As strange as some of the questions may be, one of the most common questions curious individuals ask on a regular basis is one of the harder ones to answer, and also one of the answers most difficult to understand.

Q: "Why don't you ever just hire someone to do the tedious and time consuming work?"

Though my initial reaction is to smack my head with my hand and stare back blankly (as I had with the construction zone intimacy question), I know that any person asking this question can't realize the level of obscenity they'd just leveled at me and my DIY prowess. Rather than turn my back and walk out of the room mumbling incoherently, I've always tried to come up with a reasonable response that goes beyond a simple, "Because we don't do that."

The response to this seemingly simple question requires a great deal of personal introspection, willingness to accept my emotional foibles, and an ability to adequately convey my desire to frivolously spend an inordinate amount of my own time toiling away on a project rather than an interest in spending money to have others do work that I'll forever and always be mildly disappointed in. Disappointed in quality, in price, in execution, in my own failure to complete the task with my own two hands. I know, how weird am I?

No matter the response, the person posing the question either agrees or disagrees with my stance before the words fly from my mouth. Hire out vs. DIY is almost as engrained as red state vs. blue state, and we all know how easy it is to change a red or blue stater's mind.

When it comes down to the answer, I usually say something along the lines of "I prefer to do the work myself. I enjoy it, and I enjoy the satisfaction I have when it's complete. I know the quality of work that many tradespeople perform, especially those willing to be hired by a non GC for smaller jobs, and it's all a balance of time vs. money for them. The longer a project takes, the less time they have to work on another project that could be making them more money. I also know my own ability, and my personal insistence that I want to do a project and do it well. I'll gladly take a much longer time to ensure a project is completed to the best of my ability, while a tradesperson will usually ensure it's completed with just enough quality to be accepted by the customer. Not perfect, but good enough for sign off." 

By the time I get to this point in my answer the question asker has typically either nodded off or has wandered away to find something or someone more engaging. I don't blame them, I'm quite boring, and especially so when I'm standing on a soap box. But I feel quite strongly about this topic.

However, every once in a while my DIY brain gets soft. It usually happens somewhere in the middle of a massive and long running undertaking. Subconscious notions of hiring out portions of work to completely qualified and professional tradespeople begins to creep into my fragile psyche. I start to imagine sitting on the couch and watching TV while a team of capable individuals knocks out portions of my project that would take me days in a matter of fleeting minutes, all while I happily write out checks for the work and eat cookie dough and ice cream. Ah, how nice might that be to wake up in the morning with progress on a project and not have an aching back, stiff knees and ankles, bruised arms, hair full of dried joint compound, and cut hands. DIY can be a full contact sport, and sometimes the allure of watching from the sidelines starts to draw me in. Then...it happens, and I'm reminded exactly why this life of perceived luxury comes with it's own set of torturous results...or at least torturous to me.

A nearby home that is quite beautiful and rather grand has a breathtaking front porch. The home just recently sold, and though it is in overall good shape, there has been a lot of work going on both inside and out. Many of the wood elements of the porch's columns were quite rotten and needed to be repaired.

The thing about work like this is that it's time consuming, tedious, and not cheap. You can't just run down to the big box to pick up new molding to replace the old, everything is completely custom and needs to be milled specifically for the job.

I've been watching with great interest as the work has taken place on this grand and beautiful home. I'm totally fascinated by being an external observer in projects like these. I have no concept of the cost, only of the time and effort necessary to do the job, and I love watching as other people's hard work comes together. A few weeks ago, the custom and very large molding started to go back on the front porch columns to replace the rotten and deteriorated elements that couldn't be saved.

The new pieces that had been custom cut matched the old almost perfectly. They were obviously new due to the lack of pitting, dents, and other evidence that it's been outside for over 150 years, but that distress and patina will come back over time.

As I walked by I silently inspected the work, how the corners met up, how it all looked so good, but that's when I saw it.

You know...IT! The thing that reminded me of exactly why I prefer to take my own time and effort to do a project. The reason why I sacrifice weekends, evenings, and free time where I could otherwise be at the pool or playing tennis. And the thing is, I think 99.9% of people that walk by this lovely home and its newly restored molding will never notice what I noticed. Here's what I saw.

Do you see it? It's right there. The lower square base of one of the several columns is set back about 1/2" from the front edge of the rounded detail above. I can see from the pencil marks that the measurement and the cut was just a little off, which resulted in this minor error. But the problem is that it would take a fair amount of time to correct, requiring the removal of at least three and potentially six pieces of molding to remedy the mistake. Here it is compared to the other side of the same element.

You can see how it's right in line with the front on all of the columns except for this one column. And to me, this is the detail that I get stuck on. This is the thing that I will see each and every time I walk by this house. Nobody else will notice. But I will see it, because I have a sickness, the same way I see the bump of wood filler on one of our door casings that I didn't quite sand enough before painting, or the slight gap left on a bit of window molding from an incorrect cut on the miter saw, or the crack in one of our closet door panels because I glued it in place instead of allowing it to float.

But the thing about all of these things that I see wrong with our house, they are our own fault, and I'm more okay with things that are my fault. I'd much rather know that the crack in our guest bathroom's marble threshold was caused by my own negligence than the shoddy work that I had paid for and expected to be perfect. I'll look at it every time I use the bathroom, and almost nobody else will see it or think anything of it, but I'll see it and know that it was my own fault, and that's okay. Had we paid for it and not noticed it until after the final payment check was cashed, I'd always beat myself up over the fact that we overlooked it and had expected it to be perfect.

The fact of the matter is that our home is over 125 years old. It was never perfect, isn't currently perfect, and will never be perfect, but I want to make sure that our own four hands are the ones responsible for whatever level of imperfection we bring upon our house. And the level of imperfection I'm talking about, well, that level of imperfection costs far more than I'm willing to pay anyone else. 

And that's the long answer of why we won't just hire someone to do the tedious and time consuming work in our house, at least not while we're capable of doing it ourselves.

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This is obviously a very generalized version of the question, since most people asking usually have their own assumptions as to why one would undertake the challenge of completing almost all major and minor tasks associated with home renovation, maintenance, and decoration themselves. And we suppose it's a more polite way of asking "why don't you just hire someone?"

Though the question may be simple, the answer falls into a far more difficult realm. And in reality, our answer has gradually changed over the years. Call it maturity, call it what you will, but we see it as an evolution of an answer.

I'd say the most common assumption as to "why" we DIY because it is less expensive. Some friends or family have even delicately suggested that we do it because we are cheap, miserly, frugal, or any other polite or inventive way to say we're tight asses with our money. Most also assume that if we had more money, we'd do less ourselves.

Boy, I've lost weight since these early days. Yes, that's the same basement as this one...

True story. Over the years we've actually had conversations with people that involved sentences such as, "Why would I do it myself when I have the money to hire someone?" as well as "I remember the days when I had more time than money and used to do projects too." But the reality of our situation is far more convoluted than a simple explanation like that, and it goes all the way back to when we bought our home.

Wendy walking into our house on day #1, 15 minutes after closing.

Even before we started actively looking for a home, and well before we were married, we fell in love with Old Town Alexandria. I know we've said this before, but we just couldn't get over the historic district and its feel. It was so different from where we grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, and even though it's "city living," Old Town doesn't feel it cold and hard like a major city. We knew we wanted to live here, but the prices in the area were going up like crazy, we were young and just out of school and we had no way to afford the type of house we wanted.

We made a decision when we started house hunting that the location was the most important aspect of our home. The second most important factor of the house was age (it had to be old, and the older the better). After that, it was up to the house gods.

Given our desire for location and (ancient) age of our house, we stretched ourselves to the very edge of our budget. Now, when I say edge, I mean something more like the edge of a cliff, and very close to the edge, as if you're looking way down the side of the cliff and just hoping you don't fall.

The selection process and constraints we placed on our search (location, age, and budget) meant we had to compromise on the size of the house and the shape the house was in. Basically, there was no way we could afford a three bedroom 100+ year old home in the location we wanted that was in any way "done." This was our reality af the time we were looking for a home, so we had to make the best of our situation. And what we ultimately ended up purchasing was, as Wendy puts it, a grotesque bachelor pad. If you think we're exaggerating, just take a look at a few photos snapped during our home inspection.

When we bought our home we were stretched to the max. Add to it that our home was not in great shape and that we had grand plans, so we felt the work needed to start straight away. The only problem with our plan was that we didn't have much money to spend, so we had to make the money we had count.

So I'd say that it is a fair assessment, especially early on in our project, that the reason for choosing DIY wast simply based on affordability. While this may have been the case easily in our adventure, it slowly began to change.

The longer we were in our house, the more we found ourselves really and truly caring about the house. I knew we would care, I just didn't know how much. To us, our home is a piece of the fabric of our nation's history and we are stewards with the responsibility to care for the house. Our home had been long neglected, needed some TLC, and was just waiting for the right people to pour their hearts and souls into breathing life back into the place.

After a few months and years into our project and we started to gain confidence. Our DIY skills were beginning to be honed, and we were starting to feel more confident in our ability to really know how to work on the house. We were also starting to feel like the job we were doing looked as good as most professional jobs on friends' houses, so we figured we'd stick with it. Our results, enjoyment of the work, and the fact we were able to actually save money doing it ourselves helped us to transition our mindset from DIY because we must, to DIY because we want to.

The desire to DIY is one of those things that you either get it or you don't. There's no middle ground. I know plenty of people who thought they wanted to do this, only to buy a fixer upper and realize it wasn't for them. We were lucky in the sense that we find DIY projects satisfying and inspiring, and we both enjoy the end result as well as the process. Seriously, look how happy Wendy was when we finally got to the tiling stage of our guest bathroom reno!

As the years in our home have ticked by and our DIY adventure on our home has continued, our feelings about our projects have continue to evolve. No longer do we even look at this as "DIY to save money," we now see it as our responsibility to the house we call home. Between increased demands and hours required at our "day jobs," this blog, our lives, etc, we have less time now than ever, but we still feel this ultimate responsibility to continue the work we're doing because we feel we can do a better job than pretty much anyone out there because we care about our home more than anyone else will. We take our time, we do our research, we persevere until the job is done right, and we try to make smart decisions about how and where we spend our money.

As you can see, our actual reasons for doing work on the house ourself has evolved over the years. What started as DIY out of necessity to save as much money as possible, has turned into DIY out of appreciation, while still with a lean towards frugality. Our new perspective allows us to still maintain a high level of craftsmanship and respect for the home while keeping the price low, but now we have a little more money in our pockets to choose some of the nicer materials, technology, and finishes in the house. Basically, we don't need to choose between buying paint and getting a hair cut like we did in the old days. (The paint would usually win out, and Wendy is still cutting my hair if you're wondering. I guess old habits die hard.)

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's been easy and there haven't been times that we've questioned our decision to make this our lifestyle. There are days when the criticism from friends and family has eaten away at our motivation and confidence in our decision. There are times when we've wanted to throw in the towel, or in Wendy's case, throw me down the rickety basement stairs. (Like when I made a big hole in the wall and broke one of our original baseboards, just days after taking ownership of our house. This photo was snapped moments after the incident.)

Throughout the process our relationship has been tested, but we've been forced to communicate, problem solve, and work together as a team to accomplish our mutual goal. There are times when one or both of us isn't completely happy with a project, project's pace, budget, or anything else related to what we do, but those times are not constant. Most importantly, when all is said and done, we're actually closer to each other and also feel rewarded that we're preserving a small piece of history, and will leave our humble abode in a better state than when we first entered into it.

Do you DIY? What are some of your reasons for wanting to take on minor or major projects without the help of the professionals? Have your reasons for doing work on your house changed over the years? How have your skills grown and evolved over time? We'd love for you to share your story.

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Throughout our time living here, we've undergone tremendous changes in our lives including the onset of living independently from our parents, getting married, buying our first home, and the growth and responsibility that has come with our respective jobs. We've experienced high points, low points, exciting points, and mundane points, but at each point over the last 11 years, we've used our experiences to grow and learn.

So we'd like to do a little retrospective between the two of us and share it here with the world four people that read our blog. We hope you'll enjoy it.

Q: Are you glad you left Cleveland and moved to Alexandria?

Alex: Very! It was a scary time leaving the comfort and security of the city we had grown up in, but it also opened a huge number of possibilities we wouldn't have had if we had stayed in Cleveland. We took a risk and hoped for the best. Looking back on the last 11 years, I consider us very fortunate that everything has worked out the way it has. However, I do miss seeing the Browns and Indians in person on a regular basis.

Wendy: Absolutely. What started as an adventure with a three year imposed time limit has now stretched into a "maybe forever." Moving away from our family and friends was very difficult, and we took a big risk. I didn't have a job when we moved to D.C. (luckily I found one within only three weeks), and this area has opened our eyes and broadened our experiences to include a diverse history and culture that we didn't have access to in Ohio. Ultimately it made us have to be completely self reliant without having a network to fall back on. 

Our First Apartment

Q: Buying our house, good decision or bad decision?

Wendy: Definitely a good decision. Again, we took a big risk buying our house, as we stretched ourselves financially and in skill. I'd say it made us a stronger couple and has been a huge learning experience. We lucked into a neighborhood of some of the most amazing people I know. We were fortunate to buy in an area that has weathered the storm of our nation's falling housing market. And the home we chose was probably the best pick of the homes we looked at. Despite my initial hesitation, I'm glad I let Alex talk me into this one.

Alex: Great decision!!! I fell in love with old houses and Old Town once we moved out here, but I had resigned myself to the fact that we could never afford an historic home in Old Town. Finding our home, and finding it in the state it was in, in need of serious help and upgrades, was truly an amazing stroke of luck. It hasn't been easy or quick, and it's been the source of many a fight in our household, but it may be the second best decision I've made since moving here (the first would obviously be my marriage to Wendy...true love!)

Wendy: Awww. That's so corny. I'm fighting the urge to edit that last part. Like I do with most of your posts.

Q: Is the renovation what you thought it would be when you bought the house?

Alex: Not at all. I really had no idea what to expect, though I thought I did. I think the very first night of paint stripping that took hours to remove a very small amount of paint was an eye opening experience. I had an expectation that our renovation would be paint and minor upgrades in each room and then we'd be done. I had no idea how intricate, tedious, and in-depth this renovation would actually be. What I absolutely didn't expect was how tied I would become to the process as a whole, and how much I would take the restoration aspect of the renovation to heart as a responsibility.

Our Limited Progress Stripping the Stairs, After Hours of Effort

Wendy: Not really. I had no idea how much work it would be nor would I ever have expected it to take this long. (Still with years ahead of us.) But on the other hand, I never expected for it to become such a passion for us, nor a journey we would feel compelled to share with anyone who would listen.

Q: If you had it to do over again, would you buy the same house or a different one?

Alex: I'm 50/50 on this one. I absolutely love our house, and I'm attached to this house beyond belief, so it is hard to imagine us living anywhere else. But... there's this one house that I always feel was the one that got away. We looked at a brick row house in the heart of Georgetown on Olive Street. The house needed a lot of work, had no parking, was outside of our price range, and was in the busiest part of Georgetown's congested tourist area, but the house was very cool. It had a basement apartment to offset some of the cost, and lots of original details just begging to be restored. 

In retrospect, the lack of parking would have been horribly inconvenient, both for us and for guests, and the need to get the apartment into shape before we could have even started on our own work would have been frustrating beyond belief. I think we made the right choice in buying our house over the one in Georgetown. Our neighbors and neighborhood, parking situation, location, and character within the house outweigh what we would have gotten in Georgetown, but I still think about it and how amazing my commute would be whenever we pass by that house. I hope my house didn't hear me type that.

Wendy: Oh man, that's a tough one. In an odd twist of fate, we discovered a few years ago that the house I fell in love with during our search had to undergo major foundation repair, to the tune of $100k+. So, I guess taking that house out of the equation, I would buy the same house if we were considering the same options. There have been a few on the market since then that I would prefer over ours. 

Keying into our house for the first time.

Q: What was the renovation high point over the last 8.5 years?

Wendy: I don't think I can chose one singular high point. It probably comes in the satisfaction we receive from sitting with friends in a room with a glass of wine, enjoying the finished result. Or the look of horror on people's faces when we show them the "before" pictures for the first time. Love it. It reminds me just how far we've come.

Alex: There are so many things that I love about our projects throughout the house, but the one that I would say is my high point is potentially inconsequential to most people who would ever look at our home. My high point was the day we discovered the intricate scroll pattern in the decorative woodwork above our front door and windows. This discovery and restoration of the delicate feature was exactly the type of experience I was hoping for in restoring a home. Uncovering details obscured through layers of paint, taking time and putting forth significant effort to bring our home back to what it was intended to be, and discovering something that other people would never notice is what I value most about our entire experience.

Q: And the low point?

Alex: I actually have two points where I felt simply defeated. The first was the night I broke a pane of original transom window glass after protecting and caring for it for over two years in the basement. I had carefully removed it form the transom, delicately moved it from place to place in the basement, reinstalled it in the restored transom window, and was placing the final glazing point in the frame when my putty knife slipped and put a bit too much pressure on the glass and broke it. I can't express how upset I was. I couldn't talk. If you know me, you know I don't get flustered very easily, but this did me in.

The second was the moment I broke my collar bone while playing softball in 2007. We were in the midst of our office/bathroom renovation and I was just getting into the swing of things and everything was moving along. When I hit the ground I heard my bone break, but I couldn't believe it so I got up and put my right hand up to my left shoulder and felt the bone sticking up under my skin. I knew I had done something bad, but my first thoughts were about how upset Wendy was going to be and how this was going to really hold back our house work, rather than the searing pain radiating through my shoulder and arm. I ended up with surgery, a sling, and physical therapy for two months before I could start working on the house again. That was the longest and hardest two months I've had since buying the house.

Bahamas 2007

Wendy: Discovering the entire back of our house was being held up by two 2x4s! What our home inspector dismissed with a condescending wave of his hand, in actuality was a cluster f@%$ of water and termite damage that threatened the structural integrity of our home. We spent nearly everything we had in savings to correct the damage. And I'm still a little bitter about it.

Wendy looking a little scared by the termite damage.

Q: Where do you see yourself in five years?

Wendy: Happily living in our home, with all of the major projects completed. Stil having fun improving upon past work, redecorating spaces, taking on "fun" weekend projects, and helping friends with their own design dilemmas. And maybe having enough money saved to start thinking about a second home somewhere in one of my happy places (Napa Valley!) that's in need of some TLC. Did I really just type that? I need a DIY intervention.

Yountville, CA - @Bottega, mmmmm, 2009

Alex: Still working on the front door project? Is that a valid answer? Five years from now I hope to have the entire first and second floor of the house projects complete, with our focus turning to what we are going to do with the basement or rest of the basement if we're already done with some of it. But if everything works out the way I hope, we'll have won a $100 million dollar lottery jackpot and will be travelling the world and buying up houses that we find particularly unique in every location we love. We'll then let our friends and family use those places whenever they are on vacation. Sound good? Don't worry, we'll let our loyal blog readers stay in our various homes too. After all, what are Internet friends for? We'll let you know when we win the lottery. Any day now, I'm sure.

Final Question: 11 years, thumbs up or thumbs down?

Alex & Wendy: Two Thumbs Up! We have a good life. It's a lot of hard work and effort, but we've been fortunate enough over the years that our hard work has been fruitful. Alexandria was a great place to move to right out of college, and a wonderful place to buy our first home, but our luck has continued as the area has improved in almost every way before our very eyes. It makes us excited for what is yet to come.

So there you have it. A very brief 11 year retrospective on our time in D.C. and in living in our historic Old Town Home. Do you have any questions for us about our journey you'd like us to address? If so, feel free to ask. We'll do our best to answer. 

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Wendy on day one, 15 minutes after settlement on the house.

Did I say "rewarding?" Absolutely, but the fresh faced kid versions of us who bought this house in 2003 with barely two pennies to rub together after their first mortgage payment simply didn't have a clue of what lay ahead. Honestly, how could they have, they'd never lived through what we have lived through. They didn't get it, their friends didn't get it, and their family didn't get it.

Move in day, 2003, with my parents and our friends Mary and Michael

Today, many of our friends get it, some of our family gets it, and only a handful of strangers can understand why we put ourselves through this grind.

Now more than eight years later, we're older, more experienced, and on our best days...(maybe marginally) wiser. However, to many outsiders looking in, be it friends, family, or strangers, the people who've not lived through a DIY renovation don't typically have empathy for or understand what we've chosen to take on. But then again, we don't really expect them to.

Wendy and I have a lot of friends, family, and acquaintances who are intrigued at what we've taken on. And many strangers who are befuddled by ongoing renovations. These people tend to ask a lot of questions when we get together, and each one is sometimes asked with a hint of judgement. Here are some of our favorite and most often asked questions that we feel is usually served small side of judgement.

Q: Are You Done Yet?

This is pretty much question #1 for anyone who knows or learns we have been working on this house since 2003. It is such a loaded question, but has such an easy answer.

NO!

But that's not the full answer. The honest answer is that we'll never actually be done. Projects come and go, and we will complete each one in due time, but the work on a house, especially an old house going through a restoration and transformation like we've undertaken, will never actually be fully complete. 

I was talking to a good friend about this topic recently at a baseball game. He said, "You know, I realized that you and Wendy will never actually be able to say 'the house is done.' That doesn't exist in your vocabulary." This is the best synopsis of our efforts a friend has presented us to date. 

No matter the state of the house there will always be projects. Large or small, easy or nearly impossible, we have a vision for our home that is ever changing. We're always going to adopt new ideas, approaches, technologies, design choices, and feelings for what should be. We just hope that when we decide our time in this house is up, the next owners will take over and continue the work, regardless of the state of "completion." I realize this is a tall order for future owners, and one not certain to happen, but a guy can wish.

Q: Why Don't You Just Hire Someone to Finish the House?

Surprisingly, we get this question quite often from people who feel like we are taking too long to complete any given project. My quick answer is sometimes shocking, but not unexpected.

NEVER!

For me, the majority of the satisfaction, fun, and overall enjoyment I get out of this process comes from the fact that we are doing it ourselves. The only work we hire out are the tasks that I don't feel comfortable doing myself. 

There are always going to be tasks that are necessary to have outside professional assistance on, be it from a safety, expertise, or legal standpoint. This doesn't mean that I won't be very involved in the process, and it often means that I will think we can handle it the next time on our own because it really wasn't that difficult (to put in a load bearing beam with cement footers for example). No matter what, I view expert professional services as help in completing a larger project, not as someone who will ever do the project for us. 

On the roof with Mike from Lyons Contracting for our leaking skylight replace

Add to these facts that we have the patience to fully research every aspect of a project, take our time with the tiniest details, and are willing and able to stop mid project and alter our approach if we see something that can be done better or more efficiently, adding only to the time the project takes and not the cost, and you have a recipe for a successful journey. 

I often tell people who don't really understand why you wouldn't hire someone for everything, "We have more time than money, and I'd prefer to spend the time than the money on a project." This helps to put it in terms that are more easily accepted, but the reality is closer to "There's no way we have the money to pay someone for the time and effort we're willing to dedicate to this project...and if we did, they'd probably still do things wrong that we'd have to redo." 

Did I mention how completely anal we are? :-) 

Q: So when you're done, are you going to sell the house?

Taking into account the first question about "being done," and allowing the fact that we will reach a point where one could consider our work on the house complete, the question is really asking if would we then sell our house and move onto another house? The answer to this one is far more difficult than to the first two questions.

Maybe? Probably Not. 

I don't know if you can tell, but we love our house. We didn't love the building we bought in 2003, but we loved the potential we could see. We haven't enjoyed every single minute of the difficult and sometimes infuriating process, but we love the end result and what we've been able to accomplish. It may sound strange, but our house has become a member of our family. 

We may come to a point in time where we feel like we need to move onto another house, and that point in time may come sooner, or later, but we honestly have no idea.

The point of this process isn't to flip a house. We are pouring blood, sweat, and tears into this house, and we are not doing it with the intention of allowing someone else to reap the rewards of our hard work and effort without first enjoying it ourselves. The point is to live, grow, learn, and appreciate our home and our lives to the fullest. And we can't do that effectively if we're just looking at this whole process as a way to make some money and move on. 

Best case scenario, we can move onto another house and another project, but we won't have to let go of this house. This is a "winning the lottery" type scenario, but it would mean we can keep this home and our pride and joy as long as we're alive. It's a lofty goal, I know. But we have put ourselves through a lot over the years. Afterall, when you can look like Wendy did on the first evening of home ownership shortly after I tried to "fix" a piece of baseboard in our master bedroom and and did more damage than intended, you know it is going to be a tenuous ride.

Sorry honey! And Sorry it took me about six years to fix it.

The whole adventure of renovation and living in Old Town Alexandria is about the experience and impact on our life that we will allow it to have. It is unlike anything you can really understand until you've actually been involved in it. And more than anything, you must possess the desire for the end result that trumps the annoyances you experience during the process. 

As much as we appreciate the experience and would love everyone to jump into an old home renovation with both feet, until you have the desire for the end result and ability to see past the dust, our overkill approach to DEY (Do Everything Yourself) may not be the best way to approach home ownership. In DIY, the "it" you are doing is far more quantifiable, and is typically a better starting point to see if you fall into the category that has the desire and need to do everything themselves.

I know some of our readers are the hardcore renovator, others are DIY hobbyists, and others are people looking for ideas or inspirations. If you have a story like ours, or great questions that you are often asked, please leave of a comment and let us know. It's a labor of love to work on homes, but quite a rewarding one at that.

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