My parents hated spending money. I wore my sisters hand-me-down clothes (bras too!) and we absolutely would never spend money on painting crews. One summer my brother spent scraping and painting the entire house. The summer of my 7th grade year I took a wire brush to our rusting wire fence, primed, and re-painted it silver. I can’t tell you how many hours I have spent trying to refinish something that should have just been thrown away or replaced. Long tedious projects are in my blood. Both of my parents were the children of two sets of strong farmers who lived through The Great Depression/Dust Bowl. And even though both of my parents had plenty of money they still threw nothing away and DIYed and re-purposed everything, even before it was cool.

I grew up in a household where summers were filled with outdoor painting, scraping, and sanding projects. And winter breaks were filled with indoor painting, scraping, and sanding projects. I grew up in a limestone home with beautiful wooden garage doors. Every summer us kids would sand and scrape those garage doors and put on a fresh coat of varnish. 20 years later there were 20 coats of varnish on that bad boy, and thanks to chemicals and persistence with a hand sander I was able to get it all off to bare wood and re-stain and seal it. Here is a picture of those garage doors a year after I sealed them and helped my mom re-tar the driveway. I helped her with all of this right before I bought my first home. I knew I would be busy with my own DIY projects after that.