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I haven't done flooring, but at this point, here is how DH and I have come to look at house stuff (even lawn mowing, Christmas light hanging, etc.):

1) Does it require both of us to do it? Lawn mowing doesn't, but Christmas light hanging does. If so, where will the kids be/who will watch them while we do it? If it's a project that would require longer than the length of a Disney movie, most likely we'd have to get a sitter, so I consider whether or not it might be cheaper to pay the labor fees on someone with a little experience (who could do the project faster than us).

2) Do we actually WANT to do the project? If it's going to stress us out/cause us to fight, sometimes it's worth it just to pay someone else.

Not exactly what you asked, but....figured this perspective might help you think about what you want to do! It used to kill me to spend money on services when it was something I felt I could do myself, but now I'm starting to see the value of my time/sanity a little differently.

We just did this - purchased LifeProof from Home Depot. They quoted something like $3.50 a square foot to lay it. Our handyman did it for $1 per square foot. He did a great job. I think it took him most of a day. It was for a roughly 350 square foot room in our basement. You'll also want to figure out whether you'll have to lay quarter round or baseboard, which is harder to do than the actual flooring.

We are not particularly handy, but we also have 3 kids and figured it would take us a full weekend day to do it together, so it was worth it for us to have someone else do it.

We just put some in our basement and decided to have it done professionally for many of the reasons listed above. Ordered the flooring from lumber liquidators for around $2.50 sq fr and found a contractor who was trying to start his own business to install. He laid 130 sq ft for $500 and it took about 4 hours. Done!

We paid to have it installed, but we (and by we I mean me) installed our own quarter-round. The price to install quarter-round is INSANE. We had 97 linear feet that needed to be installed and it was going to be almost $200 for that. I tackled most of it in two 3 hour stints on a weekend and just did the last part in about an hour. It would have been quicker if I had used my nail gun the whole time.

@HappyBaker: I’d hire someone!

I think it really just depends on two major things; how handy is DH and how big is the space? BIL just did my MIL's whole house and it wasn't hard at all!

We did it outselves - my husband and a friend did it, and it took them about a day. That being said the friend had done it before and knew what he was doing. If it was going to be just your husband, learning as he goes, I might look into hiring somebody (although if your contractor doesn't usually do flooring, is it also going to take him longer than it would take somebody who knows what they're doing? If I were paying by the hour this would concern me).

Is your basement floor sloped? If so, definitely don't do it yourself. The ones around here are sloped towards the drain... don't know if that is common or not.

My husband did it himself for our basement 1.5 Years ago. We would definitely do it again. He’s pretty handy and watched YouTube videos. The worst part was carrying the boxes. It’s laminate floor boards that look like wood...sort of. They were quite heavy and I’m pretty weak.

We used this product instead of subfloor panels. https://www.homedepot.ca/en/home/p.dmx-1-step.1000747034.html

It took him a weekend and our basement is pretty big and had some poles to cut around and weird angles.

Paying a floor installation person and not your contractor is also a good choice!