Hi! I’m Lara, an aspiring handywoman determined to develop my home renovation skills and share what I learn with other DIYers. The learning process is fun, but it’s also full of mistakes and teachable moments. I’ve drilled holes in the wrong places, cut on the wrong lines and stripped more screws than the (former) president has screwed strippers. And yet, I’m on my way to customizing my home, project by project. I believe you can do pretty much anything with a few good tools, a stack of wood and a half-baked idea.
My content
I am not an expert in home improvement, but I’m a shameless dabbler and enjoy sharing. I’ve learned that things are often not as hard as they look, materials are more forgiving that one might imagine, and the chances of chopping off your fingers or drilling through your hand are less than I feared (but also not zero so be careful). I am, by definition, The Unprofessional. I get most of my inspiration from trespassing in peoples back yards or surfing the interwebs. Most of the time, what I like has to be altered or scaled to fit my small, 1940’s brick Cape Cod home. For this reason, I don’t typically follow plans, but I’ll try my hardest to document my project steps to make it easier for those who do. This site is intended to empower you to take on small and medium-sized home improvement tasks, understand what basic tools and materials you’ll need, all while providing a little bit of inspiration and entertainment. All of my projects are completed by yours truly, though often with the help of my equally unprofessional partner in life, Adam. This is easy stuff, so buckle up your tool belt and get to it!
How I became The Unprofessional
It all started when I was in the womb. My mom tells a story about her first pair of maternity pants. She was seven months pregnant with me, and when she couldn’t squeeze into my dad’s clothes anymore, she bit the bullet and bought legit maternity pants. That very same evening, it stormed and the roof began to leak. Up the ladder she went with a bucket of tar, wearing her brand new pants. She patched the leak in a downpour and in the process, got roof tar all over her new pants. “I cried like a baby!” is her punch line, because my mom thinks the story is about her crying over her ruined pants. Everyone else who hears the story, knows it is about a crazy lady patching the roof in the rain whilst seven months pregnant.
The OG DIYer
My mom is the OG DIYer. If times had been different, she would have run her own construction firm. If she wanted a window where there was a wall, she just cut a hole in the side of the house and figured it out. When the shower leaked for no obvious reason, she sledge-hammered it to the ground and put in a new one. When the door was in the “wrong place” she moved it. When the crawl space under the house needed to be a storage basement, she dug it out bucket by bucket. Growing up, I saw my mom mix cement, build fences, hang drywall, you name it… all with my dad laboring, semi-willing, by her side. Neither of them had a building background, and this was before the internet. What she knew that others didn’t, is that mistakes can be fixed. And the worst case scenario was that she would have to call a professional to fix something beyond her capabilities. She built her DIY networks all around town. She was on first-name basis with everyone at the hardware store. She was never afraid to borrow or rent a tool she didn’t have or ask for advice when she was stuck. She was chummy with the county code people and had inspectors on speed dial. She may have been unprofessional, but she was (and still is) responsible.
Although I witnessed this can-do attitude during my formative years, it wasn’t until my most recent home purchase that I finally picked up the DIY baton. I’m no where near the badass that my mom is, and have ruined zero pairs of maternity pants via exposure to construction materials, but I did eventually adopt her mantra: Just give it a try. What’s the worst that can happen?* And that, my friends, is how I became The Unprofessional.
*This does not apply to anything load bearing, electricity and in most cases plumbing. These are tasks best left to the pros.