The Ugly Middle: Why no one talks about the worst part of renovating – and the encouragement any DIY-er needs to hear

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.

We don’t see many glossy magazine spreads about this part of renovating. You know the part we mean. Not the mood board stage. Not the pristine reveal with perfect styling and beautiful light. We’re talking about the middle. The dusty, demoralising, borderline soul-destroying bit where everything looks worse before it gets better - and you wonder what on earth you were thinking.

We’ve lived there. And we’re here again . . .

Our own ugly middle (plural) moments

We’ve been through enough renovations to know it’s not just us. There was our little flat in Brixton, where the entire kitchen was out of action for what felt like years (Covid years were definitely longer weren’t they!).

There’s our holiday cottage in Suffolk, which we thought just needed 'a lick of paint' but ended up needing a full new kitchen and bathroom.

And now there’s our current project: an old Suffolk cottage that came with a crumbling carpenter’s workshop. We demolished that ourselves before it fell down, but living through building the new extension has meant perpetual dust, bare plaster, and that unsettling sense that we’re camping in our own home.

And through it all? We’ve been ghosted by trades we desperately needed, waited weeks for quotes that never came, or been told 'yeah, maybe next year.' It’s one of the reasons we’ve had no choice but to roll up our sleeves and DIY so much ourselves. Not out of a smug desire to 'do it all,' but because sometimes it’s the only option if you actually want to see progress this decade.

The truth no one likes to share

This part of renovating sucks. It’s living with everything in boxes. It’s washing dishes in the bath because there’s no sink. It’s debating paint colours when half your walls are still raw plaster. It’s endlessly sweeping up dust that just comes back five minutes later. It’s realising the budget is running out faster than the jobs are.

And it’s that moment you look around and genuinely think: Was this the worst mistake we’ve ever made?

While social media loves a dramatic 'before and after,' it rarely shows the endless 'during.' The months (or years) where your home is neither one thing nor the other, and you can’t even remember why you wanted to change it in the first place.

Why it’s normal (and actually necessary)

But the thing is, this stage isn’t a failure. It’s necessary.

You have to rip things out before you can put them back better. You have to live without stuff while you’re rethinking how it works. You have to make the mess before you can make it beautiful.

Even the slickest TV makeovers have a behind-the-scenes disaster zone they’d rather not show you.

We’ve learned (painfully) that you can’t shortcut it. The ugly middle is part of the process - no matter how tempting it is to skip straight to the pretty.

How we got through it (mostly intact) and will again

We won’t lie and say we did it gracefully. But here’s what’s helped us survive so far:

• We embraced living in one usable room at a time. There was a stretch where the bedroom was the only sane space, so we made it as nice as we could and accepted that everywhere else was chaos.
• We set small, realistic goals. Instead of “let’s finish the whole house,” it became “let’s just get this one room functional” or “let’s make sure we have a working loo.”
• We learned not to apologise for the mess. If you visit us mid-reno, you know what you’re getting.
• We reminded ourselves why we chose this. That we wanted a home with history and character. That we wanted it to feel like us. Even if that meant tiling at 10pm on a Wednesday night while quietly despairing over our life choices.

And yes - sometimes we chose to do things ourselves not because it was fun or cheaper, but because no one else was showing up to do it.

A word of encouragement

If you’re in the middle of it right now, wondering why you ever started - trust us.

You’re not failing. You’re renovating.

This stage is ugly and hard and will test your patience like nothing else. But it does end. One day you’ll realise the walls are painted, the floors are clean(ish), and you don’t have to wear shoes indoors anymore.

We’re still living in our own ugly middle, and we’ll keep sharing the real bits here so you know you’re not alone.

Because a home you make yourself might be messy for a while - but it’s yours. And it’s always worth it.