There are plenty of DIY projects out there: you can raise your own chickens, change your own oil or even build your own house. But not all DIY projects make financial sense. There are plenty of items you can make yourself, but the price of the components you’ll need is actually more than the cost of just going and buying a finished product.

1. Baking Your Own Bread: There are thousands of recipes for breads that take just a few minutes to mix up. Even when you add in the cost of running your oven long enough to bake a loaf of bread, you can make your own bread for just cents a batch, compared to the rising prices of bread at the supermarket. It isn’t even a time consuming project: you’ll probably want to stick around while you actually have the oven on, but you can still do other things in the meanwhile.
2. Repairing Your Own Appliances: Even basic repairs to dishwashers, refrigerators and other appliances come with big price tags if you need to bring in a technician. There are literally thousands of websites where people list basic problems and easy repairs — just Google the issue, along with the appliance model. Of course, you do have to be comfortable making those repairs yourself.
3. Make Your Own Cleaning Supplies: You can clean just about anything in your home with some combination of baking soda, vinegar, liquid detergent and washing soda. You get the added benefit of avoiding some of the harsher chemicals that you probably don’t want in your kitchen and can even avoid many allergies. You can find a whole list of recipes for cleaning supplies at Care2.
4. Going Green: There are tons of ways to make your home more energy efficient (and save some extra dough), and you definitely don’t need a specialist to tell you how. Just browsing online can help you build a list long enough to keep you busy for weeks to come: replacing weatherstripping, installing programmable thermostats and many other projects that will cut energy consumption and keep money in your wallet.
5. Cleaning Your Carpet: Hiring carpet cleaners can be expensive, but you can actually rent the equipment to do the job yourself. Be careful, though — when renting a carpet cleaner, the recommended cleaning solution is always expensive. There are a wide variety of alternatives, however — including cleaning mixtures you can put together yourself. You’ll want to run a search to see what type of cleaning solution works well with the carpet cleaning equipment you’re using.

These projects make sense most of the time — but not for every person. That’s because different people place different values on their time. If you can make $50 in an hour, saving a few cents by spending that hour on a DIY project makes less sense. You’ll have to run the numbers for your own situation to see just how much sense a particular project makes — but you’ve already got a few starting points right here.

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How many times have you driven past a fixer-upper and said to yourself, “I bet I could get that place cheap! And then I could slap a coat of paint on it, do some repairs, and have a real nice house?” I do it all the time. I like the thought of turning a so-so home into my own miniature palace and saving money doing so.

But, as I have to remind myself, there are plenty of ways that scenario can go very wrong. There are plenty of opportunities for a renovation to suck up your time and money — and still leave you with a less-than-great house.

Just what are the hidden costs, though? While every house is different, each time I talk to someone who’s done their own renovations, certain similar themes pop up:

• Plumbing. In many states, homeowners aren’t even legally allowed to work on their own plumbing — they have to call a professional. And, honestly, that’s not a bad idea. While I don’t like the idea of the government telling what I can and can’t do, plumbing is problematic. When something goes wrong with a house’s plumbing, it generally goes bad in a big way: even a small leak can mean that a wall rots and needs replacement, not a cheap proposition.
• Time. For many homeowners, the amount of time necessary to do home renovations on their own is prohibitively costly. There are a certain number of hours that have to go into doing renovations, no matter how you do them. There’s also the question of the value of your time: can you make more money working an hour than it costs a contractor to work on your house? If so, financially, it may just not make sense to do a lot of the work yourself.
• Paperwork. You’re just doing some rewiring on your house, or maybe building on an addition, right? There’s no paperwork involved, right? Wrong! Depending on just what renovations you’re doing and where your home is, you may need a building permit, an inspection, or some other bureaucratic paperwork. Taking care of permits and fees can add up quickly in terms of both time and money, especially if we’re talking about a big renovation project. And if you don’t take care of all the necessary paperwork, you may have to worry about a fine.

If you’re considering doing home renovations on your own — especially if you’re buying a house expecting to do some work on it — take the added costs into account. You should be thinking about more than the cost of materials and work: what happens if something goes wrong? That ‘if’ may very easily turn into a ‘when’ if you don’t have much experience with renovations, especially with more skilled work like plumbing.

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