If very high-skilled work is needed and/or specialized tools (replacing a front-door, plumbing a gas-line), I agree, it's hard to match a skilled professional.

In my experience, the vast majority of household diy/repair does not require that level of skill. It can also be hard to find a really skilled person that cares about your home as much as you.

For me, I tend towards fixing/making everything myself unless it requires high-skill or specialized tools.

> It can also be hard to find a really skilled person that cares about your home as much as you.

This is something I've found to be true.

We bought a house that we later found had some significant water damage issues. I hired a professional the first time we noticed it and he did little more than paper over the problem.

I ended up spending the next two years basically tearing the wall apart and redoing all the sheathing and insulation and house wrap.

Sure I could have hired someone and they would have eventually done all that for me, but I'm pretty confident it would have been in the tens of thousands of dollars by that point.

Caring about the end result will get you a long way.

But part of it is probably also that I come from a working class family and was immersed in the basics of that sort of work for my entire growing up time.

How do you know you're hiring an expert? It's easy to find people claiming to be experts who are willing to take your money. It's virtually impossible to evaluate whether they're any good or not when you're not an expert either.

If I do it myself, I might take three times as long, but at least I know what I'm going to get.

Somehow, it feels better if it's screwed up because I screwed it up rather than paying someone else to screw it up.

Word of mouth is a good way. Experts tend to have a portfolio of work so you can use that as your reference point.