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Comment by Y7ZCQtNo39 | Hacker News Reader

Would you say, for example, your painting is good as a professionals (e.g., paint lines are straight with respect to adjacent walls / ceiling, etc)? As someone who anticipates being a homeowner in a few years, I wonder if it's possible the first time you learn how to do something (without having the best technique for the skill) to get the best outcome.

I wouldn't want my home improvement projects to look half-assed just because I wasn't experienced or knew the "best practices" for the given home improvement task.

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Well it all depends, how good professional is, how much time you spend and how much you care about details. From my experience comparing to the jobs my nieghbord/friend had done by contractors - I can do better :) Though they didn't hire expensive contractors, I'm sure there professional who can do much better. But as mentioned in other comments, for average contractor time matters and they don't pay attention as much as you can. So if you care about details a lot and can't/don't want to hire expensive contractors, better do yourself.

Painting is especially easy, if you screw up some spot, you can always return and repaint (worst case you'll have to do that couple times :)) Painting equipment is (relatively) cheep, you can cover floors with plastic covers/blue tape and don't worry about screwing floors/doors while you learn :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNagIA8sKY0 watch these videos and you'd be ready to start. Cutting wall/ceiling line by hand is not that hard (the video has a trick), there're also "helper tools" for cutting lines in home depot/lowes. One trick is that if you go with light color on walls, perfect line with white ceiling doesn't even matter, you won't notice small deviations anyway.

If have doubts in your own skills (I did), try starting with closets and bedrooms. Only then move to living rooms/kitchens. If you screw up closet or your bedroom - it's not that of big deal. Though if watch above video series, it's really hard to screw up too much.

I think you'll find that it varies by the job and your own personal level of "halfassed".

I can do most home maintenance stuff - electrical, most plumbing, fixtures, appliance repair, etc. I pay someone to do drywall work or painting - because I'm pretty picky and I can always see where my work falls short.

I think you'll find for finishing work practice makes perfect and is where professionals shine. You can certainly do professional quality work, but expect a learning curve and to be re-doing sections of projects that don't turn out too well. I know several homeowners who have re-done bathrooms themselves, and only one would I say turned out professional looking in quality. That guy is simply a perfectionist who spent an inordinate amount of time on the project.

Yeah, I'd imagine as a homeowner, I'd want projects (at least those where the outcome matters visually), to have that professionalism.

I kind of would want to be a bit further up the learning curve, but if you only have 1 or 2 bedrooms, you don't have much by way to learn, so it seems like having a professional is probably worth the premium vs. your own labor (if you're like me and highly value the aesthetic end result).

My painting (imho) is better than most professionals. I am not time or quality constrained, as I'm not running a business.

I can buy good paint, brushes, and tape. I can take my time, I can let paint dry over multiple days, do touchups, keep properly mixed cans (mixing two cans of the same color into one).

There are two aspects to being a "professional" tradesman.

1) Do it _better_ than others

2) Do it profitably

#1 is something you as an individual can overcome with practice, #2 is generally a hard constraint which sometimes compromises the goals of #1.

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