Life lessons I have learnt, but still often fail to apply

Hi everyone!

I’ve recently been reflecting on my home renovation and all the life lessons I learned along the way, and I thought some of them might be worth sharing. But first a bit of background.

My husband and I bought our first home together back in 2020. It was a huge risk, the pandemic had just hit, getting a mortgage was almost impossible and the place needed a huge amount of work - strip back to bare brick and go again kind of levels of work – but it was the only place we could afford if we wanted to stay in the area and so we took the ginormous leap of faith and dived in.

Neither of us had undertaken a project like this before but he had the skills (although I am a very experienced decorator!) and I brought the planning and positive mental attitude. It was extremely hard work! We spent every weekend we could there and some evenings too, luckily the pandemic meant we didn’t have a lot of social plans! Eventually, almost a year later, we moved in and have been living here ever since; thank you ridiculously high interest rates! It’s home though and all the hard work makes me appreciate it all the more. 

To say it was a learning curve - on so many levels - is an understatement, and whilst I was fairly sure I would come out with new skills, I didn’t anticipate all the other lessons I would learn along the way. Sharing is caring, so here are five things I discovered: 

1)      When you’re in a period of change, it often gets worse before it gets better.

When we bought the place it was tired and run down. 30+ years with little-to-no maintenance will do that. Unfortunately it got a whole lot worse before it got better! We took it back to a bare shell, crumbling plaster off walls where it was cracking, scraping off tatty wallpaper, demolishing built-in cupboards, filling the place with tonnes of building supplies. It was dirty, dusty, chaotic, cold, messy and so far from finished we weren’t sure we’d make it to the end. But we did and there was such key signs along the way. When we got rid of the last tiles and bricks from their discarded heaps, when all the windows were finally replaced, when the first coat of plaster lined the walls with its dusky pink smoothness, when that first coat of colour was complete. Each new milestone was a step in the right direction and a step out of the chaos but the thing is, that’s often the same with life. 

If you’re clearing out the old to make way for the bright and shiny new, the in-between is messy and confusing and overwhelming and sometimes it feels like you’re going in completely the wrong direction. Then suddenly everything changes and you can feel yourself begin to climb out of the murky depths. All change requires some sort of de-clutter (mind, body or spirit) and if we don’t clear out all the parts that aren’t serving us anymore then there’s nowhere for all the new and wonderful ideas or habits or friends or enthusiasm to go. So be ruthless and be brave and accept the horrible in-between because when you do, the end result will be so, so worth it.


2)      Plan for it not to go to plan

How can you plan for what you don’t know? Well you can’t, but you can plan that something will go awry with the plan. As humans we’re very bad at imagining all the things that could go wrong, mostly because you don’t know what you don’t know right? However, if you always plan for something to go wrong then you’re probably in a good place. I know, I know I’ve just talked about positive mental attitude and now I’m saying plan for things to go wrong, but there’s a subtle difference here. Nothing in life ever goes 100% according to plan, and when we expect it to, we set ourselves up for disappointment and failure and all the torrent of emotions that come with it. But things not going to plan is just life doing its normal thing. So, when that hiccup comes along and we go, ‘That’s fine, I knew not everything would be exactly as planned’ we actually set ourselves up to respond in a much more positive way. 

P.S. In terms of our house renovation we hadn’t realised our ceilings were concrete! No nice new, ‘up-to-code’ wiring and pretty spotlights for us, that was unless we built false ceilings in every, single room! Which we did. It was a huge expense we hadn’t expected, all that extra timber and plasterboard and TIME! Argh! But we got through it and luckily the ceilings were nice and high to begin with so we could afford to bring them down. That’s what contingency budgets are for right?! *Weeps at our empty savings account*

The key is telling yourself - and believing - that when things don’t go to plan that you are more than capable of dealing with whatever comes your way. You will work it out, when whatever surprise is thrown your way, and find a way through. Leading me nicely on to my next point. 

3)      Trust yourself and take the *calculated* risk

There comes a time when the only thing left to do is jump. I did the calculations and then I did the sums again and then we triple checked our savings accounts and then we discussed it with a mortgage advisor and then we added a bit more to the contingency budget and then we almost bottled it because of the pandemic and then finally we couldn’t make up any more excuses and we just had to jump. Whatever risk in life you’re about to take, whatever it is that you desperately want to do, that thing that you’re letting fear talk you out of, there has to come a point where you just take the leap!

All of the battles you’ve faced so far, all of the change you’ve overcome, all the times you’ve had to pivot and adapt and reshape what life will look like – you’ve made it through. It might not have been easy, but you have struggled and learned new things and made yourself wiser and stronger. So, when you’re faced with a decision and you’re not sure you can do it, well I’m here to tell you, you bloody well can! Do the sums, check the list, mitigate as much risk as is reasonable and then take the leap, because you can and will do it, because you’re you and you want it and you are more than capable.

And if convincing yourself of that requires a little shove in the right direction then look for the signs! I stood outside that potential home, wistful but overwhelmed and I asked the universe if I was about to make a huge mistake. Right at that moment two beautiful crows, coats shining majestically in the sun, jumped from the neighbours roof on to ours. I love crows, always have, and I just knew, there was nothing more I could do to prepare, I just had to ‘take the leap’.

4)      You can learn what you don’t know

The internet is a wonderful thing, many kind souls in this world tend towards helpfulness, the library is full of resources. Do not let a lack of knowledge stop you doing something you really want to do. Whatever you don’t know, you can learn and no, you don’t have to know everything before you get started. There’s nothing quite like learning on the fly. It’s exciting and the feeling when you do something for the first time that you had no clue how to do is one of elation. 

Of course I’m not saying be reckless, we did ask a builder to take down the wall we wanted gone and we had a qualified electrician do our electrics, but I can’t tell you the amount of times we quickly googled something right before starting or came across a problem and watched a Youtube video for a solution. The same applies to life, you do not have to be an expert, just get started, give yourself the grace to fail and muddle through until you have a million proof points to demonstrate your progress.  

5)      Celebrate the wins, all the wins!

Last one. Some projects don’t really ever end. What number of subscribers on Substack will make you sit back and think ‘Yup, my work here is done?’ Right? I imagine for most of us ‘The limit does not exist’. So if there’s no end, then when do you celebrate? I’m here to tell you, that what you should do is celebrate all the damn time! The big wins, the small wins and everything in between! Now I am a huge hypocrite, so I am telling you this because I have learned the hard way, and we did not do this. We were so in the thick of it all, it always felt like it wasn’t quite time to celebrate. And now, 4 years later, we are only just getting round to sorting out our back garden! With every item ticked off the list, we just moved on to the next. Oh? The bathroom is done, cool, but the kitchen hasn’t even been started. Everywhere is plastered? That’s nice, but jeez that means everywhere needs painting. Even after we had moved in, we still had so many more plans. Shelves here, built-in unit there, front garden, back garden, new furniture, picture wall here and so the list went on and on. Is any home ever really finished? It’s been four years so it’s probably time I re-decorated the grubby hallway walls! I wish we’d taken more time along the way to celebrate the wins. Don’t make the same mistake we did. Celebrate the achievements you make along the way, you are literally living your dream, taking steps towards your goals and desires, don’t forget to celebrate the journey that takes you there. 

Gail x

For those who are interested, here’s my favourite before and after…