Welcome one and all to my first ever blog post! It’s something I’ve intended to start for a while now… If you’ve followed me for any length of time on Instagram then you’ll know my post captions tend to be a bit… wordy! I almost always run out of space and feel like I’ve been cut short so figured I could waffle on for as long as I want if it’s my very own website!
Obviously this doesn’t necessarily mean anyone will want to read them… or even that I’ll have time to do it, which brings me on to my first subject that I think any renovators would agree with me is a constant challenge – good old father time!
My first thing to say is that not everyone will necessarily find themselves in the same situation as me. I work full time (in an entirely unrelated field to houses/DIY/Design), I have a busy little Instagram page that I love and probably spend slightly longer on than I should… AND I’m trying to renovate a ridiculously large house with the absolute bare minimum of help and trades. This means I think Admirals is going to take at least 5 years to complete (and then another 2 on the garden!) and beyond that every year there will be an ongoing and endless series of jobs and maintenance to keep on top of the old girl!
The second, is that if you’re pretty new to renovating… and you’re tackling an old place.. is that almost everything you try to do, is likely to take longer than you expect. When you start peeling away the damage, neglect and detritus you inevitably find issues that need putting right. A case of 2 steps forward and 1 back at times but ’tis the nature of the beast.
Now all this sounds a bit… err… negative… which definitely isn’t like me… but it’s not intended to and really brings me onto my first ever bit of advice on here and that is… if you’re renovating your home, for yourself… try not to get too focused on deadlines or timelines. They add a huge amount of (very much unhelpful) pressure and whilst it’s good to give yourself goals, renovating is hard and it’s important to be as kind to yourself as you can!
The second is…. try and enjoy the process! It’s not always easy when you’re knackered, dirty and are washing out of a bucket and eating a microwave curry for the 5th time that week but it won’t last forever, and it’s so easy to forget about the hardship once your finished (so take lots of pictures) and celebrate the small wins. I quite often find myself doing the occasional job in a strange order just to give myself the mental boost of seeing a bit of the new paint colour going on the walls or what a bit of furniture looks like in the room – it can give you a bit of a kick up the backside to just keep going!
Tortoises can tell you more about the road than Hares…
Khalil Gibran
Anyway – waffle on time complete… if you’re tackling a project and find yourself questioning what you’ve done with your life as your on your knees at 11pm on a Friday night sanding a seemingly endless floor… you are not alone!
Greg x