Now is a good of a time as ever to write something like this. We are elbows/head/shoulders/knees/toes deep into renovating our fixer and I’ve been learning a lot along the way. I thought it’d be great to share how we’ve been feeling about all this and some tips for sanity.
keep things relatively clean.
This is a pretty simple one, honestly. The truth is we have a busy tot and 9 times out of 10, our house is in the middle of some construction zone. But take a look at these pictures below. The first one is already in a somewhat “clean” state for us at this point in our lives:
But in less than 5 minutes (seriously, I promise) I had it looking like this:
Say whaaaa? I know it looks like I just Photoshopped my La Croix and her play kitchen out of the corner, but I actually just tidied up. Pinky promise! This can really make you feel so much calmer. Just don’t look at our back porch that looks like a Home Depot exploded or our kitchen which looks like we run some sort of robbery business of all our neighborhood mail.
Know your limits.
Everyone has them. A lot of times, you may need to try something before you realize it’s an actual limit. For us, our limit came at crown. Sheesh. I talked about this on our Instagram stories, but it kicked the husband’s butt. So, we finally got a professional to come and in a day and a half he had it ALL UP. BY HIMSELF. PROFESSIONALS Y’ALL. I got to sit on my couch and listen to him literally whistle while he worked and it was amazing. Worth every dang penny. Once you know your limits …
Plan and budget.
For us, this has been crucial. We have a ton of plans for this space. I mean goodness knows, we talked about several things we wanted to get done in 2018 and it’s barely the tip of the iceberg. We’re talking we need to knock out walls, redo flooring in the entire house, build a garage, move a laundry room, complete kitchen redo and a gut job of three bathrooms.
Our budget has room for us to basically buy groceries. lolz. Which means we have to budget and plan very carefully. Having a budget and sticking to it can help you …
celebrate small wins.
We know good and well that knocking down a wall and doing an entire kitchen reno isn’t possible right now. BUT that doesn’t mean we have to sit idly by. Why not install some open shelving? Why not make some cased openings in the meantime so it looks like maybe we actually want the walls there? Speaking of small wins: 
We got our table from World Market. When we talked about redoing this wall as one of our projects we wanted to do in 2018, it was up in the air if we would get this table or not because we were going to build. But then it went on like MEGA sale and we had a coupon code for my birthday month, so we took the plunge. I’m so happy we did. This is not the final “styling” because I just haven’t had time to figure out what I want done with it and it’ll probably change fourtyleven times anyway but again, we’re talking SMALL WINS here!
don’t hide until it’s “all done”.
Mainly because it will never be all done, but also it will never be all done. For instance, we have a lot of our church team members over in big groups. I hosted friends here the weekend we moved in and it was a TRAIN WRECK. We had a Superbowl party at our house for goodness sakes.
When you do have people over, do not point out all the things you hate/need to do. Stop apologizing for the state of your house. “Sorry it’s such a wreck,” or, “Sorry we don’t have crown molding up. We look like trash,” are sentences to knock out of your vocabulary. You’re not sorry. You’re just embarassed. Two different things. Something I learned is to turn your sorry into, “Thank you.” As in, “Thank you for loving us while we’re redoing this thing,” or, “Thank you for being willing to come over even though you’ll have to leave to go to a gas station to use the bathroom,” or, “Thanks for being willing to just step over all the nails from our nail gun.”
Plus let’s be real. You won’t have anything to blog about if you wait until your house is totally finished, right?!
BONUS: have a favorite room!
No, I do not love every room in our house right now. But I love our house. Like I love it. And especially having a few rooms that I just love make it even better. For me right now, it’s our living room, our guest room, and our daughter’s room. Why? Because look!
extra super bonus: take strategic photos!
Strategic. NOT staged. There’s a difference. So as to not hide before you completely finish fixing and upping, take strategic photos. Remember this one from just a second ago?
Want to know what it looks like from a different direction?
Ta da! See? We’re a wreck over here. Don’t ever think any different.
All that to say, my friends, is ain’t nobody Joanna Gaines except Joanna Gaines. Your fixer upper can’t happen in an hour. So, if you’re living in a fixer upper and fixer-ing it and upper-ing it yourself, be patient, give yourself grace, and keep beer in your fridge (if you’re in to that sort of thing).
For a future sanity reminder for yourself, pin it for later:
Until next time, stay gross y’all!
I’m going to try to do a better job of cleaning up while we remolded. Even if not finished it looks better when it’s clean. I love your attitude about being thankful instead of sorry, I’m going to adopt it.
Yes! Love that! Also, we don’t always get that right over here, but when we do, it really does just FEEL better! 🙂