---
title: "DIY, handyman or specialist: picking the right level"
description: "A simple triage for home and small business tech jobs: what to do yourself, what to hand to a generalist, and when to pay a specialist."
date: 2026-06-29
updated: 2026-06-29
tags: [home-tech, small-business]
url: "https://joshdargie.com/blog/diy-or-hire"
author: Josh Dargie
---

A lot of my consulting time goes into a question people are almost embarrassed to ask: "is this a job I should even be paying someone for?" It deserves a straight answer. Some tech work is genuinely do-it-yourself territory, some belongs with a competent generalist, and a smaller slice than you might think needs a specialist. Paying specialist rates for handyman work wastes money. Doing specialist work yourself wastes weekends and sometimes drywall.

Here is the triage I actually use.

## Three questions before you touch anything

First: what happens if this goes wrong? Swapping a router that fails is an inconvenience. Botching the wiring behind a finished wall is a repair bill. Losing your only copy of the business's files is a catastrophe. The consequence of failure, not the difficulty of the task, is what should set the level.

Second: is the job reversible? If you can undo your work in ten minutes and be no worse off, try it yourself. If mistakes get buried, literally or figuratively, hire.

Third: will you ever do this again? A skill you will use every year is worth learning. A skill you will use once is usually worth renting.

## What I happily tell people to do themselves

More than you might expect. Setting up a consumer mesh Wi-Fi kit in a house of ordinary size. Replacing a modem or router and changing the default password. Installing smart plugs, bulbs and battery-powered cameras. Setting up cloud backup for family photos. Moving email to a proper hosted service by following the provider's own guide. Labelling the cables in your own rack or closet, which costs nothing and pays off forever.

None of this is beneath anyone, and none of it needs me. When someone calls about a job on this list, I say so and point them at the manufacturer's instructions. It is the cheapest advice I give.

The one habit that makes DIY safe: change one thing at a time and write down what you changed. Most "my network broke" calls I get trace back to three simultaneous changes and no notes.

## Handyman-level work: skilled hands, common tasks

The middle tier is work that needs experience and proper tools but not deep design judgment. Running a few Ethernet drops through accessible walls. Mounting access points and cameras where someone has already decided they should go. Physically installing a rack, a patch panel, a UPS. Terminating and testing cable.

This is exactly the kind of hands-on work I refer to installers rather than doing myself; in Southern Ontario I point people at [RelayPoint Technologies](https://relaypoint.ca) for it. The price for this tier should reflect trade labour, not consulting. If a quote for pulling four cables reads like a network design engagement, something is off, and I wrote about that pattern in [what a too-cheap quote is telling you](/blog/too-cheap-quote), which cuts the other way too.

The catch with this tier: someone still has to decide where those cables and access points go. Placement decided by whoever holds the drill is how you end up with an access point in a closet.

## When a specialist earns their fee

Design decisions with long consequences: network layout for a renovation, choosing what to run [before the drywall goes up](/blog/before-drywall-decisions), planning a migration, anything involving the security of a business network. Diagnosis when the obvious fixes have failed. Anything where the failure mode is data loss or downtime a business cannot absorb.

The pattern: specialists are for decisions and diagnosis, generalists are for execution, and you are for the reversible stuff. A good specialist should be happy to make one set of decisions and then hand execution to cheaper hands. Be wary of anyone who insists every tier of the job must flow through them.

## Mixing the levels on one project

Most real projects use all three. On a typical small office fit-out, the owner sets up the accounts and the cloud services, an installer runs the cable and mounts the hardware, and a consultant spends a few hours up front on the plan and a few hours at the end checking it. The design hours are a small fraction of the total cost and they are the hours that prevent the expensive mistakes.

Scoping which parts belong at which level is itself a planning exercise, and a short one. If you want a second set of eyes on where the line sits for your project, that is exactly what my [planning engagements](/hire#planning) are for, fixed fee or hourly, and I have no installer to sell you.