My DIY Journey - How I got started in the DIY world. -

Hi friends!

Happy monday!! Last week, a few DIY bloggers including got together and did a wonderful collaboration on how we started our DIY Journeys. The bloggers included myself, Rachel (Shades of Blue Interiors), Fariha (Pennies for a Fortune), Monica (House of Esperenza), and Faiza (Simply Create Joy). You can check all these fabulous blogger friends of mine out, and watch our stories on Instagram as well!

My DIY journey started many years ago, when I was 17 or 18 – when my parents decided to renovate their house. Their 80’s house at that time was maroon shag carpets and baby pink walls! They hired a contractor, and let me pick all the paint colours (mostly!) and flooring colour. I will tell you, the house turned out pretty cute… except that I changed every room into a different coloured room versus every room being baby pink HAH. They sold that house shortly after… so no harm was done haha! I wish I had some photo’s from back then but I don’t.

I got married in 2011, and we moved into my in-laws house which was beautiful. It was a builder grade house, and no one had gotten around to painting it. Do you see a pattern here? I LOVE PAINT. Paint is something I beleive you can DIY anything without having to bust out the power tools. So anyway, I decided to first paint our room in that house. I painted it a beautiful olive green. I next proceeded to paint basically the whole house because it was begging for a paint job. Next, my sister-in-law who lived in that house too, asked me to re-decorate her room. We painted that (surprise surprise) a beautiful teal, with new white drapes and bedding and a gallery wall in hand. Sadly.. no pictures to share!

We bought our own house shortly after in 2014, and moved into a builder grade cookie cutter house in2015. Our house is anything BUT wow – its a work in progress and has taken ALOT of love and us slowly trudging away at projects.

My very first DIY in this house was when I made these DIY chalkboard signs, which I still have up in our guest room! I made these using frames that my friend was throwing away. I got some plywood cut at home depot, and spray painted it with chalk paint. I wrote the text free hand with a sharpie paint pen. Super easy, and cost me $5!

After this first project, there was no stopping me. The high after a good DIY is SOOO real! The joy you get from 1. saving $ and 2. creating something are so therapeutic. In my day job, I treat/assess people for many different reasons (mental health related) and I find it can be hard to sometimes shut off my brain. A good DIY though, takes planning and requires skills that are a completely different set than what my job requires. I found that in graduate school, when I started to complete DIY projects, I had something to do – a hobby- outside of my intense studies and household type duties. It also was something my husband and I did (and still do) together, and that makes it way more fun.

Shortly after, my husband and I did our very first shiplap wall in our entryway. We built a console table using live edge wood and an antique sewing machine base . DIY’s have become such an integral part of our lives, that any decorating project or room we start is inevitably filled with a DIY.

There would be too many photos in this blog post for me to share for all the DIY’s we have done, but they can all be found under the DIY section of my blog. I recently converted a spare bedroom into an office for the One Room Challenge – a massive 6 week DIY! I hope you will head over to the DIY section and check out some of the great projects I have done. I will share some of my all time favourite ones in photos down below for you.

Also make sure you check out all the talented ladies in the blog hop: