By Yvonne Swanson, Times Correspondent
St. Petersburg Times

It's no wonder that "do-it-yourself" has become the weekend mantra of today's homeowners. Countless how-to classes, articles, books, Web sites and television shows make home improvement look simple, fun and inexpensive. Even first-time home buyers should be able to conquer plenty of projects, right? Wrong! DIY, unfortunately, doesn't always equal do-it-right.

Case in point: landscape lighting. You buy a $100 boxed set of solar path lights and spotlights, install them according to the manufacturer's directions, then wait for the sun to set and your front yard to look like the one on the box. Instead, the spotlights with the yellow filter make your plants look sickly and the pagoda-style lights along the walkway barely stay lit for a few hours. Solar, it turns out, wasn't a good choice because your front yard doesn't get enough direct sun during the day to charge the darn things.

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