DIYing vs. Living In Your Home & Enjoying It: a house log
Q: Since you decorate/upgrade/reno your house for a living, do you ever feel like you are consistently working on your house but not ever getting to simply live in it and enjoy it? Like when you spend all day cooking in the kitchen by dinnertime you are not hungry and do not even want to eat half the time. If something (like your house) is never quite done and there is a to do list longer than the purchase contract, is it hard to simply peacefully sit without consistently 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
A: Haha, it is a strong question and we in fact get it a lot. I truly think because this journal and our Hands-on enjoy began as a complete hobby (we did home improvement stuff on nights and weekends and began this journal simply to keep our friends and family posted) it is totally something that we still enjoy doing – and are thankful to have the opportunity to do full time. We in fact still do most projects on nights and weekends since during the day we are tending the journal/answering comments/writing posts/doing other office-job stuff like arranging giveaways and managing sponsors (and watching the bean) and then at night when Clara’s asleep we can in fact get our hammer on.
Bit since fixing up our home was not something we did to make money or start a business, and was in fact what we opted to spend our free time doing without making a dime after a hard day’s work – it truly is simply the definition of Lively to us. To be quite honest, the business side of running a journal can be fairly hard work – so the coding and the technical stuff and the other behind the scenes being-a-small-business stuff (like filing quarterly taxes and paying for our own health insurance, etc) can be stressful (more on that here). But the Hands-on stuff is consistently our go-to! It is the lively part. The cream in the middle of the Oreo, if you will.
Even picture taking/uploading/sizing can sometimes feel like busy-work, but projects and planning and painting and all the lively physical you-see-the-changes-as-you-go stuff is the thing we consistently look forward to! It is so rewarding and personal that it never gets old. I certainly do not think it would be that way for everyone, but simply as someone else might have a passion for numbers (and take strong joy in being a professor or an accountant or a financial adviser) we have a passion for getting to plan/rethink/paint/upgrade stuff. It is a lively challenge for us and no day is ever the same. I certainly think some folks would rather simply do it as a hobby (perhaps five hours a week is their cap) but we are glad to do it day in and day out. Heck, for the last four consecutive Christmases we have taken on some of our craziest house projects (what is wrong with us? haha). But honestly, we would not have it any other way.
It was not consistently an enjoyable, balanced, healthy thing for us though. In our first house we found that in the first few months after moving in (about a year before we began this journal) we felt rushed and put all of this unrealistic pressure on ourselves. And it sucked! We hoped our house to be fully made over in a matter of months and anytime someone was visiting we freaked out and tried to do ten things before they arrived, which left us feeling burned out at best and frustrated and deflated at worst (when we did not get everything done in time). The freeing thing was realizing that it takes years. Our den in fact looked like this eight months after moving in. And that is more than ok – it is par for the Hands-on course.
A house that needs serious enjoy is not going to look remarkable overnight or even in a month or a series of months. Unless you have a crew of people and unlimited funds. Plus, if you take your time you are more likely to enjoy the result since you in fact think it through instead of rushing in and having all those shoulda-woulda-coula feelings later. This room took 4.5 years to evolve and was one of our go-to spots in our first house – not only afterwards, but along the way. Once we learned to chill the heck out and relax. Haha.
So “relax, it is only decorating” is kind of our mantra. We have had family visit us in the middle of our most recent kitchen reno (there were no doors on any of the cabinets) and we all simply laughed that there is consistently something disassembled at our house.
Guests know it is totally normal to come over our house and see something mid-project, and you know what? They still enjoy us! It was a revelation. We do not have to go crazy trying to finish every last detail when family and friends are en route. They will enjoy us and enjoy our company anyway. Liberating, I tell ya.
In short: now we feel a lot less time pressure (haha, yes, even with such a long list and so many people watching) because we have learned that it is not a sprint and it is more of a journey that we need to stop and enjoy. We consistently say it is not about the destination, it is about the ride. And the ride never gets old to us since we get to switch things up and tackle distinct tasks all the time (painting trim for five years would certainly get old, but getting to do a bunch of distinct challenges and have various adventures along the way truly is our idea of a good time).
Plus we get to live IN our progress, meaning that everything we have accomplished surrounds us and reminds us how good it feels to get ‘er done. I suppose it is like hanging your degrees on the wall in your office, and putting up photos that make you smile – the environment is a good one because it reminds us how far we have come and how rewarding it is when we get our hands dirty and make something lackluster into something that we find striking and functional. Even when we are living right smack in the middle of a project, we try to enjoy that time, snap photos, revel in the fact that a doorway might exist where one did not a few months ago, etc. Even if the counters are not in and the new floor is not down, there is something pleasant about enjoying each step of progress as it comes.
So our #1 advice to folks is to enjoy the journey and stop rushing around. Which means while you Hands-on your way to a new home, you are required to stop to enjoy your handiwork and appreciate where you were and where you are going and all that stuff. What is a renovated kitchen if you cannot enjoy it? Since we wrapped up that looooong project we have entertained a bunch of family and friends in there and every time we find ourselves beaming at a bunch of people milling around in our new space, this wash of gratitude and happiness comes over us. We are proud and excited to share our hard work and so thankful that it is functional and striking to us!
And not only do we get that giddiness when we entertain, but a quiet evening at home on a random Wednesday night might mean that John cooks while I read to Clara in the chair by the fireplace and then we eat at the peninsula. And this is the view.
Sometimes we take Clara outside to play on the patio, so we are here:
… instead of here, which is what that area looked like before we got our Hands-on-loving hands on it.
So we are soaking up the gratitude and enjoying our ever-evolving home all the time. The same is true when we work towards upgrading our bedroom or our living room or our curb appeal – all those spaces are areas we can enjoy and they fuel us and excite us and inspire us to keep at it. They remind us how much lively it is and how rewarding it can be. So try not to put pressure on yourself to get to this imaginary finish line and simply have lively and take your time and tackle things one day and one small step at a time! It truly keeps it manageable and spurs you on to make other parts of your home simply as personalized and special.
What do you folks do to keep your Hands-on spirits up? Do you find that it is possible to enjoy your home improvement triumphs along the way? Have you ever felt the it-must-be-done pressure that we put on ourselves in the first few months of living in our first house? I am telling you, it is crazy-liberating to simply say: it’ll be done when it is done and we are going to have lively getting there. Booyah.
