DIY vs Hiring a Pro – End Result
What do most people choose on their wedding day? Doing their
own make-up? Or hiring a professional make-up artist? Cutting their own hair/beard?
Or going to a salon or barber?
On your wedding day the make-up can be quickly fixed, and
washed off at the end of the day. But any work done on your home will be there
to look at for quite some time. So, it makes sense to hire a professional.
We’ve all seen the DIY videos on social media showing how
easy it is to do, well, pretty much anything. I do believe that anyone is
capable of doing anything. However, being able to achieve a professional result
requires many years of experience. I will say that those DIY videos look great,
but you can’t see the fine details of the workmanship, and there’s no 6 month to
a year follow-up video showing that the work held up. If achieving a
professional result simply meant watching a YouTube tutorial I’d have no
problem hiring and recruiting skilled painters. But the reality is that we
sometimes have to turn down work due to a full work schedule and not enough
skilled painters.
A handful of times every month I get a phone call where a
potential customer wants an estimate to finish what they had started. This is
because they didn’t realize that there’s a lot more to achieving a professional
result than what’s initially thought and implied by DIY videos. In most half-completed
DIY jobs, we end up having to charge more as we have to address and correct the
mistakes made by the homeowner. In the end, the DIY customer ends up paying
more than if they were to have hired us to begin with.
DIY is a great option for those who cannot afford to hire a
professional. But beware that it also comes with its own cost. The cost of a
quality finish.
