DIY Projects
This section is a collection of a few of the various projects I’ve done.
From projects around the house, to little products in this section I document what I’ve done so that you can either follow along or avoid the project like the plague.
I have a love/hate relationship with projects like this as I find them to be both rewarding and incredibly frustrating.
It’s nice to sit back and see the results of a successfully completed project, but the path to get there can often involve an incredible amount of time, extreme effort, profuse sweating and blood.
I know some say that DIY projects are easy….but it’s not always the case.
Follow along at your own peril as it’s not for everyone.
House Renovation Projects
Below I’ve added a list of some of the projects we did while renovating the foreclosure that we bought.
I remember asking the realtor for a key to the place, and she said it was unlocked.
Turns out, it’s not that it was unlocked so much that the locks didn’t work and the kitchen door had been kicked in at one point – so getting inside wasn’t too difficult.
We heard after that the general consensus among the local realtors was that the place should just be torn down and that someone should build new.
But we had a look, and it seemed fine structurally, so we decided to go with it.
The reno itself took about 6 years as we weren’t living there at the time, and had to drive about 4.5 hours each way to do the work on weekends and holidays.
Originally, we thought we’d hire trades to do the work.
But after calling around, we found they either weren’t available or weren’t interested in working.
And so, we did everything ourselves.
To say it was a grind would be an understatement as we battled snow, icy roads, sub zero temperatures (as low as -43 degrees Celsius), power outages, wildfires, road closures and detours, and storms before we could even do the work itself.
We both worked full time jobs which meant we had to source and get materials in the evenings during the week and then lug it all up to our place on the weekend.
I’m not sure how we pulled it off.
Looking back on these projects now, I’m amazed at how each one has its own story of not only how it was done, but the events surrounding it.
Even with the list below, it doesn’t fully capture all of the garbage we had to remove, trees we had to clean up, drywall we had to replace, sand and paint, the hundreds of trips to the dump, and all the hours we spent driving up and down from the house as we did the renos.
But at least it covers a few of the highlights.