Welcome to my renovation blog!

Welcome to my renovation blog, you guys! (I can’t believe I just said that!) I have honestly dreamed about this day for 6 years. Ever since we bought our first home, I started taking a million pictures of every project we did, in the hopes of one day sharing them with the design community. Fast forward to today: four home renovations later; more projects than I can count; 12 thousand followers on Instagram, and partnerships with multiple national companies. I am living proof that dreams come true.

For those of you that I haven’t yet met, my name is Leslie and I live in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. I’m right next to Detroit, Michigan and I spend way too much of my time cross-border shopping and picking up things, for the home, that I’ve bought online in the states!

My husband and I are both high school teachers by day and renovators by night. We have two daughters, Juliette and Penelope, and I can’t wait for you to meet them.

Why now? Well, we are about to complete the biggest, most insane home renovation I have ever seen in my life! Ever! And I thought, ok, now is the time to start a blog and share the exciting parts of this project as they unfold. Almost 18 months ago we bought a flat roof mid-century modern ranch and finally, we are only 6 weeks away from the finish line! Along the way we decided to go big and actually took the entire roof off of the house, along with most of the walls and everything else in the interior, and in the process changed it from a worn-out mid-century time capsule to a stunning French-country-modern home. Six years ago, we didn’t start with such ambitious projects, and I’m looking forward to sharing our past renovations as well!

I guess things really got started when we bought our first starter home. Upon moving in I was suddenly lit with a fire from within. I felt like every inch of the place should be a reflection of my personal style and I just became enamored with making it over to the point of perfection. That was the first time in my life that I felt like I had truly discovered my passion. It’s such an amazing feeling doing exactly what you were put on this earth to do…now if only I could do it full time. (who knows maybe one day?!) For now, I am really happy to renovate one house at a time. The key for us is that my husband and I approach each property like it will be our Dream Home. and you know what, at the beginning of each project, we’ve honestly felt like every home would be our last one. However, once we finish, I look around and think to myself, “ok that was awesome, but what’s next?”.

I don’t like to slow down, or stop production for even one day, and I definitely drive my husband mad with my need to keep going. I should post a sign at my front door that says “Visitors beware!”, because if you do come over, I may try and put you to work on a project! We have built tables right in the middle of house parties, we’ve worked through many a New Year’s Eve building with friends, smashed holes into walls after a couple drinks needing to know what was behind them, talked house guests into putting up backsplashes…ya, not a lot of down time in our home.  The payoff for guests is that we’ll feed you really well because my husband is the best vegetarian chef in the world!

I hope you’ll subscribe to my renovation blog and introduce yourself! The next six weeks will be filled with exciting milestones like the kitchen, light fixtures, and furniture! I also want to say from the bottom of my heart that I have spent so many of my waking hours solving renovation puzzles that if you ever have a topic you want covered, or have a question, it would mean the world to me to help you in any capacity that I can and put some of this experience to good use! Thank you so much for being a part of such a special moment in my life…my very first post.