If you live or work in the DC area, you may have seen us in today's issue of the Washington Post Express (jump to page 38 to see the article) alongside many popular bloggers in an article on home blogging. More specifically, why crazy people like ourselves not only spend a tremendous amount of time and effort renovating our home on our own, but why we also choose to blog about it for the world to see.

Having over a year and a half of blogging experience under our tool belts, and going on 10 years of DIY bliss, we figured we're not the worst people in the world to provide a little insight on what makes our blogging clocks tick.

During our interview, we came up with a handful of reasons why we blog that hopefully didn't make us sound like downright tools. Though the article in the Express was brief, I figured we could be a little more verbose in our description if we carried on the conversation here. Besides, we'd love to hear from those of you that blog, why you do it, and from those of you who are primarily readers of blogs, what attracts you to them?

Without further delay, here are our primary reasons for blogging, broken into several "tions".

Inspiration

There are definitely two sides to the inspiration coin when it comes to blogging, but both are equally important in our minds. On one hand, we hope to provide inspiration to others working on their home, or hoping to tackle DIY projects. This is a somewhat obvious goal, and one that we hope succeeds above all else. We take photos, write descriptions, catalog the process, compile how tos, and offer advice, all in the hope that someone will come across our blog, see something we've done, and say "You know, that looks like something I want to do, and I think I can do that myself!"

The other aspect of inspiration comes from our own personal inspiration the blog provides for us. This may sound strange, but writing our blog has encouraged us to take on more projects, be more creative, and try to work at a faster pace. Whether we're drawing our inspiration from a comment left by a reader that has linked to their own project, an idea conveyed in a comment, or by the fact we're doing a guest post somewhere and can't help but always go overboard in our efforts, the blog is often the little devil sitting on our shoulder encouraging us to take the leap and go for it.

We often find ourselves sheepishly convincing the other that a project is a good idea by saying, "I've always hated our old counter tops, and if we did butcher block it'd be inexpensive, much better, and...it'd make a good blog post." Can you picture ONE of us saying that? I don't need to picture it, I've actually lived it.

Documentation

I'd say that documentation is first and foremost the most important reason we blog. Whether we're documenting a small project, a large room renovation, a weekend outing, or a dream vacation, we're thrilled we've been able to capture the various aspects of our days that combine to make up our lives. But there are two primary aspects of documentation that we target with our blog posts.

The first approach to documentation is a technical one. We attempt to chronicle the supplies we use, steps we take, and the various successes and difficulties we encounter when we're working on our projects. It's our hope that this level of documentation will be useful to us when we look back for reference to a completed project, and to future web searchers looking for a DIY advantage when tackling a similar project. This is a very practical and useful approach to blogging, and one we hope will come in handy for years to come.

The secondary documentation aspect falls far more to nostalgia. Wendy and I are both people who enjoy the "look how far we've come" view on our lives, and our home is a major part of that. Whether we're looking at home inspection photos to see the sad state of our house when we purchased it back in 2003, or if we're looking back on a project's near disastrous mid point for inspiration, the nostalgia we feel when we look back on these older items simply can't be beat. 

We hope some of our friends and family may get similar enjoyment if they stumble on something they helped us with, but this aspect of documentation is very much for our own benefit.

Interaction

Blogging is an open invitation to share some of the most private aspects of our lives. We write in an open way, in an effort to connect with you through our stories and experiences. As a result, we tend to get a fair amount of interaction from readers on everything from comments about cleaning our fridge to our many photos of our darling pets Mel and Lulu on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This interaction is often so fulfilling that it makes the whole blogging "thing" almost worth the price of admission alone.

We've been fortunate to meet great people from near and far, and consider many to be good friends, even if we've never met in person. It's quite fun to think about the fact that we now know people we otherwise never would have met simply because we decided to start writing about our house and life. It's an odd world we live in, and one our great grandparents never could have imagined.

Commiseration

If there's one thing I love about reading others' blogs, it's a good train wreck. I don't mean this in any karma inducing ill-natured sort of way. It just reminds me that DIY can be HARD, and we're not alone. When we write blog posts about difficulties we encounter, projects that don't turn out how we expected, products that don't function as we anticipated, and things that just plain go wrong for no reason, we're doing it to both inform those readers who are blissfully unaware of the common pitfalls of home ownership, as well as to have an open commiseration with people who are already well versed in the disasters that can loom around every corner. 

Moments after being smacked in the head by...something. Thanks to Wendy for documenting this moment rather than assisting me in coping with my trauma.

There's really nothing like a relatable story of a similar disaster (and hopefully a few great after photos) to keep me plugging through on something where I really just want to throw in the towel. Hopefully our posts will be the same commiseration crutch for someone else down the road.

Indoctrination

I'll be the first to admit, I can be a bit of a zealot when it comes to historic home items, renovation, preserving the past, "doing it right," and any other stuff I spew endlessly on the virtual pages of our lives. I hope the historic home soap box doesn't turn you off too much. And maybe, just maybe, some of my instructions, tips, and tricks, will be useful in converting someone from a "gut and rebuild" to a "preserve and restore" mentality. We look at ourselves as stewards of our historic home, and hope to inspire others to care for, and protect, their local history. 

Procrastination

Writing a blog post is a great way to procrastinate. Trust me, I'm becoming an expert. If there's a task that really needs to get done, I'll do it, but if there's a blog post I have an idea for, and something that can technically wait, the blog post gets my attention. Writing for our blog is becoming our new nightly television show, and before we know it we're one to two hours invested and enjoying (nearly) every moment of it.

We also know how great it is to get sucked into reading updates on someone else's projects rather than working on our own. It's our hope that this blog might be the same enjoyable entertainment for you, in the same way some of our favorite reads have become for us. After all, who doesn't like reading about someone else's successes and failures when the last thing you want to do is deal with your own ongoing projects?

Collaboration

And finally, blogging has opened up an avenue where we've met many very talented individuals who possess diverse and unique skills. Leveraging our own expertise along with the talents of others has a tremendous amount if potential to help us fix/create/enjoy some wonderful things.

So there you have it, the top seven reasons why Wendy and I have chosen to open our home and lives to people we've never met from all around the world. Thus far it's been an incredibly unique and enriching experience that has helped to teach us the value, power, and reach of the Internet. If you're a new reader, we hope you like what we have to say, and if you're a regular around here, we hope you've enjoyed our blog just a fraction as much as we have. If that holds true, we feel like we've done our job.

If you're a blogger, we'd love to know what drives you to share is such a public forum. If you're an avid reader of home blogs, tell us what it is that makes you enjoy reading home blogs so much.