Doing things yourself can be a big money saver. Why pay a cleaner to
vacuum your house (and rifle through your drawers) when you can do it
yourself for free? DIY renovation shows are all the rage and smart
savers are learning to cook at home rather than go to restaurants but is
DIY always the best choice? Some situations are best left to the
professionals, lest they turn into disasters. Here are but a few DIY
disasters I’ve encountered.
Cook up a Storm
My favourite money saver, you can make yourself some fabulous feasts on a low budget.
That being said, I have destroyed some very expensive ingredients
trying to get all Masterchef and not knowing what I was doing. Skip the
duck breast and quail and stick with chicken. It’s much easier to cook.
Aerial Displays
I once met a man who had climbed on to the roof of his villa to fix
the TV antenna, slipped on a loose tile, tumbled off the roof and broke
his leg quite severely. He was off work for a long time, ran out of sick
leave and didn’t have insurance to cover it. Unless you’re as
sure-footed as a mountain goat, leave rooftop antics to the pro’s.
Life’s Tiles
They make this look so darned easy on the home reno’ shows it really
gives me the willies. Tiling is hard, people, and to make it worse,
you’re working with limited time. Tile cement will only stay wet for so
long and then you’re stuck with whatever crummy creation you’ve come up
with. Worse is trying to cut tiles to custom fit them; it requires a
knack. A knack you’re probably not going to develop until you break your
very last tile.
Scissor Sisters
A lot of people save money by cutting their own and their family’s
hair. This year, in the interests of research, I even took to my own
mane with the snippers, trimming my own fringe between salon visits.
It’s actually not as simple as you might think. Cut straight across and
you look like an urchin child with a bowl cut. Cut in vertical snips and
it’s very hard to keep a straight line. Try both and still get it
wrong, and you’ve probably either cut off more hair than you were meant
to or you look like some kind of cave-dweller. Either way, you’re
probably going to need a trained stylist to save you or risk being
chased by men with wooden clubs.
In a nutshell, DIY can be great to save a few pennies but if you’re
not absolutely confident you can do it right yourself? Hire someone
else!
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