Throughout my life, I’ve seen up close what it means to be stuck in fear. Unable to act. It’s always struck me - how much of your life you could miss out on if you’re afraid to take action. Being afraid of “what could happen” has led me to ask this question in my daily life, but with a twist - “what’s the worst that could happen?”.
We moved around a lot when I was a kid, so I had always dreamed of having a home of my own. After my highschool sweetheart Steve and I got married, we became homeowners at age 24. We immediately fell in love with the freedom and opportunities to customize the place we lived in. We had nothing more than a can-do attitude, and every youtube video we could find on home design and renovation. One rainy Tuesday afternoon we decided to cut a hole in the stairs so our dog Otis could have a little spot all to himself. It wasn’t much, but seeing him cozy and curled up in his newly created nest meant the world to us. From that moment on, we became hooked on our ability to literally and figuratively build the life we want to live right within our very own starter home.
Our Story
We’ve since moved to a larger home, and on August 22, 2023, our entire family was in town to celebrate my middle child’s 2nd birthday. I was pregnant with our youngest, and my husband Steve and I were so close to being done with our bathroom we had been renovating for weeks. After Steve ran the water line which had been set in concrete, we realized there was a leak. He had to pull up the concrete to fix the leak, and then completely redo it. We got the cement board back up to re-cover the wall, the wall was screwed in, and I decided “We need just one more screw to make sure it's secure”. I drilled the final screw right into the brand new water line, and I had to run out screaming in front of our entire family “SHUT THE WATER OFF!!!”. And you know what? We all laughed about it. We tore the whole thing apart again, rebuilt it again, and now we have our nice bathroom finished and leak-free. In our experience, everything is figure-out-able.
“Why not just hire someone” you may ask? Yes, some families can certainly afford to. But whether you hire it out, or you choose to go without because you doubt your ability to learn how, you miss out on all you can gain from the experience of doing it yourself: the pride of a job done with your own two hands, the skills you gain from this project to take onto the next, and most importantly the confidence you can only earn from DOING.
Our content is designed to inspire you to take the leap and tackle that home project you’ve been dreaming of (or putting off). We take you behind the scenes of our real family of five's home renovation and design projects, sharing every triumph and mistake along the way. From the idea, through the messy middle, all the way to “done”, we provide an unfiltered look at how real homeowners can transform their spaces and in turn, their lives.
I believe my husband and I can both do literally anything we can dream of. Not because we’re smarter, more skilled or better than anyone else, but because we’ve proven it to ourselves and each other time and time again. One of us will always put a screw through the water line, and we both know we’ll tear the whole thing apart and put it right back together. When you follow our account, that means you’re on team Olivegrey Avenue. It’s a place where we can dream, do, and learn together. It’s a place where “the worst thing that can happen”, really isn’t that bad. Join us as we build the home and the life we want to live in. There’s no reason to fear that something might go wrong, because it absolutely will. Everything is figure-out-able. Let’s figure it out together.
