We bought a DIY house. Here’s a list of what we did:

– There was no kitchen, just one wall cabinet, and the floor was multilayered vinyl. We needed a chip hammer to remove the layers and tile. We bought a second-hand kitchen from one of our friends who just redid theirs. The doors were infested with cockroaches. We removed them ourselves and did bug control.
– The toilet was skew and covered in wood; so was the bathtub. This caused water damage inside the walls. We removed the toilet ourselves – not fun when you don’t know what you are doing and need to use the toilet because there is only one toilet. Ha ha!

Outside
– There was no garden whatsoever. We had a housewarming and friends bought us plants. That’s how our garden took shape.
– Garbage had piled up in the old dog kennels that the previous owner built. We hammered them down and had six skips remove the dirt, not even the rubble. All we had was a half-pound hammer – it was hard work.
– We had to close our property; we used cement slabs to move the wall and make a new gate.

It’s been six years and we are doing it ourselves – even if it takes us 60 years. We have so many plans and we accomplish them by doing one thing at a time, together as a family – from painting the house while pregnant to children planting vegetables in the garden.

If there is a slight win for us, we would love to make the kitchen open plan and knock out a few walls. I think we’ll get contractors to do that. 🙂