I love HGTV. My husband thinks it gives me all kinds of terrible ideas – as does Pinterest. Lucky for him, until recently I had been working far too many hours (all while trying to fit in quality and quantity time with two little ones) to do much more than watch a show while nursing, or pin an idea. We have been in our current home for about three years, and I’ve written before about how we were trying to slowly bring it up to date; a feat almost impossible to really do efficiently when you have little ones in the house. We had decided that it was finally time to “get serious” and finish the projects we had started and start the ones that we had not yet begun…. and that was when I realized this was going to be A LOT of work! Not because there is really that much to do, but because deciding work needs to be done is all we agreed on. We can not find common ground on what exactly should be done, what not to do, what style, or really anything else. After we remodeled our last home (before we had children), my mother used to joke that we should never buy anything that wasn’t move-in ready again, or our marriage might not survive it! So now we may have to add counseling costs to our home reno budget – yikes! Hence my recall of the HGTV show “Designing for the Sexes”; we needed an expert to come in and map out an amicable solution in order to move forward. So, I finally convinced him to let me call in a neutral party who could give us a professional opinion, and hopefully not only put us on the same page with a plan, but maybe we could even have that contractor take on some of the tasks too. My husband is an amazingly competent and experienced DIYer, but he’s also a very busy engineer who travels a lot for work and prefers to spend his free time biking – so time is always our most limiting resource.
Despite writing for this magazine for quite a while, I had never met fellow author and contributor, Greg Stopher. I do however appreciate his articles and admire the photos I’ve seen of his work. He was gracious enough to walk into our very messy chaos – yes my niece and daughter had decided to add chalk shavings all over the art area by our front door to the rest of the art free-for-all, laundry was stacked in bins all over, and really nothing else had been picked up or put away. Embarrassing but honest. We are facing the reality that:
1) I have accumulated far, far too much stuff – despite on-going efforts to de-clutter!
2) We have potentially outgrown our current space.
It was refreshing to have Greg walk through, taking notes and finding ways for us to compromise, offering solutions we hadn’t considered, and keeping design elements both of us were attached to. All I can say, is I wish we had, had him come in from the very beginning. We have decided our first step is a purge. This month we are literally getting rid of almost everything. We are emptying the house so we have a blank slate to work in and we will only bring back in things we love and things that are absolutely necessary.
So with the summer season approaching, and what is for sure to be a big garage sale season as well as a huge buying/selling season, my advice is:
1) Get rid of everything that is not of irreplaceable sentimental value or is unneeded
2) Hire someone like Stopher Construction to come in and hone your vision for that fixer-upper you’re planning to purchase. Hire someone like Stopher Construction to come in and prioritize your projects to get your home ready to sell. In fact, he works with his wife, who can offer decor solutions as well.
Now is the time. Yes, you likely can do it all yourself – but you don’t have to.
Dr. Summer Beattie, ND is a graduate of Bastyzr University. She has over 8 years experience as a Naturopathic Doctor specializing in women’s health with an emphasis on environmental medicine. Having served two terms on the board of directors for the Washington Association of Naturopathic Physicians, she has also worked in the medical aesthetics field since 2008. You can reach her at onehealingcenter@gmail.com or
907-209-4611.
