The In-Between Phase: Renovations are endurance events – if you reframe your outlook and look for small wins you'll find them easier to get through
How we survived living in a home that’s half finished and half just beginning
Committed home renovators David and Andrew Harrison-Colley (better known on Instagram as The Home Boys) are part of Ideal Home's new Open House contributors, sharing their thoughts on making a home together and living through the tricky parts. See the rest of their articles here.
There’s something quietly surreal about the days between Christmas and New Year. Time slows down, the to-do lists soften, and suddenly you have space to notice things - the small changes, the shifts in atmosphere, the progress you didn’t realise had happened because you were too busy making it happen.
And then there’s the other side: the original cottage, stripped back to its bones, with the old kitchen and bathroom taken out, a new hallway emerging, and the future main bedroom waiting patiently in the quiet hum of its own potential. Two chapters sitting side by side. The “nearly there” and the “here we go again.”
A Home in Two Chapters
We always knew the renovation would happen in phases, but living in the middle of both phases at once feels strangely grounding.
In the extension, everything is beginning to feel familiar. The kitchen works. The living room feels lived in. The shower room is finished. Upstairs, the new bathroom is almost there - tiles grouted, walls painted, ceiling beams transformed. Two bedrooms are close behind, each one starting to feel like a real space rather than a project.
Step across into the old cottage, though, and you’re back at day one. The old bathroom and kitchen are gone. The walls are open. The layout is shifting. What once felt cramped and compromised now feels full of opportunity - as if the house has taken a deep breath and is ready to become what it should always have been.
There’s something quite beautiful about watching the past and future of your home unfold at the same time.
The Pace You Learn to Accept
Renovation has a way of teaching you patience, even when you don’t want to learn it. You imagine progress as a straight line: foundations poured, walls raised, rooms finished. But in reality, it’s far more textured - a series of leaps, stalls, sideways steps, and quiet stretches where nothing and everything is happening.
The original part of the cottage gave us sanctuary during some of the messiest moments of the build. While work begins in the old cottage, we can now retreat to the warm glow of the new living room or sit at the dining table with a cup of coffee and remember that progress isn’t loud - it’s layered.
Rooms don’t suddenly feel complete because the builders have left. They feel complete when you’ve lived in them long enough to let them soften.
The Rituals That Carry You Through
During this in-between phase, we’ve realised how much the small rituals matter. They’re the anchors in the shifting landscape.
- Turning on the lamps instead of the overhead lights.
- Keeping one corner of a room tidy, even when the rest is chaos.
- Making the bed every morning - even if there’s a pile of tools beside it.
- A candle in the evening. A cup of coffee in the same spot each day.
- A throw over the arm of the sofa.
None of these complete a room, but they complete a moment, and sometimes that’s all you need to feel at home, even when your home is evolving around you.
Looking Back at What 2025 Taught Us
This year has been a chapter of foundations - not just the literal ones, but all the invisible ones that shape how a home feels.
- We learned that you can’t rush the big decisions.
- We learned that compromise isn’t always a bad thing - sometimes it makes the best stories.
- We learned that the last five percent takes as long as the first fifty.
- And we learned that even when you’re exhausted, the right decision for your home gives you energy back.
2025 has been the year of making space for the future. Taking down walls, building new ones, and slowly shaping a home that supports the life we want to live in it.
The Strange Comfort of Being In-Between
There’s a quiet pride that settles in at this stage. You’re no longer just dreaming or demolishing - you’re transitioning. The extension is no longer “the new part,” but simply home. And the original cottage isn’t “the old part” anymore, but the next chapter waiting to be written.
Being in-between is temporary, but it’s also strangely wonderful. It’s the moment just before everything changes again - the moment you pause, breathe, and appreciate how far you’ve come before stepping into what comes next.
And as this year draws to a close, we’re learning to enjoy the stillness of it - the halfway point, the phase where both progress and possibility live side by side.
