How Redesigning Our Old House Sparked My Biggest Self-Improvement Journey

When my husband and I first bought our fixer-upper in Virginia, I thought we were simply redesigning and updating an older house. But now that we’ve finished that job, sold that house, and are in the midst of our British country house renovation, I can see that whole process for what it was. Home renovations aren’t just about drywall and décor. They’re about becoming new—inside and out.

That farmhouse in Virginia was a bargain when we bought it over a decade ago, and for good reason, too. The floors creaked in three different languages, the wallpaper was older than my marriage, and the kitchen had exactly two working outlets—one for the fridge and one for my sanity.

But we were in love. Not just with the crooked little house, but with the life we pictured inside it. I saw birthday banners taped to imperfect walls, sticky-fingered toddlers streaking down the hallway, and a dining table scratched by years of family dinners. It was going to be our forever home, the backdrop of all our best stories.

Spoiler: it wasn’t.

Instead, that house became a crash course in what happens when you try to rebuild a building without realizing you’re also quietly rebuilding yourself.

On one particularly cold day, I discovered two things:

• Our walls had no insulation.

• I also had no insulation.

You strip a house down to studs and suddenly there’s nowhere for it to hide its weird decisions and old damage. Same, apparently, for a mom juggling kids, career, relationship, and a renovation spreadsheet color-coded within an inch of its life.

Renovation shows always cut to the reveal in 42 minutes, but they skip the part where everyone is eating cereal for dinner because the stove is in the living room. (To this day, I have a physical reaction when I see Trader Joe’s salads– not because they aren’t tasty, but because David and I ate one every day for months while we had no working kitchen and it stopped being fun after the first week.) Instagram reels don’t show the arguments over grout color that are not actually about grout color, or the way your kid asks, “Will it ever be done?” and you wonder if they mean the house or this entire season of life.

But somewhere between the dust storms and the IKEA assembly marathons, something shifted.

A Foundation Built on Faith

If you’ve ever had kids (or welcomed foster children! shout out to all my foster mamas reading this!) into your home, you know chaos comes standard. Add a renovation, and you’ve basically got a reality show. Yet, through the noise and dust, God kept reminding me that every wall taken down mirrors how He tears down the walls around my own heart. The hurt from miscarriages. The disappointments I tried to paint over. He doesn’t just patch me up—He rebuilds.
When I think of restoration, I picture my grandparents’ old farmhouse. The wide board floorboards creaked, and the plumbing was straight from another century, but love lived in every corner. That house taught me that beauty isn’t in perfection—it’s in love worn into the walls. I always wanted my home, and my life, to hold that same sacred warmth.

As we planned the new layouts of our Virginia farmhouse, David and I asked ourselves: What do we actually need? A bigger mudroom for tiny shoes and giant backpacks. A place to drop mail that isn’t the kitchen table. A corner that felt like a calm exhale at the end of the day. Every single decision forced the same question: What do we want our life to feel like?

I learned to ask for help somewhere between painting the nursery and realizing I had no business being on a ladder at 11 p.m. with a roller and a bad attitude. Family babysat, friends dropped off meals, and I learned that letting people in doesn’t make me less capable—it makes life more possible.

And then, just when the house finally started to look like the mood board in my head, something unexpected happened: we moved to England. And then we sold our house two years later.

Logically, it made sense. We loved living in England. The housing market was good in Virginia, and we didn’t want to be landlords of an 1850 farmhouse from across the Atlantic. But emotionally, it felt like saying goodbye to a person who had seen me ugly-cry in paint-splattered pajamas and still let me stay.

I thought I’d feel regret, but what I felt instead was gratitude.

That crooked little fixer-upper taught me:

• I can survive more chaos than I thought.

• I don’t have to do everything alone.

• A “dream home” is less about square footage and more about how you treat yourself inside its walls.

Yes, the before-and-after photos look great. But the real before and after lives in me: the woman who walked into that house needing it to make her feel “settled,” and the one now, who walked out finally understanding that feeling settled is an inside job.

After the mess clears, flicking on a new light or opening a freshly painted door feels like victory. Those small joys remind us how much beauty hides in everyday life.

Fast Forward: Still Learning

If you’ve ready any other parts of my story, you know that we are embarking on renovating our new home here in England. Suffice it to say I’m not the same girl I was when we embarked on our first renovation journey in Virginia. To make room for what mattered, we had to let go of a lot:

• The boxes we moved from the last house and never opened.

• The clothes I kept for the “someday” version of myself.

• The belief that a good mom keeps everything “just in case.”

Decluttering as we moved into our new house made me notice how much emotional clutter I was carrying too—old stories about needing to do it all, be it all, hold it all together. Out went the broken lamp and, quietly, some of that pressure to be perfect. Some of that pressure to have the perfect sacred warmth from my grandparents’. I’ve finally realized in our new home a lesson that took me way too many tears, dollars, and hard lessons to learn: it’s actually, truly, not about the physical stuff.

Rediscovering Joy in the Dust

If you’re in the middle of your own renovation—your home, your faith, or your soul—remember this: God’s not done with you. Whether you’re sanding down rough edges or repainting your story in forgiveness, beauty will rise from the mess. Maybe not immediately, but faithfully.
Because every project, both in our homes and in ourselves, starts with one small “yes.” One coat of paint, one prayer, one act of kindness toward a child who hasn’t yet learned to trust.

The real before and after is this:
Before: A mom who thought home was something she had to perfect.
After: A mom who knows home is anywhere she’s allowed to grow.