Q: Since you decorate/upgrade/reno your house for a living, do you ever feel like you are always working on your house but not ever getting to just live in it and enjoy it? Like when you spend all day cooking in the kitchen by dinnertime you aren’t hungry and don’t even want to eat half the time. If something (like your house) is never quite done and there’s a to do list longer than the purchase contract, is it hard to just peacefully sit without always thinking about the next project and thereby giving yourself low level anxiety? Or….am I the anxious one which is why this even occurred to me? – Rach
Embracing the Endless Evolution: Finding Joy in DIY Home Renovation
Rach, your question resonates deeply with us and countless home renovators and DIY enthusiasts across the globe! It’s a fantastic query, and one we actually receive quite frequently. The feeling you describe – of perpetually working on your home without truly settling in to enjoy it – is a common concern for those immersed in the world of home improvement. However, our journey with home renovations, and indeed this blog, started purely as a passionate hobby. We dedicated our nights and weekends to DIY projects, initially just to share updates with friends and family. This organic origin is, we believe, the secret to why we still genuinely love what we do, even as it has become our full-time endeavor.
For us, the lines between ‘work’ and ‘passion’ often blur. While our days are filled with blog management, engaging with our community through comments, crafting compelling posts, organizing exciting giveaways, and managing sponsor relationships (all while juggling parenthood!), the physical act of renovation primarily happens during evenings and weekends. Once our daughter, Clara, is tucked in bed, that’s when we truly get to wield our hammers and bring our creative visions to life. It’s a testament to how much we cherish these hands-on tasks.
The Heart of DIY: A Labor of Love, Not Just Livelihood
It’s crucial to understand that fixing up our home was never a strategic business move or a pursuit for profit. Instead, it was our chosen pastime, what we naturally gravitated towards after a demanding day. In essence, it defines ‘fun’ for us. To be completely candid, the operational side of running a thriving blog can be incredibly demanding – navigating intricate coding, handling technical challenges, and managing all the less glamorous aspects of small business ownership like quarterly taxes and health insurance can be quite stressful. You can learn more about how to start a blog here, and see that it’s not all glamour! Yet, despite these challenges, the DIY projects themselves remain our absolute favorite part. They are the exciting core, the ‘cream in the middle of the Oreo,’ providing immense satisfaction and creative outlet.
Even tasks like photographing, uploading, and resizing images – which sometimes feel like routine chores – pale in comparison to the excitement of planning, executing, painting, and witnessing tangible transformations during a project. That immediate gratification and personal connection to the work never gets old. We recognize this deep-seated passion isn’t universal. Just as some individuals are naturally drawn to numbers, thriving as professors, accountants, or financial advisors, we find our joy in planning, rethinking, painting, and upgrading spaces. Each project presents a unique and fun challenge, ensuring no two days are ever the same. While some might prefer DIY as a limited hobby, perhaps capping it at a few hours a week, we genuinely relish immersing ourselves in it day in and day out. In fact, for the last four consecutive Christmases, we’ve even tackled some of our most ambitious and ‘craziest’ house projects. It might sound unconventional, but honestly, we wouldn’t have it any other way.
From Pressure Cooker to Peaceful Process: A Transformative Mindset Shift
However, this enjoyable, balanced, and healthy relationship with home improvement wasn’t always the case for us. When we first moved into our initial house, roughly a year before launching this blog, we found ourselves under immense, self-imposed pressure during those initial months. It was, frankly, an unpleasant experience. We harbored unrealistic expectations, wanting our entire home to be completely made over in just a few short months. Any impending visitor would send us into a frantic flurry of activity, attempting to complete ten projects before their arrival. This approach inevitably left us feeling burned out, frustrated, and deflated when we inevitably fell short of our impossible goals.
The pivotal moment, the truly liberating realization, was understanding that true home transformation takes years. Our den, for instance, still looked significantly unfinished even eight months after we moved in. And that’s perfectly acceptable – it’s simply part of the typical DIY journey. A house requiring significant love and attention isn’t going to magically transform overnight, or even within a few months, unless you have an unlimited budget and a dedicated crew of professionals. Moreover, by taking your time, you’re more likely to achieve results you genuinely adore. This thoughtful, unhurried approach allows you to thoroughly consider each decision, preventing those dreaded “shoulda-woulda-coulda” regrets later on. Take this particular room, for example, which took 4.5 years to evolve into one of our absolute favorite spaces in our first house. The beauty wasn’t just in the final outcome, but in the entire process – once we learned to truly relax and enjoy it. Haha.
“Relax, It’s Only Decorating”: Our Stress-Free DIY Mantra
Consequently, “relax, it’s only decorating” has become something of a mantra for us. We’ve had family visit during the midst of major renovations, like our recent kitchen overhaul when cabinets lacked doors entirely! Instead of stress, we all shared a good laugh about how there’s always something in various stages of disassembly at our house. Our guests now understand and accept that it’s completely normal to arrive and find a project mid-progress. And you know what? They still love us just the same! This was a profound revelation. We no longer feel the need to frantically complete every last detail when friends and family are en route. They appreciate our company regardless of the state of our kitchen. It’s incredibly liberating, I tell you.
In essence, we’ve shed a significant amount of time-related pressure. Yes, even with a famously long to-do list and a large audience following our every move, we’ve learned that home improvement isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon, a journey that demands we pause and savor each moment. We consistently echo the sentiment that it’s not solely about the destination, but very much about the ride. And for us, this ‘ride’ never loses its appeal because we’re constantly tackling diverse challenges and switching up tasks. While painting trim for five years straight might indeed become monotonous, the opportunity to embrace a variety of challenges and embark on different adventures along the way genuinely constitutes our definition of a good time.
Living in the Progress: Celebrating Every Step of the Home Journey
Furthermore, we get to truly ‘live in our progress.’ This means that the fruits of our labor constantly surround us, serving as powerful reminders of the satisfaction derived from seeing a project through. It’s akin to displaying your academic degrees in your office or adorning your walls with cherished photographs – your environment becomes a positive reinforcement. It reminds us how far we’ve come and the profound rewards of getting our hands dirty to transform something lackluster into a space we find both beautiful and functional. Even when we are smack in the middle of a project, we consciously strive to enjoy that specific period, capture photos, and revel in milestones like a newly created doorway where none existed months prior. Even if the new counters aren’t installed or the final flooring isn’t laid, there’s immense pleasure in appreciating each step of progress as it unfolds.
Therefore, our primary piece of advice for anyone embarking on home improvement is simple: enjoy the journey and resist the urge to rush. This means that as you DIY your way to a transformed home, you are encouraged, even required, to pause, admire your handiwork, and appreciate both where you started and where you’re headed. What good is a newly renovated kitchen if you’re too stressed to enjoy it? Since completing that extensive kitchen project, we’ve hosted countless family and friends in the space. Every time we see a group of loved ones mingling happily in our new kitchen, an overwhelming wave of gratitude and joy washes over us. We are immensely proud and excited to share our hard work, and profoundly thankful that it is now both functional and beautiful to us.
This sense of giddiness isn’t reserved solely for entertaining. A quiet evening at home on a random Wednesday might involve John cooking a meal while I read to Clara in the comfortable chair by the fireplace, followed by us eating at the kitchen peninsula. This becomes our view, a snapshot of serene domesticity born from our efforts:
Sometimes, we take Clara outside to play on the patio, and we find ourselves enjoying this space:
… a stark contrast to how that area appeared before our DIY-loving hands transformed it:
Keep Your DIY Spirits High: Practical Advice for the Home Journey
We are constantly soaking up this gratitude, cherishing our ever-evolving home at every turn. The same principle applies when we work towards upgrading our bedroom, our living room, or enhancing our curb appeal – all these spaces become areas of enjoyment that fuel our creativity, excite our senses, and inspire us to persist. They serve as potent reminders of the inherent fun and profound rewards of DIY. So, resist the urge to impose undue pressure on yourself to reach some imaginary finish line. Instead, embrace the process with joy, take your time, and tackle things one day and one small step at a time. This approach not only keeps your projects manageable but also consistently spurs you on to infuse other parts of your home with the same level of personalization and special touch.
What strategies do you employ to maintain your DIY enthusiasm? Do you find it possible to celebrate your home improvement triumphs as you go along, rather than waiting for absolute completion? Have you ever experienced that overwhelming “it-must-be-done” pressure, similar to what we felt during those initial months in our first house? I can tell you, it’s incredibly liberating to simply declare: “It will be done when it’s done, and we’re going to have an amazing time getting there.” Booyah!