Home D.I.Y.

I like to do general home repair. You have to know your limits though, when to call a professional.

Like roofs - i never mess with roofs. Because if something goes wrong, then well, there goes your house. :)

Electrical is frustrating because you have to shut the right breaker off and of course the labels are faded. Plumbing is probably the easiest as long as you know what tools and materials you need, but I'm a fairly big guy (american-football player-style) and those areas are pretty tight.

I've recently bought my first house and since we have no money we're trying to do it ourselves. But it's not so easy! My dad always did everything himself so I'm not toally clueless, but not being vey good at hand-based skills is a bit of a bummer.
I figure plumbing I can do (I like the push-fittings instead of solder) and electrics is easy to do simple things like replace a single socket with a double one.
We had to replace part of a rotten floor taking up most of a room; things like tiling, painting etc don't count really as DIY but are decorating in my book!

I have found that I do just as good of a job as the "professionals" in my area, and I usually end up cleaning up after them anyway, so as long as I'm spending time on the problem I might as well save some money on it as well. I see guys on TV that are many orders better than me at this stuff, but I've never seen those people around here.

It's not that hard to look up building code requirements and stick to them, not that hard at all. and sticking to the building codes helps you to make a good repair/installation/whatever. Imagine that!

I do the simpl stuff (floors, paint, internal walls and doors, some wiring...), but when it comes to stuff that can go very wrong (roof, windows, plumbing), I hire someone so I can blame them.

Plumbing is pretty simple, so is roofing. Not being a paid professional, though, I don't do anything like that for anyone other than family. (I've got enough other things to waste my time.)

I usually only do the electrical work since I am comfortable with working with AC and wiring. Plumbing will depend on the kind of project. I have replaced wax rings and isolated water lines (worked at a hotel doing such things).

It turns out I can do just about any kind of home repair at all - except plumbing. Ive always been good at building/making/fixing shit, just like macguyver. The only problem is, I have no tools whatsoever, so I let a lot of stuff slide that I wouldnt otherwise.

I work on things that I know if I screw up that the world won't end.
The other things, I either let go or grudgingly call a professional.

Well obviously it depends on the job at hand, like felling a tree (done that a few times) can be a lot harder to do without assistance, but family are great for things like that.

I do have to get the plumber in to fix the main line into the house from the meter as there is a fair bit of spray coming from the pipe. Apparently when they built this area they went dodgy, and that was about 20 years ago now :/.

Still, it is always a great feeling finding out how stuff works, I never had a clue how taps worked until I pulled them apart... teh fun.

Painting the house is teh suck, but makes a vast improvement. We just finished facing our house with a colour that WASN'T orange (I really don't know what drugs the previous people were smoking).