DIY or Hire a Contractor

As I am very sick of January, my mind drifts to spring.  When my mind goes to spring, I think Home Improvement. We have a sizeable list of things that need updating and also total overhaul. Sadly we do not have the checkbook to tackle everything all at once, so I am starting to prioritize.  A few Blogging friends have me thinking about  how much, if anything , we should try and take on ourselves, and what we should just patiently save for and hire a contractor. Sluggy at Don't Read This, It's Boring is starting a total bathroom redo.  Lovely Grey has been methodically shaping up her new house into a lovely as her name says, abode for her and her son. Both talk about how they have or will be squirreling away funds for bathrooms. 

Bathrooms! Such expenses in small spaces. Our upstairs bath needs a total overhaul, but the lower should be able to get by with some DIY repair from an old drip that got fixed and some basic wall patches and new hardware. I nice tall closing door cupboard would be goo in there too.I don't think DH should touch the upstairs bath at all.  It is so far gone after 25 years of living here and wasn't that great in the first place. It is ridiculously small for supposedly being both the main bathroom for the house combined with a master bedroom pass through so is supposed to also mimic having a master en suite. It walls up to a small walk-in closet in our bedroom, and a built in vanity and then the little door pass.  We could look at just ripping the bedroom apart too, and enlarging the bath and redoing how we have the closet in our room. I'm cringing at the thought of that price tag, but the vanity has been just a place for clutter-we never use the pass through door, and we could get better closet space with a wall closet as opposed to walk in. Again, no DIY.

Reality is we need to keep deep cleaning and purging before taking on any of this.  We also have a serious driveway, and  drainage problem outside that we will feel again first rain.  That has to be the first priority, and we have funds tucked away, but may have unforeseen costs.  DH has some good skills, but he is so slow, and he often gets in over his head, then he gets frustrated, and things stay incomplete. We are best to take the other projects as slow as we need to and hire most jobs out. I just hope none of us end up with this bathroom.