We’ve had such a great response from Terry’s healthy eating/meal planning In the Kitchen series (click on icon on the right sidebar for all the recipes), that we’ve decided to introduce a second series here at 11 Magnolia Lane. We’re going to call it, simply, “Fearless,” and it will showcase the absolutely-not-afraid projects of a variety of guest bloggers.
- One of my VERY fearless moments–taking a paintbrush to two dozen cherry cabinets!
Over time, one of the things that readers have mentioned to us repeatedly is that while they want to improve their home through do-it-yourself projects and decorating, they often get stuck because they’re scared. They’re afraid that they’ll hurt their home’s resale value, that they won’t be able to finish what they started, or that it won’t turn out like they envisioned it. I think we’ve all been there! Any DIY’er will tell you that in addition to her amazing, blog-worthy successes, there have been any number of epic fails. I still remember the time I spilled an entire gallon of bright-red paint all over the pristine white ceramic tile and grout in my powder room (this was years ago), or the time that I punched a hole in the drywall while attempting to pry off molding (only months ago). It even happens to the professionals, though.
I think the best advice I can give you is just to give it a try! Start with a smaller project, like painting a room. Worst case scenario, you hate the color and have to repaint it. I do that on a regular basis–paint is CHEAP! If you don’t know how to do something, call in an expert, watch how he or she does it, and then do it yourself the next time. That’s how I learned to rewire lighting fixtures and hang chandeliers. I wasn’t sure how painting my tile backsplash in my kitchen would work out–I couldn’t find a lot of information on whether the paint would stick or how it would hold up over time–but I realized that the backsplash had to go, either way, so I just decided to give it a try. Six months later, it’s holding up beautifully, and I’m so glad that I saved all that time, money, and effort that it would have taken to tear down the brown and put up white, just by pulling out my paintbrush and being fearless.
- Before–brown tile backsplash
- After–pristine white and perfect!
Go ahead, add a built-in! You CAN do it yourself, and what potential buyer will come to your house and say, “Oh, no, I can’t stand having all this extra storage!”?
- Make an Ikea bookcase look like custom, built-in storage shelves? Why not?!
So what if you put a pry bar through your drywall while you’re putting board and batten in your upstairs bathroom? 
You’ll learn to patch drywall (it’s not hard) and the end result will still be pretty, functional, and a definite improvement on where you started! Oh, and you’ll still have paid about a quarter of what a pro would charge you to do the same thing.
- This result was well worth a little suffering along the way!
We’re looking forward to showcasing the amazing efforts of some of the most fearless DIY’ers that blog-land has to offer, and hopefully they’ll inspire you that “you’ll never know until you try!”
{Do you have a project that you overcame your fear and tackled? Do you know of one that we should feature? Email us at 11Magnolialane@gmail.com and tell us about it and we may feature it!}
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We just knew we’d have a ball with Kelly from Eclectically Vintage when we started swapping martini recipes at a Twitter party a few weeks back.
