Q: Since you decorate, upgrade, or renovate your house for a living, do you ever feel like you’re always working on your home and not really getting to live in it and enjoy it? For example, if you spend all day cooking in the kitchen, by dinnertime you aren’t hungry or don’t even want to eat. If something — like your house — is never quite finished and the to-do list is longer than the purchase contract, is it hard to sit peacefully without constantly thinking about the next project and feeling a low-level anxiety? Or am I just the anxious one for even asking? – Rach
A: Great question — we hear it a lot. Our blog and DIY work started as a hobby: nights and weekends projects we did for fun, originally just to keep friends and family updated. That origin means we still genuinely enjoy the hands-on work, and we’re grateful to do it full time now. Even so, most actual projects still happen nights and weekends because daytime is for writing, answering comments, arranging giveaways, managing sponsors, and other behind-the-scenes business tasks (and keeping an eye on the little one). Once Clara is asleep we can get out the tools and really dive in.
Because fixing up our home started as something we chose to spend free time on without pay, it’s still fundamentally fun to us. The business side of blogging — coding, tech, taxes, health insurance and other small-business tasks — can be stressful. But the DIY work is our favorite part: the planning, painting, and visible progress that comes from physical projects. It’s rewarding and personal, and for us it never feels like a grind. Some people find joy in numbers or education; we find joy in transforming spaces. That doesn’t mean everyone should do it full time — many people prefer a hobby-level commitment — but we love switching between different kinds of challenges. Over the years we’ve happily taken on big projects (even during holidays) because that’s our version of fun.
That said, it wasn’t always balanced. In our first house we felt pressured to finish everything quickly. We’d try to redo ten things before guests arrived and burned ourselves out when deadlines slipped. The turning point was accepting that it takes years to make a home feel fully finished. Some rooms evolved over 4–5 years, and that’s normal. Taking your time often produces better, more thoughtful results than rushing and later wishing you’d done things differently.
A house that needs serious updates won’t become perfect overnight unless you have a crew and endless funds. If you slow down and think through decisions, you’re more likely to love the outcome. When we learned to relax, it changed everything. Guests are used to seeing our home mid-project — cabinets without doors, tools on the floor — and they still enjoy visiting. Realizing that people will love you even if every detail isn’t finished is incredibly liberating.
Now we feel much less time pressure. We treat renovating as a journey rather than a sprint. The variety of tasks keeps things interesting — we’d get bored repeating the same trim painting for years, but tackling different projects keeps our enthusiasm high. Living among your progress is part of the reward: completed projects surround you and remind you how satisfying it is to transform something run-down into a beautiful, functional space.
We try to savor each step of progress: snapping photos, celebrating a new doorway, or just enjoying a freshly painted wall even if counters and flooring aren’t finished yet. That mindset turns the work into an ongoing series of small victories instead of a constant source of stress.
Our top advice: enjoy the journey and stop rushing. While you DIY your way to a renovated home, pause to appreciate progress and where you started. What’s the point of a beautifully renovated kitchen if you don’t enjoy using it? After finishing our big kitchen project we loved hosting — watching family and friends gather in a space we built is a warm, proud feeling every time.
Some evenings are quiet and ordinary: John cooking while I read to Clara by the fireplace, then eating at the peninsula. That everyday contentment is what the work is for. Other times we take Clara outside to play on the patio and remember what the space looked like before. Those contrasts make the effort worthwhile and keep us motivated.
So soak up the gratitude and enjoy your ever-evolving home. Work on rooms one small step at a time, and resist the pressure to hit an imaginary finish line. It’s crazy-liberating to decide: it’ll be done when it’s done, and we’ll have fun getting there. Booyah.
How do you keep your DIY spirits up? Do you find ways to celebrate progress along the way, or have you felt that same “must-finish” pressure we did when we first moved into our house?