DIY Fail: Why You Shouldn’t Replace Your Roof Yourself

Replacing your roof can admittedly be expensive. Taking into consideration the time, materials, and labor required to remove an old roof and install a new one, it’s easy to see why. Some homeowners will try to reduce the expense of replacing their old roof by doing it themselves.

However, this is a terrible idea. Roof replacement is one home improvement project that you’ll want to leave to the professionals. The following are five reasons why a DIY roof replacement is a bad idea:

1. You Could Injure Yourself or Someone Else

Professional roofers are taught to take very stringent safety measures. Not only can they get up on a roof and perform repair or replacement work safely without injuring themselves, but they take extra precautions to ensure nobody else on the property is injured as a result of their work as well.

If you don’t have the training or experience to perform roof work, you’re much more likely to fall off your roof or injure yourself in some other way. You may also injure those on your property due to a lack of safety training (for example, a tool might fall from the roof and hit someone below).

2. You May Cause More Damage

If you don’t know what you’re doing, then simply trying to get up on the roof and walking around could cause more damage. If you try to replace your roof, you could do damage to the underlying deck or even cause property damage by dropping materials or tools off of your roof. The more damage you do, the more expensive everything will be to repair or replace.

3. The Roof Will be More Vulnerable to Damage

Even if you manage to “successfully” replace your roof, odds are you don’t have the training, experience, or expertise to do a good job of it. This means that you’re going to quickly discover that your roof has issues as a result of a poor installation. This can come in the form of leaks or structural vulnerabilities. As a result, you will have to pay to have your roof re-installed or to have any issues that develop repaired, costing you more money than if you had simply had a professional roofer install your roof to begin with. Not to mention that your roof will likely continue to have problems as a result of a poor installation.

4. Shoddy Work Doesn’t Look Good

Besides the fact that your roof may experience all kinds of problems as a result of a poor installation, it may end up looking bad as well. People can tell when a roof was poorly installed — it doesn’t look good. This can hurt your property’s curb appeal, which, in turn, can end up hurting the value of your home. Not to mention that it can become an eyesore in your neighborhood, which won’t please your neighbors.

5. Materials Will be More Expensive

Roofing materials can be quite expensive. Professional roofers have established relationships with vendors that allow them to get high-quality roofing materials at a discount. Additionally, odds are you don’t have the tools needed to install a new roof, which means that you’ll have to purchase the required equipment, which can be costly as well.

As you can see, trying to replace your roof on your own can not only be dangerous, it can end up costing you way more money than it would have cost to have a professional do it. If you’re in need of a roof replacement, contact us at All-Nu Construction in Toledo, OH, for a free estimate today.