Which task is worthwhile to do yourself?

We moved into our house (165 sqm + 50 sqm basement) two months ago. I basically saved up my entire annual vacation for the final phase. I have an office job but am relatively handy. When the shell was up, I built a fireplace (masonry stove) myself.

Otherwise, we did all the painting work ourselves, which took almost two weeks, during which I sometimes worked 12-14 hours and although I am fairly athletic, I could barely move in the evenings at times. Especially the filling and sanding held us up, and every time the sun shifted a bit, new flaws became visible that still had to be worked on.

I also glued nearly 100 sqm of parquet flooring, which was relatively easy. We also did the move entirely ourselves (rented a large van for three days = €170 + hardworking friends who sometimes also provided us with meals). We are currently laying tiles in the basement ourselves on the weekends, although large slabs are not quite that easy to lay.

In conclusion, I can say that after work there isn’t as much that can be done as one might think, but I sometimes have long days and you don’t start doing major work after 7 p.m. only. There are still small things missing (baseboards etc.). The frequency with which you have to clean at the beginning should not be underestimated either. It felt like we brought several hundred kilos of dust out of the house and with the windows you could almost change the cleaning water after every window.

Once it gets warmer, the garden will be next, although we only want to plant everything ourselves here and build an irrigation system (I have done that once before with a friend).

In the end, I am really proud of many things and I think you appreciate the value very differently when a lot of your own work is in it.

We did a lot of the work ourselves on our house too, but it was a real marathon. We only had about 6 months for the renovation and I was really on the construction site every day all day, and my husband worked on weekends and during holidays. EL was planned, but not to that extent. It was hard to get craftsmen on short notice and we then had individual contracts, and many things didn’t coordinate as well as you would expect as a layperson. So in the end, we did quite a lot ourselves. Window installation, interior doors, floors, ceilings, walls, suspending ceilings, drywall everywhere, renewing joints in the basement and who knows what else. Partial plastering as well. And of course the demolition... which was probably the dirtiest job. Was it worth it? Well, I had taken semesters off at university and didn’t work during that time (it would have only been a mini job anyway). Basically, for us it was the only option since we wouldn’t have found craftsmen anyway. If we did it again today, many things would look much better than what we managed the first time. We had the electrical work, tiles, sanitary rough installation, as well as the installation of the roof windows and roof insulation done by professionals. It didn’t run smoothly because some companies missed their previously agreed appointments by a wide margin. And we only lived 10 minutes from the house. I have to add that we also had two small children, aged 4 and 2, which meant only one of us could work at a time and many things were more difficult than they would have been without children.