Over nearly seven years of owning a house and doing our own projects, we’ve picked up a number of hard-earned lessons. None of these are the only way to do things, but they’re the ones that saved us time, money, and headaches. If you’re learning as you go, maybe a few of these will help you avoid the same mistakes.
1. Don’t follow one-line tips without checking whether they apply to your house or system. Home-improvement blurbs often sound simple and brilliant, but they don’t always consider specific house conditions. Case in point: we read that stuffing insulation into an unused chimney would save energy, so we shoved some in without checking the chimney cap. After a rainy stretch, we found dozens of maggot-like larvae spilling onto our floor—flies had laid eggs in the damp insulation where water was getting in. We hauled the insulation out, cleaned up, and sealed the chimney cap with silicone. The takeaway: a neat-sounding hack can be a disaster if you don’t inspect the situation first.
2. If you have a stump, get it ground instead of trying to dress it up. We tried to disguise a huge dead stump by building an octagonal planter on top of it. No matter what we did, it just looked like a stump with a weird wooden box on it. When we finally paved the driveway for our backyard wedding, we paid to have the stump ground out and regained that corner of the yard. Generally speaking, if something in your house or yard bugs you—ugly wallpaper, a dead tree, or a permanently awkward feature—invest in removing it instead of spending time and money trying to camouflage it. Removing the problem lets you create a space you actually enjoy rather than continually covering up something that makes you cringe.
3. Plant at a safe distance from your foundation. It’s tempting to tuck plants close to the house for instant landscaping, but planting too near the foundation causes problems for both plants and the structure. Dwarf trees and shrubs planted a few feet farther out look fine from the street, get better sunlight and rainfall, and reduce the risk of roots interfering with the foundation. Give plants room to grow and your house will thank you.
4. Make spackle and drywall mud perfectly smooth before priming or painting. Paint and primer accentuate every bump and imperfection. If you try to sand painted drywall to get the same glass-smooth finish, you’ll quickly learn how difficult and messy that is. Our routine is at least two rounds of spackle and sanding: fill, sand, inspect, repeat until it’s truly flat and smooth. It feels slower in the moment, but it prevents the much bigger hassle of repainting or repairing after the fact.
5. Your first idea might not be the best one—live with the space and rethink layouts before committing. In our first house we initially planned to replace cabinets in the same footprint, but after living with the space and sketching ideas we ended up removing a dining-room door, turning that room into a bedroom, and transforming the kitchen from a narrow single wall into a functional U-shaped layout. We gained storage, counter space, and a usable extra bedroom. In our current house we debated adding an island, then a banquette, and ultimately chose a peninsula—an option we wouldn’t have considered without time to test how we actually use the space. Waiting, measuring, and reimagining a room after living in it for a while often leads to smarter, more valuable changes.
Those are five practical lessons we learned the hard way. A couple were painful fixes, others just took patience and planning, but all of them made our home work better for us. What have you learned the hard way with your house or DIY projects? Share your tips so others can skip the same mistakes.
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