Guest Post {The Little Black door}

Hi everybody! I'm Elizabeth from little black door and I'm so excited to be here today to talk about some things I've learned from my years of DIY projects. I started DIY'ing when I was 2, which is why I have so much experience but still remain so young and beautiful. :) Hopefully you can find a useful tip or two or at least can relate to some of the hard learned lessons. There is no rush. Leave the deadlines at the door. Sure, you know how long spray painting a lamp will take but when dipping your toe in a new DIY pool, don't add to the stress of the unknown by working under a randomly selected deadline. New (to you) projects are full of surprises and you can't take the time to deal with them correctly if you are rushing. As I learned when reupholstering our couch, what you think will take an afternoon can end up taking two weeks, or four. So frustrating. Especially for someone who has zero patience...that would be me.

 

No need to reinvent the wheel. There are tons of great tutorials out there and chances are whatever you are trying to do has been at least attempted before. Do some research (Pinterest is great for this) and read a few tutorials. Even if you don't end up following the tutorial line by line, it will at least give you an idea of what you are in for. You've got skills. Never underestimate your DIY abilities. Of the 50 or so DIY projects I tried in the past year, I would have guessed I wouldn't have been good at about 49 of them. Turns out, most turn out to be not half bad and I had a great time doing them to boot.

 

DIY Monogram Shams

Quick can be good. Not every project needs to be a huge undertaking. Some of my favorite DIY projects were less than 10 minutes. Like this....

 

Gold spray painted lampshades

Help is a good thing. Sometimes you've reached your DIY limit and you've just got to hire it out. As I learned with the chandelier, not every project is a DIY project. On the big projects, save yourself the stress and the extra money by getting the right help from the start.

Thanks for having me Megan, this was fun! Now off to Pinterest to find my next DIY project!