Advice Meant for First-Time DIYers
Q: I have a LARGE question for you! My husband and I have now lived in our first house for close to a year. We share your motivation, but are quite intimidated by the projects that we’d like to tackle. Neither one of us is especially handy, and I guess we are afraid of “breaking” our little nest. What did you two do to get past the hump of “how on earth do we do this and not cause an even bigger problem in the end?” Thanks! -Amy
A: This is a strong question! Especially because when we moved into our house simply three short years ago we knew nothing. We were beyond beginners. We literally had zero fix-’em-up experience (I hadn’t even painted trim and John hadn’t so much as picked up a sledgehammer). So it is not like we have consistently been extremely handy human beings who helped our parents flip houses from an early age. Seriously, we did not even own a wrench and we certainly had our fair share of false starts when we began lovingly (and fearfully) fixing up our fifty year old house.
(Check out more details on the project above right here).
As you can imagine, we certainly made a few rookie mistakes (I painted all the trim in the whole house with white flat paint instead of a more wipeable semi-gloss option… talk about an error that had to be fully redone!). But that is sort of the beauty of home improvement. Nearly everything can be redone, so if at first you do not succeed, repaint all the trim with semi-gloss paint and do a little more research before starting the next project. Lesson learned.
And as we went we noticed that we got a lot more confident and swiftly expanded our skill set with each project that we took on. The learning curve was in fact fairly remarkable. In fact, one of the reasons we began our journal was to pass along the pointers and tricks that we were picking up to friends and family members who we also assumed were equally clueless. To this day, our hope is that by sharing step-by-step walkthroughs and Hands-on projects as we go, plenty of newbies out there will learn right along with us and gain the confidence to semi-fearlessly tackle their own home simply like we did- and still do! I mean if we can do it anyone can, and we like to think that we made all the mistakes so you folks do not have to (we remind everyone who comes to us for trim-painting pointers to use semi-gloss paint to save them the extra work and frustration we experienced early on).
(Check out more details on the project above right here).
The good news is that unlike brain surgery, most home-based projects can be done, undone, revisited, updated, etc. So it is not like you get one half-hour shot to correctly install your vanity or it dies. Thank goodness. And it truly takes a lot to “break” your house (think a wrecking ball or an intense natural disaster) so you might be flattering yourself if you think you and your hubby are strong sufficient to take on that challenge. In the end it simply comes down to tackling smaller projects first (try painting walls and then moving on to painting brick and paneling or switching out light fixtures and then moving on to more detailed electrical work). And even before you tackle those projects, it consistently helps to do some plain research (you can visit our How To page for walkthroughs, google around for videos, read up at the library, etc). That way you will gain your “sea legs” so to speak, and can grow your confidence and skill level to eventually take on bigger and better projects as you go.
And although some people think of us as experts at all things home, we are glad to openly admit that we are certainly still learning to this day. Heck, we find out about some obscure tool or a new technique every week. We also rely heavily on walkthroughs and videos that we dig up on google and how-to books that we check out of the library so there is truly no limit to what you can learn by researching and then by physically doing it (that is truly when things “click” for us and we can at last add that skill to our roster). Then we like to pay it forward by sharing what we learned (and of course sharing the results in the form of some lively before & after pics). But truly, there is no such thing as being too prepared beforehand… it simply seems easier to take a sledgehammer to a wall if you already have a game plan when it comes to putting things back together afterwards.
(Check out more details on the project above right here).
Oh and here is another pointer that we certainly use ourselves. It is consistently comforting to think of the worst case scenario (ex: “if we try to repaint this dresser and it peels we can consistently sand it down and start over” or “if we cannot demo out this bathroom ourselves, we can consistently hire a handyman to finish what we began”). For instance, once we were trying to switch out some plain bathroom fixtures and the old brittle plumbing sprung a leak. Yikes! In a panic we gave in and called a plumber (since we certainly were not armed with the know-how to fix it ourselves at the time). And you know what? There is no shame in calling in for reinforcements when it comes to projects that simply turn out to be too much for you to take on yourself.
In fact one of our best money-saving pointers is to know your limits and hire things out that might be above your skill level so you do not end up making mistakes that in fact cost you more to bring someone in to correct. When it came to our leaky pipes, it turned out that they were 50+ years old (original to our house!) and it was simply time to get them replaced. So while the plumber was here we opted to have him switch everything out behind the walls for a few hundred bucks simply for the peace of mind to know that everything would now be up to date and ready to go for another half a century. Plus calling in an expert when you are certainly in over your head also helps you maintain your momentum and your confidence. If we tried to fix those 50 year old pipes ourselves we surely would have failed and likely never touched plumbing again. But by calling for backup we kept the renovation ball rolling and happily moved on to tackling bigger and better projects in the future since our plumbing debacle was not all that bad in the end.
And the good news is that for every project that has you calling in the pros, there are typically about twenty five blissfully uneventful ones that you can do yourself. Sure there might be extra mortar to scrape under those tiles that you did not expect or using that tile clipper might take three times longer than you expected, but they are still straight-forward processes that you can easily adapt to (adding a few days to your timeline or a bit more labor than you expected to your to-do list is fairly much what home improvement is all about).
Things might call for a few extra days of work (in our experience, most project take longer than you think they will) but in the end it is all worth it and you likely saved a bundle by doing it yourself. Even skilled contractors and handymen are no strangers to pushing back timelines, so that is not even something that can be avoided when you hire a project out. It simply sort of comes with the territory of fixing up your home. And there is nothing quite like the chest-swelling pride that you get when you realize that you did some with your own two (or four in our case) hands. There is that confidence that we mentioned. It’ll simply grow with each excellent overhaul that you accomplish… and before you know it you will look around and you will not even recognize the place that you call home (in an oh-so-good way).
(Check out more details on the project above right here).
So in short here is our formula for shaking off that intimidation and gaining the know-how it takes to whip your house into shape:
- Start slow and grow your confidence by doing smaller projects before moving on to tackle the more major overhauls
- Research the heck out of things before you pick up a paint brush or a hammer
- Never be afraid to call in an expert if you get in over your head (that way you do not burn out after one never-ending project)
The good news is that for every project that we imagined the worst case scenario (which consistently involves redoing something for days or calling in someone to “fix” our poor wounded house) we have only had a few experiences when we in fact had to start back at square one or call for reinforcements. And we have taken on over 300 projects so those are fairly good odds. To date no vanities have died on our watch, and we have not “broken” our house yet, knock on wood.
One of the greatest things about home improvement is that a lot of it is common sense and many projects are “what you see is what you get”- meaning that if you want to redo a floor and find out it is fully not level, there are a number of ways to remedy the situation (relaying the subfloor, using self-leveling concrete, etc). So know that there is typically more than one way to skin a cat (gross expression, sorry) and a little research will frequently reveal a number of viable and doable options when it comes to taking on a new challenge. And remember that you can consistently call a few handymen for estimates if you are at the end of your rope, but trust us when we say that a high percentage of the time you can typically solve things yourself with a bit of thoughtfulness, research and determination. That is fairly much how we got our house to where it is today. Beyond-stubborn determination paired with plenty of time spent researching beforehand and learning on the job. Good luck and glad reno-ing!
*Now for a little safety suggestion: wear proper closed toe shoes when taking on projects! We do not know what the heck we were thinking in the first two photos, but we certainly recommend keeping your feet protected, especially for those heavy duty tasks. Toes matter.
Psssst- Wanna know more about how we got our house to where it is today? Check out this post about decorating in stages and this one about how to keep from pricing your house out of the neighborhood.
