15+ DIY Renovation Stories — One MIL Painted a Forest With Glowing Eyes on the Nursery Wall

• We’d had a beige kitchen for 12 years. In September, I decided it was time to make a change. At the store, they handed me a fan deck of samples: “Whisper of Linen,” “Morning in Provence,” “Creamy Silence,” “Breath of Oats.”
  For a week, I carried the fan deck in my purse and held it up against the walls. Dad said he didn’t care, as long as it wasn’t green. Dan said it was all beige again anyway. Grandma asked how much a can of that paint cost and didn’t take part in the discussion after that. I chose “Breath of Oats.”
  We spent the whole weekend painting, and Dad moved the fridge. That evening, we stood in the middle of the kitchen and looked at the walls. For a long time. Dad said, “Well, it feels fresh.” Later, I found the old can on the balcony. The lid said: “Breath of Oats.”

• My husband and I bought an apartment. My mother-in-law lives 10 minutes away. During the renovation, she came by every day. Sometimes the trash needed taking out, sometimes the construction dust needed sweeping around with a broom — basically, she always found a reason.
  As the renovation neared completion, regular tours of the apartment were arranged for all the relatives. After all, she had to show everyone what a big, beautiful apartment her son had bought.
  The renovation was finished! I counted the keys and realized one set was missing. We started looking for it. No one knew anything. I said, “Okay, we’re changing the door!” The keys immediately turned up — with my mother-in-law.

• We finished renovating the hallway, all that was left was to install the baseboards. My husband volunteered to do it all himself while I was at work.
  I got home that evening, and everything was perfect — straight and beautiful — except for one corner. There was a neat gap there. Surprised, I asked, “Why is there a piece missing here?”
  Looking proud, my husband said, “You told me yourself that you were going to put an ottoman here. So I saved some material — no one would see anything behind it anyway.” Why he needed that saved piece of baseboard, I have no idea.

I love the benchtop and the handles. I loved the tiles when I saw them but not now they’re in. The cabinets are painted and they were supposed to be a subtle pink but look yellow. I have blackbutt floors so being orange they don’t help. It looks worse at night.
I swapped the globe from warm white to cool which helped a little, but I still don’t love my kitchen. It’s taken over a year to do this (DIY except plumbing, electrical, bench) and it looks like something out of 2005.

• I went on vacation and left my apartment keys with my dad so he could accept the delivery of shelving for my walk-in closet. When I came back, Dad was standing there, pleased with himself, and said, “I helped you out with those cabinets! They sure don’t know how to make furniture these days.”
  Sensing there was a catch, I walked into the closet and saw that instead of installing the trendy shelves, Dad had made solid wooden ones himself — the kind that will probably last another hundred years.
  Now I’m wondering what to do, because I wanted the trendy shelves, but I don’t want to take down Dad’s handiwork either.

• We had a neighbor upstairs, a pleasant older gentleman. 3 years ago, he decided to replace his windows, and where there are windows, there’s a full-scale renovation. For an entire year, the sound of a drill in a duet with a sledgehammer above us never stopped.
  He replaced everything in the apartment that could possibly be replaced. At last, the renovation was complete. I ran into him outside, and he happily told me that he had unexpectedly decided to sell the apartment because he had found a better option.
  A month later, another renovation began there. That renovation also lasted about a year, until the new owners decided to sell the apartment as well. And now, yet another renovation is underway.

• While I was at the maternity hospital, my husband and mother-in-law were finishing up the nursery. My mother-in-law is a professional artist, so I wasn’t worried.
  We came home with the baby, I opened the door, and what I saw made my eye twitch. The entire wall was covered with a dark enchanted forest, with dozens of pairs of glowing eyes peeking out from behind the trees. Beautiful, but a little unsettling.
  My mother-in-law beamed: “I hid little animals in there! When the baby gets older, he can look for them.” My husband then spent a week painting over the animals’ eyes.

In the bathroom, one wall was finished with textured gypsum tile and coated with matte plaster. It looked beautiful, of course, but toothpaste splatters left marks that wouldn’t wash off. We had to recoat the entire wall with plaster and then apply a matte varnish on top, which I now regularly scrub clean of any splatters with a brush.

• My apartment may have been recently renovated, but it’s not trendy minimalism. I inherited embroidered pieces, crystal vases, paintings, figurines, keepsake boxes, and plenty of other things from relatives. I just can’t bring myself to throw them away. Plus, my friends are always adding new souvenirs to the collection.
  3 years ago, I met a man my own age. We started going out, then visiting each other’s homes, and this year we got married. Only afterward did he tell me that when he and his first wife got together, they rented an apartment, renovated it to her taste, and bought the furniture she wanted.
  Then, all of a sudden, it turned out he wasn’t allowed to change or move anything in that apartment. The last straw came when his coworkers gave him a funny mug for his birthday, with some inside joke from their team, and the very next day he couldn’t find it: his wife had thrown it away. After all, the mug simply didn’t match the beautiful light-beige kitchen.
  He decided to marry me only after he came to my apartment and realized that here, at least, no one would make him sit on an uncomfortable but beautiful chair or dry himself only with white towels. I never thought that my lack of fashionable taste would end up helping my love life!

• I’m having renovations done in my apartment, and yesterday evening I posted an ad offering my kitchen stove for free. Someone messaged, “I’ll take it.” A middle-aged man arrived by subway with a cart. He was polite and pleasant, loaded the incredibly heavy stove onto his little cart, and headed back to the subway.

• We went to order kitchen cabinets. We’re renovating and have planned a big L-shaped set with a bar counter. It’s not a small setup. But at some point, the designer told us there was nowhere to put the forks! They couldn’t find a spot for them!

• We were picking out a bathroom sink with lower and upper cabinets. The price difference between stores and online marketplaces was really significant, but there was a chance the sink could arrive damaged during delivery.
  We decided to take the risk. The sink arrived broken. I messaged the seller, and he said it was no problem and that he would send a new one. But the second sink also arrived broken. In the end, we decided not to return the whole set and to just buy a sink from a store.

• My husband and I were replacing the light switches. I went into the kitchen, while he stayed behind to finish up. Then he called me over to admire his work. I walked up to the wall and saw that he’d neatly cut a square out of the wallpaper around the switch plate.
  I froze, cup in hand: “What is this?” Looking very proud of himself, my husband said, “I trimmed the wallpaper on purpose. It’ll eventually get dirty around the switch, but then you can just touch up the wall with paint, and it’ll always look brand-new!”

3 years ago, we bought an apartment and decided to hire designers for the renovation. We got started. The project was good, but the execution fell short, and the final stage — fully furnishing the place with furniture and textiles — was never completed at all. I wrote a review.
The next day, the designers called to apologize and came over to make a list of issues that still needed to be addressed. They took care of some things and then disappeared. Before they vanished, though, they came by with a textile company and fabric samples to choose decorative cushions.
I ordered 2 square ones and 2 longer ones. I have no idea what exactly made them longer, but we received just 2 tiny cushions the size of an A4 sheet. One of them is in the photo.

• My friend bought a brand-new condo that was completely unfinished inside. We were sitting on the bare concrete floor, drinking tea out of plastic cups, when he came up with a brilliant idea: “Who needs contractors?! We can level the floors ourselves, can’t we?”
  The next day, we brought over 30 bags of self-leveling compound. We mixed a batch in a huge tub and poured it in the living room, the kitchen, and finally the hallway. By then it was 1 a.m. We sat there, tired and dirty, but proud of ourselves.
  Then my friend said, “Okay, guys, the floor’s still wet. We can’t step on it, and it’ll take about 6 hours to set. How are we getting out?” That’s when it hit us: we’d covered the hallway and trapped ourselves in the bedroom at the far end! If we walked across now, we’d ruin all our work.
  My other friend had a “genius” solution: “We’ll jump over it!” He took a running start from the corner of the bedroom, pushed off hard, flew through the air, and landed with a splash right in the middle of the hallway. Of course, the next day we had to hire a crew to level out the hardened mess.