When to DIY and when to call a handyman

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The honest breakdown

Not every small job in the house needs a handyman. Some of them are worth learning to do yourself - they'll happen again, the tools pay for themselves, and the failure mode if you get it wrong is minor. Others are a false economy - the tool cost is high, the time cost is high, and the failure mode if you get it wrong is expensive. Here's how we'd draw the line.

Worth doing yourself

Changing a tap washer. Silicone-sealant renewal in a bathroom or kitchen. Bleeding a radiator. Replacing a light bulb in a downlight. Tightening a loose kitchen cabinet handle. Filling and painting a small crack in a wall. Fitting a curtain pole into stud with the right fixing. Assembling small flat-pack. Any of these is a YouTube-video job with hand tools you'll use again.

Sometimes worth doing yourself

TV wall-mount. Fitting shelves into masonry. Hanging a heavy mirror. Fitting a bathroom extractor fan (existing feed only - new circuit is a sparky job). All of these depend on the wall type. If you're confident you know whether you're drilling into stud, plasterboard, brick or lath-and-plaster, and you have the right fixing for each, then it's a Saturday afternoon. If you're not sure, the handyman fee is cheaper than the repair when a shelf pulls out of plasterboard six months later.

Not worth doing yourself

Anything requiring a ladder above the first floor. Anything on the roof. Gutter clearing on anything above a bungalow (falls off ladders are the single biggest handyman-adjacent injury in the UK). Splicing or repairing an external timber sill. Fitting an outside tap with an isolation valve. Any job where the failure mode leaks water into a ceiling.

Never DIY, always trade

Anything gas-connected. Anything requiring a Part P electrical certificate (new circuit, consumer unit swap, EV charger, kitchen or bathroom rewire). Anything structural. Anything requiring building regulations approval. In all four categories, DIY isn't just financially risky - it's actively illegal and it will invalidate house insurance and complicate a future sale.

The middle ground

The handyman lane is the middle ground - the jobs that don't need a full plumber, sparky or roofer, but do need someone who knows what they're doing, has the right fixings on the van, and won't spend three hours on YouTube in your kitchen. That's what we do.