Find out what kinds of home improvement endeavors consumers are researching online.

Struggling with that DIY job? You’re not alone. Experts predict that the home improvement market will grow through 2024 as home sales decline and disposable income rises. And folk are using government home repair assistance programs such as rehabilitation and repair loans to make up the difference. All in all, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies predicts that Americans will spend $485 billion on improvement and repair this year.

So you’re not alone. But it can sometimes feel that way when cornered by a tricky task and the sudden feeling that you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s when millions of budding Al Borlands turn to YouTube tutorials or a live video chat with one of Frontdoor’s home repair experts for help.

But just how many homeowners are out there struggling with the same home repair job as you? To find out, we analyzed viewing figures from top YouTube DIY help videos to see which home improvement and repair tasks we need the most help with.

Data analysts at Frontdoor found the number of views for “how to” videos on YouTube for over 100 of the most common DIY home improvement and repair jobs. We then ranked each category by the combined total of views for the top ten videos for each task.

Key Findings

• The repair job we need the most help with is door repairs, with the top ten videos on this topic totaling 34,380,000 views.
• The top home improvement job we are trying to figure out with YouTube’s help is building a fire ring, with 38,785,000 views across the top 10 videos.
• The most common bathroom DIY help request is how to repair a toilet (25,500,000 views).
• How to repair and paint kitchen cabinets are the top kitchen jobs we need more help with (over 20 million views on YouTube).

The 10 DIY Repair Jobs We Most Need Help With

What could be simpler than a door, right? Wrong. That great big slab of wood is the home improver’s worst nightmare, and we have the data to prove it: the top door repair videos have a combined 34,380,000 views, which is more than any other job.

Locks, handles and hinges are fiddly devices that need precise attention. And if you need to take the door off to mend or replace it, putting it back up can be a complex combination of elbow grease, careful alignment and maybe even planing the wood.

There are five plumbing-themed tasks in the top ten DIY jobs we need the most help with. And there are two toilet-related tasks in the top five: repairing and unclogging a toilet.

How To Repair a Toilet is the second-most watched DIY video theme of all. There are so many interconnected parts and so much that can go wrong. One home improvement site lists 21 issues, from a sticky toilet handle to “phantom flushes.” And yet, “some common problems are so easy to fix that you’d be flushing money down the toilet if you put off fixing them yourself,” says Ace Hardware’s Lou Manfredini.

The 10 Home Improvement Jobs We Most Need Help With

While DIY repair jobs often crop up at a moment when we have neither the time nor money to hire a specialist, home improvement jobs are a challenge we take on out of choice (albeit that it may be our partner who made the choice).

The one that needs the most help is building a fire ring — an enclosure to prevent outdoor fires from spreading from barbecues or campfires. Naturally, homeowners are concerned about getting the safety aspects right. Aside from the risk of human injury, the heat or sparks from a fire ring can potentially damage the ground below, walls and fences nearby or foliage above.