DIY Renovation - What To Do Yourself vs. What To Hire Out

I've had a few questions about what we do ourselves vs. what we hire out, so I thought it might be helpful to go into that more in-depth today and talk about not just what we personally hire out, but also how we make those decisions (and I'll walk you through how to make those decisions for yourself as well). It's always a good to have an idea of what you really can (and want to) do yourself before you begin any kind of remodeling project!  I addressed this briefly in my post about installing the recessed lighting in our kitchen if you want to check that out as well.

When it comes to home renovation, you're not only deciding how much you want to pay, but also what you want to pay. Because doing things yourself involves a different kind of cost than paying a contractor. While DIY does save money, it costs time instead. Nathan once spent a whole Saturday installing flooring in our dining room with help from a friend and they only got about 75% done. So while we saved a lot of money over having it professionally installed, it cost him a couple days of time instead. See what I mean? 

So for every part of your renovation, you need to evaluate your unique needs and decide exactly what you're willing to pay. Find the balance that works for you, your home, and your family. Today I have several tips to help you think through these decisions and I put together a free printable workbook to help you as you work through that thought process! You can get it here:

DIY Renovation Planning Workbook

First Steps in our DIY Kitchen Renovation

Guys, we're well over a year into our DIY kitchen renovation. Which sounds crazy. But we're DIYing the entire thing (on top of jobs/kids/homeschooling) so it takes as long as it takes. I've been planning to share as many details as I can, but it turns out finding time to both do the DIY and write about the DIY has been difficult has not been something I really wanted to try to do. So. I didn't. 

But I think it's time. So today I'm going to kick if off by going back to the beginning to share the first steps we took toward get our dining room ready to convert into a kitchen just in case it would help anyone else planning a similar renovation. Obviously the very first step was a lot of planning, which you can read about here. Then the first actual ax-to-the-grindstone step was getting the bones of the room ready and creating a blank slate. 

How to Turn Stock Cabinets into DIY Built-In's

Our first project of 2020 is (finally) finished! We tackled a totally neglected corner of our home (a little nook off our kitchen) and added a ton of functional storage with DIY built-ins. It's a pretty simple DIY that started with a couple stock cabinets from Lowe's, so today I want to share the process we followed so you can recreate it in any space and in any size!

This project started much like every other project we've ever done: with me saying "It will be easy! We'll be done in like two weeks!" And just like every other project... I underestimated. Like, a lot. It took us nearly two to complete these built-ins. Not because this process is difficult - it's actually pretty simple - but because we were exceptionally slow at setting aside time to work on it, and because the walls in this old farmhouse are crazy crooked. I mean, DIY always takes longer than I hope (you'd think I would learn - but no) but this project was even worse because we spent so much extra time cutting and recutting each board to fit tightly against walls that just aren't straight. But as usual, that slow and steady work has finally paid off in a big way.

It's hard to believe this is the same corner: