Yeah in the UK where I spent most of my life, it seems like you do whatever you want, pretty much. Golden rule - you don't touch gas plumbing. And you don't mess with your circuit breaker board/RCDs etc. I think installing new ring circuits may be off limits.
Anything else? Go for it. I fitted a bunch of taps and a toilet, changed single sockets to double+USB sockets, changed light fittings, fixed poorly wired lighting circuits, installed Cat-6 through the walls to a few rooms, all sorts of stuff. And none of it was anyone else's business. You can (should?) get a professional inspection and safety certificate before you sell the house, but that's about it AFAICT.
I'd be happy enough with the situation in Austin, so long as the city inspections were cheap or free. I'd be happy enough to do a short course in the basics before getting some sort of permit. Where we are now is nuts.
(But at least I can buy a pair of generic reading glasses pretty much wherever here!)
The inspections themselves here are reasonably priced, but it’s still annoying to deal with the city because they operate in 1995. There’s no portal for scheduling inspections for homeowners, you have to call them. They don’t tell you when they will show up on the day they will perform them, so you have to be available at home from 7-17 ready to instantly answer the door at a moments notice the second they knock or you will miss them and have to reschedule
The pricing is reasonable enough - it’s cheap enough to actually be worthwhile to do several things yourself that normally you’d have to pay a contractor for. I did it when I ran some electrical conduit to my garage to add a few 120V receptacles in there.
My general rule of thumb is also I won’t touch gas. But also anything like plumbing that is INSIDE walls I usually am looking to have a professional handle as well. It’s harder to fix knucklehead DIY mistakes when they are covered up behind drywall.
It does make me want more plumbing setups like I’ve seen in Europe. When I lived in Sweden I loved for instance that a lot of bathroom plumbing is completely exposed, so DIY’ing plumbing work is actually pretty accessible. Here where you have to dig into the walls to get at it makes it much less appealing since not only do you have to be a a decent plumber you also have to be a decent drywall person as well.
Watching "Scrapheap Challenge" has taught me the UK has a lot of regulations about steam engines.
One of the behind-the-scene videos was something like "that old steam-powered whatever they just happened to find in the scrapheap? Yeah, we've got the inspection certificate right here."
Anything else? Go for it. I fitted a bunch of taps and a toilet, changed single sockets to double+USB sockets, changed light fittings, fixed poorly wired lighting circuits, installed Cat-6 through the walls to a few rooms, all sorts of stuff. And none of it was anyone else's business. You can (should?) get a professional inspection and safety certificate before you sell the house, but that's about it AFAICT.
I'd be happy enough with the situation in Austin, so long as the city inspections were cheap or free. I'd be happy enough to do a short course in the basics before getting some sort of permit. Where we are now is nuts.
(But at least I can buy a pair of generic reading glasses pretty much wherever here!)