Original Ideas? Pish Posh.: a house log

Q: How do you come up with your remarkable home ideas? Is it all on your own? Do you have some secret inspiration method? Like the built in wardrobes in your master bedroom and the doorway widening trick that you pulled in your den/kitchen/dining area. I simply wish you could teach me how to think like you so I could come up with some original ideas to make my house feel like it is unique and cool instead of lame and boring! – Lisa

A: First of all, we will say this: we are 100% confident that nothing that we have ever done to our house or on this journal has not been done before. We repeat: there is likely not one original project that we have taken on out of the 500+ that we link to on our Projects page. In fact there are likely multiple designers and regular people alike who have done a lot of the exact same things that we have tackled (from widening doorways to creating bedroom built-ins) before us, better than us, and perhaps even cheaper than us.

Truly, it is true.

It is kind of like advertising. As a copywriter I felt like every commercial I wrote must have unconsciously been inspired by something else (from my own life and personal experiences to other remarkable ads that I studied in college or even from pop culture-ish things like TV or a go-to song). A script could not truly come out of thin air, since all that we soak up and experience on a daily basis makes up our sub-conscious and somehow reemerges when we are channeling that part of our brains and trying to be creative.

And thus I have come up with this plain explanation: inspiration is everywhere and we are like ShamWows- simply absorbing it all.

Most of the time we do not even know that it is happening. We are listening to a song or going for a walk and then bam, an idea pops up. Sometimes it is obvious where it came from, like when we created the post card wall in our office after reading about it in a magazine (read more about that here) or when we whipped up some tone on tone stripes in our bathroom after being inspired by Jenn from Design Star Season Two (read more about that here).

And sometimes it is simply something that we have seen done a whole bunch of times that we cannot wait to try (like upholstering a chair, painting a ceiling, making a headboard, building a vanity out of a night stand, taking the door off of our linen closet, or painting the back of a bookcase). These are basic things that plenty of Hands-on lovers have tackled, and in each instance we were excited to try our hand at something that we’d seen successfully done a bunch of times, both in magazines, the blogosphere, and even in our friends’ homes.

Sometimes a project that we take on is simply a tweak on something that we have seen and thought “hey that is cool but we cannot afford it”, like when we covered glass vases with cork after seeing a sweet but pricey cork lamp in a shop in Delaware (read more about that here).

Heck, sometimes we honestly have no clue where on earth an idea in fact came from, but we are sure it was not all us (how could it be when we are so surrounded by inspiration everywhere we look?).

The takeaway here: there is no secret fountain of creativity, and the best way to tackle your home makeover head-on is to immerse yourself in inspiring TV, magazines, and life in general to find something that truly excites you. Then take that ball and run with it baby! We in fact think that 1% of the “hurdle” to making over your house is finding inspiration. That is the straightforward part (read more about a few ways to do that here).

The other (more challenging) 99% of the process is in fact deciding to get moving and committing to doing something that you’ve thought about- even if you are nervous. Paralysis does not lead to a new looking casa- action does. We have toyed with plenty of things, but thinking about ideas does not make our house look distinct. In fact tackling those tasks with excitement and a mild sense of “this-should-work… right?” typically does the trick. You can read more about how we prep for projects and gain confidence as we go here. But the whole act of committing to executing something that you’ve toyed with is truly the way to that “I am so glad I live here” feeling when you walk in the door.

In short: we are so not special. And the whole mission of this journal is to encourage everyone out there to simply do it. Wait is that someone’s slogan already? My bad. The point is that if we can do it, you can do it. There is nothing magical about us. Quite the opposite in fact. We are so normal it is crazy.

So go forth and Hands-on something! What are you folks up to this weekend? Anything particularly lively going on in your house?