Honestly, I’ve had almost the exact same experience. Last year I was out there with my tape, a shovel, and a very confused dog, trying to line up what...

This hits home for me. I tried going fully digital once, but after missing a couple of key payments (ouch), I went back to basics. Now I keep a simple...

Ha, sounds painfully familiar. I grabbed some no-name smart switches off Amazon last year, thinking they'd be fine for basic lighting control. Big mis...

I feel your pain with the shiny fixtures. When we built our place, I went all-in on polished chrome because it looked so sleek in the showroom. Big mi...

I hear you on the elbow pain—last summer I decided to build a deck extension and thought I'd "keep it simple" by hand-nailing the joists. Felt satisfy...

I've actually got a few Lutron switches installed at my place, and yeah, they really do work offline. Had a storm knock out our internet last month—li...

Yeah, moisture can definitely be tricky—I learned that the hard way after my first clay wash experiment in our bathroom. Looked awesome at first, but ...

Had a similar experience when we refinanced our place a couple years back. Appraisal came in way lower than we expected, even after we'd sunk a good c...

Yeah, building those relationships definitely helps. I remember chatting with one of the guys at my local reuse spot about needing some old hardwood f...

Yeah, that's a good point about checking neighboring projects. When I built my place, I chatted with a few locals who'd done similar builds nearby. Tu...

This is spot on. I remember when we were building our deck, I emailed the inspector about railing specifics. Thought I'd been crystal clear, but he re...

Had a similar situation when we built our deck last summer. We thought we had everything planned out perfectly, but halfway through, we realized the s...