*Shout out of gratitude for my sister Annie who faithfully edits & improves these posts!*
Exactly a year ago, we signed the papers & grabbed the keys for our very own fixer upper home project, one that we knew would stretch & challenge us. In some ways, it’s a very good thing we didn’t know just how in over our heads we would feel last fall as we rushed to renovate most of the main spaces before moving in. We had no idea how it would all unfold, but we were excited & ready.
The good news is, here we are, a year later…so happy, so grounded and at home in this space that’s both old and new. It’s been a shelter & our true happy place during the turmoil of 2020. We’re thrilled with the progress we’ve made and always neck deep in the next project. Currently working on Phase II which is finishing the large basement & creating our ideal rec room, and finishing the mud room (garage entrance) and laundry space.
I sketched the outline for this post a year ago when I was fresh out of the late nights—staying up painting trim, welcoming crews each morning, and just generally in the thick of it. Even at that time, I could tell the experience was changing me and changing our family. But as with all things, it’s taken time for this post to go from a seed in my mind to germinated thoughts & experiences in full bloom.
Now, a full year later, I’m excited to take this anniversary as an opportunity to share some of these thoughts about our #pidelprojecthome (@pidelprojecthome).
- Transformations require massive amounts of patience.
We live in a world of quick updates & slap-dash before/afters bombarding us from social media. Not everyone likes to acknowledge the slow process, the messy middle, the curveballs, the two-steps-forward-one-step-back that comes with real, beautiful, timeless transformations…of homes and of our hearts & selves.
2. It often has to look worse before it looks better.
Picture any house after the demo process of ripping everything out—piles of dust & old radiators, moldings, junk everywhere. We literally had four dumpsters for our project over the span of four months, slowly carting away old layers of the house to replace it with new.
It’s a bit like someone in the middle of a KonMari de-cluttering when all their belongings are laid out in piles on their floor. It can be hard to start these kinds of excavations of spaces and selves because we’re fearful of this element of the process. It quickly becomes larger than our control, and we have to surrender to the process itself, until with the lack of tidiness comes a true sense that big things are happening here. That’s when we have to lean in.
3. People won’t undertand the process and that’s okay.
During our intense nine-week timeframe for renovation (yes, we did it as a major sprint because we didn’t have to be living there during the time), I felt like we were in a bubble, a completely all-engrossing cloud, that others couldn’t really reach us in.
That was hard for me at first, and then I became at peace with it. Sometimes, when you’re committed to making big changes in your life, and you set out to take those actions, it will feel lonely at first. Things are shifting & the relationships in your life may change too. Not everyone will be able to relate to where you are and why you’re doing it. That’s okay. Once you move past the grief of this, it can be incredibly freeing.
And these times of intense growth can still allow for powerful relationships, it just has to be based on a new kind of communication and an acknowledgment of just how different things are. You need people who can love you where you’re at, as you evolve. Anyone who can relate to & stick with you through an intense growth phase is a keeper, a friend you will value more deeply than ever.
4. The vision is what will enable you to carry through the tough moments.
I talk a lot about vision boards. There’s something so important and powerful about creating a clear vision of where you’re headed. With design, it’s obviously an essential step to creating the new space, but it has a similar importance when we’re considering the future life that we’re creating for ourselves (and how our own personal work ties into that life vision).
It’s scary, but so powerful to put a visual up on a wall (yes, I’m a big believer in doing it old-school style for maximum daily connection) to remind yourself every day where you’re headed. Keeping eyes on that vision is your best chance to pulls through the tough moments when we wonder whether it’s all worth it.
5. The result of hard work is always beautiful, and you’re forever changed.
This one is so simple, but so powerful. When we sat up & rubbed the dust off (and took off our painting clothes), we looked at each other, my husband and I, and marveled at just how much we had changed, alongside the spaces we were working on.
Our hearts & our eyes can see when work has been poured into a space (or a personal transformation). The love and care & detail that went into it becomes its spirit. Same with our own inner work: the results show up in who we become and enter into every future interaction we have. It’s the BE-DO-HAVE model, lived out. In order to be ready to welcome our abundant beautiful life in our new home, it required us to allow ourselves to change first, before having what we had desired & envisioned. (More on this in my life design program if you’re intrigued)
6. Simplicity is always a good idea. Complicating things creates more excuses, mental clutter, & reasons for it not to work. Keep it simple.
This is just as true with personal growth as with an old home. Don’t overcomplicate things. Stay focused on the vision & the clear path that can get you there. Over-complicating things is usually a form of resistance—our brain & ego keeping us from just GOING FOR IT and going all in.
7. You will NOT do it alone.
Yes, you may experience loneliness as you realize that your former relationships aren’t carrying you in the same way on this courageous journey you’re on. But in reality, there will be key people who serve as inspiration, as mentors, as coaches, as friends, and you will be amazed by the NEW help & relationships that come into your life when you undertake this kind of journey. We absolutely learned this during our project, and we were blown away by the people that stepped up & truly saw this project out to its conclusion, even when the going got tough and the deadlines were real.
8. The effort is transformative in itself because we learn to work hard for things that matter to us.
This one was a hard one for me, and boy did our home renovation teach us this. It’s easy to focus on the glamorous side of a reno: picking out the tiles, materials, and colors. But then you hit the nitty gritty: the late nights, encouraging workers to meet their deadlines, hauling materials in every weekend, the millions of runs to Home Depot, bringing out boxes and boxes in an ice storm as part of project clean up…these are the experiences that make us love & value our home even more. The lessons learned from the hard work can be seen as their own reward…and they add to the beauty of the final product!
9. Break it into simple, doable steps, day by day, so as not to get overwhelmed.
This is very true in reno life. It’s literally, one thing at a time, one layer at a time, overlapping trades needed for certain moments, building upon each other’s work. The over-arching goal remains, but the steps & focus for each day is bite-sized. The way we kept ourselves from being overwhelmed in moments with this huge house project was to focus on what we could accomplish just in that day or week. Then the next. And soon…you realize it’s nearly complete!
It’s true in our personal work too. It’s why I coach my clients not to set too many goals or priorities…feeling overwhelmed will keep you from moving any of them forward. Same thing goes for setting stretch or unreachable goals—we need to be working on something that we can see to the end of, and then we go a bit further the next time, building momentum & confidence as we go. Set yourself up to have frequent, small wins, and soon you’ll be addicted to the stretch & growth of personal development.
10. Stay humble and make gratitude the focus.
Loving attention to detail, bringing order & beauty, and new life & vision out of old & worn out habits/patterns/ways of life is the great gift we are all called to discover & live. Transforming an old home last year drove home all these lessons that I’ve been learning in my own work in personal development, my own journey, as well as coaching others through transformations in their health, life, and businesses.
The gift of living in a home that has been transformed through a vision made reality by daily sweat, communication, logistics, and effort, that we had the privilege to shape, design, and put intentional effort is a great reminder of a deep truth about all transformations. Namely, we must trust the process, build patience, stay open to all the ways that change, once begun, will be out of our control and will take us to places we’ve never even imagined going.
However, the initial choice is always ours—to take a chance and begin to tear down old walls, so that new ones can be built.
Are you ready to tear down some walls? To embrace a journey of transformation that encompasses all aspects of mindset, facing resistance to change, and powering into a place of inspired momentum, check out my life design course, enrolling now for fall 2020, the last time it will be open until spring 2021!