existing layout of your house - and, most importantly, the possible opportunities available to you for change.
The importance of marking on the plan doors, windows, access routes and so on is to let you see at a glance where potential problems could lie and how challenging it's going to be to make the particular alterations that you want. As an example, a bathroom can pose problems since it has to function entirely around the supply and disposal of water. You can not merely move it to the other side of the house as you could with a dining room, for example.
Even at the end of this exercise, you may still be baffled as to what may be carried out. If so a get a professional to come up with a series of possible options. Architects and surveyors normally work within a similar scale of fees and you should be able to get a rough idea of what the price is likely to be just by making a telephone call, either to individual practices or to the head office of the relevant association or society.
You are unlikely to be charged an enormous amount for an initial visit, consultation and outline of suggestions. Should you determine to take the matter a stage further and have proper plans drawn up for yourself or a builder, then you should enquire as to the approximate fee.
Buying a property
You may run via the exact same procedure if you are thinking of buying a property and there's no pressure on you to make a fast purchase. Nevertheless, you may not have sufficient appreciation or knowledge of building work to make a swift, accurate assessment on a particular property when there is a queue of interested parties also contemplating buying. In this scenario you may take your professional adviser with you to get an immediate expert opinion on the property.
Your initial response might be that this is a good way to lose money. But imagine what it could be like to purchase a home believing it to be possible to make certain alterations or improvements, only to discover a couple of months later that you can not do what you want - or that the cost of the work is very expensive!
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