About Spain
DIY or find a contractor for your restyling?
A lot of people when they move to Spain decide to renovate a building, usually out of necessity, Spanish buildings tend to be poorly constructed. That means that they have to make a decision about whether or not they are going to hire a contractor or do it themselves. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.
The decision as to whether or not you are going to renovate a building in Spain on your own is largely going to come down to the skills that you have. You do not specifically need to be able to do any of the work yourself since most of a contractors job is actually arranging for the work to be done by others. Therefore you do not have to have construction skills to act as your own contractors. However there are other skills that you are going to have to have.
If you don't speak Spanish it is probably not a good idea to act as your own contractor in Spain. You may be able to get around this if you are going to do all of the construction work yourself but even then it is not really a good idea. The problem that you are going to face will be in hiring and supervising workers who likely only speak Spanish. It is possible to find a contractor who speaks English but not an entire work crew.
The other big challenge that you are going to face if you act as your own contractor is that you are going to have to get all of the permits and approvals for the work. This is going to require that you speak Spanish as well since all of the paperwork will be filled out in Spanish. Equally importantly the building codes in Spain are quite a bit different than they are in the US so you will likely want the assistance of somebody who is familiar with the local rules.
One other thing in favour of hiring a contractor is that construction costs in Spain are quite low compared to the US. Therefore the savings that you will get by not using a contractor will not be as much as you would save doing it yourself in the US. The biggest reason for the lower cost of renovating a home in Spain is that the labour costs are quite a bit lower.
There is however one big reason that you may want to do it yourself when it comes to renovating in Spain, you may not be able to find anyone else to do it. There is a huge construction boom going on in Spain right now so there are not a lot of experienced contractors who are going to be able to fit your project in. If you are going to do it yourself plan on having to do most of the work yourself as well since finding skilled tradespeople will also be a challenge.