Being a homeowner is definitely costly, and it totally makes sense to want to save money by taking on some DIY projects. But sometimes regrets can arise after you reflect on the time, money, and labor spent — and you realize that maybe hiring a pro wouldn't have been such a bad idea after all. Recently, I asked the homeowners of the BuzzFeed Community to share with me which DIY home projects they wish they'd just left to the experts. Here are some honest answers that you might want to take into consideration before touching your current (or future) home:
1. "Removing our popcorn ceilings. We thought we could do the whole house in one weekend. Three years later, we still only have one room de-popcorned. I tell everyone that whoever said it went 'out of style' never had to remove it themselves. Word to the wise: Just pay someone to do it and save your back."
2. "My brother was taking out a wall in our childhood home. This started an electrical fire and destroyed the entire house. He had a professional rebuild it."
3. "I know this is one of the easiest DIYs you can do, but I don't think it was worth painting my own cabinets. They look great, but it took me about two weeks after work hours in a disassembled kitchen. It would have taken a professional with a paint gun about an hour."
4. "I built a retaining wall from wood, but it didn't last long due to drainage issues. I should have just hired a pro and built it from concrete products."
—John, 60, Georgia
5. "Not me, but my mom. She had a beat-up wood floor in her bedroom that she'd decided to paint, but she opted out of doing a first coat of primer because she thought it wasn't important and would save her time. She probably saved herself a day or two at first, but less than a year later, the paint started to chip. Turns out, primer on a wood floor is important — it gives the top coat something to stick to! She spent the next decade having to repaint or retouch the floor once or twice a year. Her options were to continue doing that or get the whole thing professionally redone — which she eventually did. A chipped floor is hardly the end of the world, but I know it drove her nuts that skipping a step turned her cute DIY weekend project into a decadelong monument to her mistake."
6. "During the summer of 2020, my husband and I decided to redo the tile that covered our entire downstairs floor (kitchen, dining room, bathroom, living room, and kids playroom). We moved all the furniture upstairs and rented a dumpster and equipment to pull up the tile and smooth the floor. Five days, pounds of dust, and two aching backs later, we had everything thrown away and smoothed out. Then, on our hands and knees, we laid the tile for over 11 hours in one day, only to find the next morning that we'd used the wrong-sized trowel. The adhesive stuck to the floor but only to maybe 20% of the tile. We had to pull everything back up, re-sand the entire floor, and demolish the few tiles that did stick. We hired someone to redo what we'd tried to do, but we paid more than double our initial estimate and lost a week of vacation time — and what we thought would be a three-day project took over two months from beginning to end. It was a disaster."
7. "One of our first-ever DIY projects was tiling our bathroom. Let's just say that I see every imperfection when I shower. It definitely didn't help that we only have one bathroom, and we were stuck working on it most weeknights. I wish we'd just hired someone who would've been able to get it done in a quarter of the time and with better results."
8. "I tried to re-caulk my bathtub. To be fair to myself, whoever did it the first time did it in a weird way — they caulked over grout, so when I tried getting rid of the old caulk, the grout broke into pieces. That said, I could have done a better job in removing the old caulk/grout because the new caulk didn't adhere properly in places. Now it's gross and peeling again, and I'm procrastinating on getting a pro to do it."
9. "Anything my sister attempted on MY house! She'd take on projects thinking she could do it because our dad did it at his house, but our dad had a lot more practical experience — from the uneven peeling caulk she tried to put on the tub seams to the three doorbell buttons on the outside of the house, all the way to the tape she attempted to repair a crack with. I also had to spend over $1,000 to get the trees she'd planted in my yard removed because they were blocking my ability to see oncoming traffic from the street. Not to even mention the load of unused home improvement crap she filled my garage with!"
10. "Moving. We rented a U-Haul truck but brought everything upstairs ourselves. Mind you, I lived in a house with my sister and mom, but we were moving into an apartment on the third floor. There was no elevator. We were outside in the winter. We should've just hired movers."
11. "Painting the entire interior of our house. Granted, it saved us several thousand dollars, but we didn't do the best job. And holy cats — the arguing! It was beyond stressful for both my husband and me. It was during the heat of summer, and we didn't take any time off work. In our marriage, we've never argued so much except during that time."
12. "My husband and I remodeled a kitchen in a 921-square-foot home with two toddlers. It took forever to complete. I saved the cabinets by painting them, we made concrete countertops (twice, because they broke the first time), trenched electrical in a slab for an island, and managed to keep it within our $8,000 budget. Don't get me wrong, I felt proud to have completed it, but two years of reno would have taken professionals maybe only five to six weeks."
—Tracy, 53, Ohio
13. "ALL OF THEM. I DIY'd my kitchen backsplash after the cost of renovating my kitchen went over budget. I figured I could save on labor, but I nearly lost my mind in the process. Anything I would have saved on the price of a professional install was spent on buying and renting all of the tools needed — not to mention my time. SO MUCH OF MY TIME. Everyone says it looks professional, but all I can see are my mistakes and uneven tiles. And TBH, I don't think I saved anything in the end."
14. "I built a flagstone patio — nothing too large, about 15 by 20 feet. It was the worst weekend of my life. Digging 6 inches in clay sucked. Making the ground flat sucked. Everything was heavy (the bags of rocks, the bags of sand, the stones), and getting everything level was a pain. Never again."
15. "After demolishing and renovating parts of our kitchen ourselves, we went to a big-box store for our cabinets. Big mistake. You measure everything yourself, and the design and ordering of your cabinets are based on those measurements. After everything is delivered, someone will come out to your house to officially measure. Better hope your initial measurements were right because if not, things need to be reordered. Finally, we thought we had everything settled, and installation began. We ended up finding out the measurements were still wrong, and some of the cabinets were even too big for the wall they were supposed to go on. It's been three months of back-and-forth trying to get everything right."
16. "Flooring! We tiled our living room–dining room combo at our last home, and it nearly killed us. With our new house, the first thing we did was hire flooring people! It was much less hassle, and they completed it in just three days."
17. "No doubt, drywall finishing. It's an art, man, and it takes a thousand passes to become good at it. Every time I do it, I just wish I'd paid an expert."
18. Last but not least: "'Should have hired a professional' describes 90% of the DIY jobs my dad has done around his house. I've been able to fix some, but others need an actual professional to come in. For example, my dad tried to fix the lights in the kitchen, but he is not an electrician. Now there are no lights in the kitchen, and one of the outlets doesn't work. He's been using a camping lantern when it gets dark so he can see. Another project that was less extreme: The half bath in his house needed to have the flooring replaced. Instead of doing it properly, he got some peel-and-stick laminate tiles, cut them to size by eyeballing them, and slapped them down. I had to go in later and redo the whole thing so my parents would stop tripping over the edges. It would have been cheaper for him to just hire someone to come in and do it properly the first time."
—Anonymous
What are some DIY projects you took on that you wish you'd just hired an expert for? Was there ever a moment when you stopped mid-project, took a step back, and just felt a ton of regret? Let me know in the comments, or you can submit anonymously using this Google form!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.