We bought this house in 2021, moved in April and spent about seven months renovating inside while living in the house… It was a rough few months! For a few weeks, we slept in the dining room area while the back of the house was being fixed. We used the laundry room as a temporary kitchen for six months. (What a glorious moment it was to have a real kitchen after six months of using a camping table and 1x gas cylinder for cooking. I still feel so grateful for my kitchen!). One of many maintenance problems we faced when we moved in was the kitchen drain. It was so blocked, my husband had to take out some kitchen cupboards in the beginning to get to the blocked parts. We were shocked to find that the kitchen drain was re-routed to drain into the front garden! We never saw this before buying the house as there were too many overgrown bushes outside.

The house had seven different tiles and all finishes (except two of the tiles) were brown. The lack of colour balance resulted in such a depressing feel of the house, and we couldn’t wait to paint. At first, we just planned to paint, settle in and wait a few months before redoing the floors etc., but then all our things were in boxes, furniture was wrapped and we didn’t want to pack up the house again in a few months. Thus, we pulled up our socks and went all in. We stored most of our boxes/furniture in our closed lapa area and garage. We had a vision and the costs for general maintenance inside and outside the house were going to cost a pretty penny. So, we decided to do as much as we can ourselves – even though it would cost a lot of time and energy, on top of working full-time and running a business from home. It was hard. We paid some contractors to knock out the arches and kitchen wall, take out the floors, lay new concrete floors and repaint the walls. The rest we did ourselves. But, investing so much time, effort and love into this project really paid off and we are left now with a beautiful home that we enjoy so much. Through this we also taught our now six-year-old twins that we are able to achieve so much if we put our time, effort, and minds to it! They know that if we want to see something change around the house, we would most probably have to do it ourselves. And that, we CAN do. Just the other day, my daughter painted her Barbie doll house and gave it a mini “home makeover” – a proud DIY parent moment.

*Note: We took many photos while the renovation was in progress but, unfortunately, we only have proper before photos of the house before we moved in, with the previous owners’ furniture (except one photo with the kitchen wall intact, taken on the day we moved in). We never packed out our boxes or furniture before the renovation was completed – only the essentials.