The Meaning of DIY
Hey, I’m Kerrie and I’m after my last blog post where I hope you got to know me a little better, I wanted to start this series off with, what DIY means to me.
There are so many do it yourself-ers out there and with how life has changed for many of us over the last number of years, there have been even more DIYer’s coming to the forefront and I couldn’t be happier. What could be better than having a community of people sharing their ideas and experience.
There are two types of DIY, one is where you don’t hire a professional to do a particular task and the second is created something yourself rather than buying it from a shop. Ultimately, you are involved in the final product you have.
Why I love DIY?
DIY helps me to reduce, reuse, recycle and remodel on a tight budget. There is no doubt, that my favourite part of the process is the idea generation, I love reading blogs, looking at magazines and Pinterest for inspiration and see how that would work in my home. From the moment we got our keys, my mind was whirling with ideas of exactly what I wanted each room to look and function like and that is so important.
I’ve done lots of projects from easy like creating cushions to more challenge tasks like painting and stencilling tiles in my bathroom. There is no doubt that DIY has a rollercoaster experience, no what size it is, the flow of inspiration, excitement, doubt, and gratification when its complete. For me, getting hands on and seeing my vision come to life is exactly why I love it, it’s not just about one project, I love taking elements and learnings from others into new projects. What could be more satisfying then repurposing something already there or bringing a fresh look to a room.
The most adventurous DIY yet
Moving into our home by the sea in the winter of 2020 had its own challenges. Moving into another lockdown and a house that we knew had lots of problems, we had to move quickly to transform it from a house to a home. As we moved towards another lockdown, getting people to help with projects and having people call out to our house just wasn’t an option, we knew we had to roll up our sleeves and do it ourselves.
Taking on a house is a big project, if I can offer any advice, take your time if you have it. Watch what light comes into the rooms and when, this will help with colours. Look at how you use the room and how it could be more functional for you. For us, we love hosting our friends so opening a wall up to make an open plan living and dining area was essential. A project like that can eat a large part of your budget so we knew we had to cut corners elsewhere and that is exactly why trying DIY projects is perfect because we have more control over our budget. All our DIY projects aren’t this big, my favourite projects were ones where we stripped old wallpaper and repainted the room. Fresh colours can make the world of different.
DIY just about anything?
Starting a project, yourself, doesn’t mean that you will have to craft everything yourself. When I’ve decided on each room, I’ll never decide on every single feature of the room, I’ll start by deciding a coupled of I create a mood board for it, I like to use neutral colours and difference textures before I make a start on any project. We went to We Love Blinds for our venetian blinds in our dining room. We have such a large window in that room that let in beautiful sunlight during the day so we wanted to be sure that this light still made it in. Venetian blinds always look luxurious, and we measured the window ourselves, taking less than 10 mins to measure and decided on the colour that would work best for us. Once they arrived, it took us less than 30 minutes to install the blinds. It's not all about getting your hands dirty, some of my favourite DIY jobs have been the finishing touches of things like blinds that I’m happy to celebrate as well.
Our journey so far: Before and after house renovations
Moving into our house in December 2020, the house has been vacant for some time before we moved in so the house was left as it was, floral wallpaper, musty carpets and don’t get me started on the curtains.
The winter really does show you the areas that you need to focus on most. Planning what to tackle first is pretty simple because there is one focus, make it air and watertight. After that it is on to the fun projects. I wanted to work in the rooms we would use the most so started in the kitchen. The best way to move quickly with a kitchen is to try to manage the process yourself and get timelines from everyone and move it along.
Once we got the kitchen finished, it was time to move onto the living room and dining room so decided open plan so there were a couple of walls that needed to come down and this process took a little longer than expected so we moved on to the bedrooms. We moved to work from the top down.
Thankfully, being the resourceful person that I am, those old curtains have been put to good use, they have made the perfect paint colours and when I’m ready for the next project they will be back out again.
