I find it interesting, with all the blogs out there, how people have come to expect perfection from the people who write blogs. I've fallen into the trap of being so disappointed/irritated when a recipe I try is horrendous or while reading about a DIY project that I know will crash and burn from the very beginning thinking "why don't they know better?". As a result of people who express their irritation with this imperfection, you'll see people remind their readers over and over that they are not professionals (to the point where you tire of reading it) or will only post the perfect project with the perfectly clean room under the perfectly staged conditions to appear more professional.
It's silly really. By definition, a DIYer is not a professional. It should be explicitly clear from that definition alone that projects are going to fail, everything will not be perfect and their way of doing things isn't going to be the best option for everyone. You know there is a right way of doing things, and that right way is pretty easy to look up, but due to time, money or motivation restrictions, you may choose to get creative or lazy with a project to make it work for you. And why shouldn't you make something your own (as long as it's safe... see the disclaimer? gotta cover your butt since apparently we can't trust the general public to know what is safe for them). So today I thought it would be fun to share a couple of confessions from this DIYer of things that I know how to do correctly but rarely/never actually do.
#1: I am a spastic paint picker
I rarely choose wall color for rooms the correct way. For us, painting is usually one of the last things we do in a room renovation. The combination of being near the end of a project and wanting to see the impact the paint immediately usually results in having a general idea of what color we want, going to the store with Nate, picking out a few swatches, talking in the store with him about which one we like best and buying the paint on the spot.
The correct process is, of course, to get a bunch of samples and put them up on the walls in various spots and live with them for a bit (especially in different lighting conditions) to see which one you like the best. The idea of this is painful to me (not only do I hate paying for the samples, but it just takes so much time) and so I simply don't do it. Usually, I like the color and I can only think of two scenarios that I really didn't like the result.
However, there are two rooms in our current house that we have spent way more time then I would like to admit picking the wall paint. The one that we finally figured out is the kitchen. Since we had to use a different backsplash than we originally picked out, we really weren't sure anymore what we wanted for a wall color. We ended up putting seven color options on the wall (you can play where's waldo and see if you can actually see all seven in the above pic) and after about three days, finally decided on which one we liked the best. I'm going to keep the color of choice a surprise until later but this whole process has been driving me crazy.
#2: I am not a stager... or a maid
Honestly, I am totally envious of the bloggers out there who seem to have the time to do projects and have time to not only clean before they take pics, but also stage their rooms. One of my goals for this year is to try and take better pics and you might see a nicely put together room for a final reveal, but I simply do not have time to clean every time I want to take a picture. Granted, if I did clean before every pic I would have a super clean house, but then I would never post anything. Sometimes I feel guilty for taking a pic with clutter around but I have to remind myself that I'm not posting these things to show how perfect we are, I'm posting them to show what is really going on in out life... and clutter comes with real.. especially when a project is ongoing.
However, on the rare occasion I can get ever tool out of a room and I really scrub everything down (rare being about every two weeks) I feel compelled to take progress pics in the nice clean room. So here is what our kitchen is looking like these days.
We still have finishing stuff to do (and so the kitchen will look like this for maybe a day) but it has come so far that I just like looking at it.
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