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← All guides · Published July 2026 · Richard Lim

When to DIY, when to call us, and when to call a specialist.

It doesn’t serve us to have you calling for every small job; you’d get sick of us fast. Here’s the honest split - what’s a genuine thirty-minute DIY, what’s worth outsourcing, and what you should never touch yourself. Written by someone whose income depends on saying the opposite.

Genuine DIY: worth doing yourself

If you have basic tools and a spare hour, these are jobs where a handyman visit doesn’t make sense.

• Bleeding a radiator. The bleed key is £2. Turn the heating off, hold a rag under the valve, turn until water hisses out. Job done in five minutes. If you can’t find a bleed key, the tin lid of a bean can works in an emergency.
• Replacing a washer on a dripping tap. Turn the water off at the isolator (if fitted) or the mains stop. Undo the tap head, pull the cartridge or spindle, replace the rubber washer, reassemble. Fifteen minutes if you’ve done it once. The tricky one is old chrome-plated brass fittings which crack if you overtighten - be gentle.
• Silicone reseal on a small area. Bath edge showing black mould around the seal. Cut out the old with a Stanley knife, wipe with mould killer, dry the surface completely (a hairdryer is your friend), tape either side, apply new silicone, smooth with a wet finger, remove tape immediately, cure 24 hours. Total time 45 minutes, cost under a fiver.
• Hanging a curtain pole (drywall or plasterboard-on-stud). Wall plugs and screws, spirit level. On solid brick or lath-and-plaster, this is worth outsourcing - wrong fixing method drops the pole with the curtains still on it.
• Clearing a slow-draining sink. Under the sink, unscrew the U-bend into a bucket, clear the trap, reassemble. Five minutes and a wipe-up. A caustic drain-cleaner is often worse than useless and eats the trap.

Jobs where the tool cost outweighs the handyman rate

These are the jobs that look DIY-friendly but only if you already own the specialist tool. If you don’t, buying the tool for one job costs more than the handyman visit.

• Cutting a floorboard to access a leak. A multi-tool is around £150. A handyman is one hour. If you don’t need the multi-tool for anything else, don’t buy it.
• Skimming a plaster patch above a filled hole. A hawk and float set is cheap; the skill to make it flat isn’t. Wrong-flat means sanding endlessly and repainting three times. Two hours of handyman labour beats a weekend of yours.
• Fitting a curtain pole in a bay window. A bay-window rail is a specialist part with specific brackets; getting the sweep right on a Georgian bay involves angle calculations you don’t enjoy. Standard rectangular window: DIY. Bay: outsource.
• Removing a slipped roof slate. A slate ripper is £20 but ladder work at height is not a first-time-DIY job. The cost of falling is a lot more than the cost of the visit.

Red flags: never DIY

• Anything involving gas - boiler, hob, cooker, gas pipe. Gas Safe registered engineer only. Doing gas work yourself is a criminal offence in England and Wales under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998.
• New electrical circuits or fusebox (consumer unit) work. Building Regulations Part P notifiable. Registered electrician only. Insurance will decline claims for damage from unregistered electrical work.
• Any structural wall work. Removing a chimney breast, opening up a load-bearing wall, cutting into a beam - requires a structural engineer’s calculation and often building control notification. Get it wrong and the wall above comes down.
• Asbestos-containing materials. Pre-2000 Artex ceilings, some older textured coatings, garage roofs from the 1970s, some floor tiles. Suspicion is enough to stop - get a test done (£30-50) before disturbing. Disturbing asbestos releases fibres that damage lungs cumulatively over years.
• Roof work above single-storey. Not because it’s technically difficult, but because falls at height are the largest single category of accidental death in home maintenance. Absolute worst-case-return trade-off ratio in the whole DIY category.

The middle ground - where a handyman earns their keep

The jobs that fall between straightforward DIY and specialist trade are exactly the handyman’s bread-and-butter. They’re the jobs where a skilled generalist saves you six hours and a repeat visit. Adjusting a jamming door properly (not just planing the edge, which lasts three months). Replacing a failed toilet flush mechanism cleanly. Fitting a TV mount on lath-and-plaster with the correct fixing. Silicone-resealing a shower tray so it lasts five years. These are ten to sixty-minute jobs done right; two-hour ordeals done wrong.

If you’re looking at a job and thinking ‘I could do this, but it’ll take me a Saturday and I’ll be irritable’ - that’s the exact right time to call us. If you’re looking at a job and thinking ‘I’ve done this three times before’ - keep going. You don’t need us.