This time of year is always strange. The change in season, the daylight saving time change and the holidays are a lot to take in. See, I have a love-hate relationship with change. While I know it’s necessary and always for the best, I fundamentally dislike the initial discomfort it brings. So when all of these overlapping environmental changes affect my routine, I have a hard time catching up. With chores, holiday plans and invitations and ultimately with my own thoughts and feelings. This ‘weirdness’ in the context of the festive holiday atmosphere makes for a bizarre experience. I guess this is what some people call the ‘holiday blues’.

Late summer of 2016, I came across an image of an outdoor fireplace and like I do with so many idea images, I shared it with Mike. I’m not sure if it was my insistence on how cool it would be to have an outdoor fireplace or Mike’s love for a challenge, but for some reason he took on the project with the lofty goal of finishing it for that fall. Perhaps as a sweet birthday present to me.

Once Mike began building the structure and we finalized idea, the project had substantially grown beyond the initial intent. So, here we are over a year later…

This is the largest W house project we’ve undertaken (yet)! We started this project like most other house projects… with an innocent suggestion. It went something like: ‘wouldn’t this space be awesome if we had an extra three feet of headroom and we could move the stair?’ Somehow, the expected reaction from two people with experience in design and construction was not what you’d expect– we didn’t think anything of it. Maybe because we I didn’t actually think we would do it. Then we repeated the idea enough times until it became part of ‘the plan.’

Then, one day this past spring (2017), Mike had a ‘schedule’ in mind for the project and we began to seriously discuss it. After several minutes of talking about how cool the room would be and what we would do with all this new extra usable space, we began to map out the expected design and construction challenges. At that point, we realized we needed to draw the house. THE. WHOLE. HOUSE.

After about a year of planning and  (mostly) procrastinating, here is our first progress post!

We currently have three ongoing projects (from the oldest to the one we  started most recently): the wine cellar, the outdoor patio & fireplace and what we have come to call “the upstairs”.

Today was a big day relocating the stair to “the upstairs” and revamping the blog structure and I’ll begin posting about “the upstairs” in the next few weeks… but right now… we are (I am) the most excited to share the progress with the wine cellar.

So what do we mean when we describe the house renovation as “DIY-ish”?!

…well, we both work in design and construction and between the two of us, we have more than 25 years of experience. This means we know which parts of the project we can do ourselves and which parts we’d rather hire trade professionals for– either because we are certain a trade professional would complete the work better or faster or because there’s some work we’re not crazy about tackling on our own.