Today we’d like to introduce you to Tarah Wolff.
Hi Tarah, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
In April 2014, I began the adventure of the renovation of the 100-year-old farm of my mom’s childhood, of my childhood, and of all the fifty years my grandparents lived there together.
My mom, brother, dad, aunt, and a couple of friends helped me some but there was still tremendous struggle and many ups and downs. It was my goal, my total focus, where I went every day after my day job, and where I spent every single weekend.
With almost nothing hired out, after completely gutting the home, I managed to finish the electrical and plumbing in December 2014. (And passed inspection PHEW!!!). After moving in, in the summer of 2015, I realized I wasn’t just fixing this place, I was fixing me too in the same way. I was content and I was happy.
I guess it makes sense that it was then that I met someone. His acceptance of me and all of my weirdness, my family, my work, my dreams, my job, my home, and my blog is a love I never knew was possible. He didn’t want me to change anything or have to give up anything, he just wanted to be a part of my life.
This little place of mine hollered my husband home too. We tackled lots of projects in the first couple of years after he moved in in 2019 – crazy we didn’t also kill each other! (mostly kidding…). It cemented the truth: we both wanted this life of ours for the rest of our lives.
On June 11th, 2022, we got married!
I started the blog way back in 2015 and had no idea it would blow up like it did. I think our audience appreciates our candor and total lack of perfection, lol. I think our home turned out beautiful but it’s got a lot of character! My message is that: Yes, you can do anything you put your mind to, male or female. Houses, furniture, none of it cares how old you are or how strong you are, or whether you know the difference between a reciprocating saw or a jig saw.
These are old trades and there may be no more satisfying thing than the restoration of a home, a room, a bathroom vanity, a saved rocking chair that was destined for the dump, a saved dresser that went from a beast to a beauty.
This is the good stuff, the best of stuff, this is the stuff that gets under your fingernails and fills and nourishes your heart as well as your body. These labors transformed me just as deeply and completely as all of the transformations I have created along the way.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It was not a smooth road for me lol but I wouldn’t change a thing! Back in 2005, I cosigned with my boyfriend at the time on a house down in Oklahoma with the plans to renovate it and sell it for a profit and that story goes: I learned how NOT to do a renovation and to NEVER EVER EVER cosign with anyone.
I spent years of my life splitting my time there renovating that house and my time here helping run my family’s golf course. Minnesota had been hollering me back home for years, I only wish I had come back sooner. 2011 turned into a landmark year for my family. My family had to sell the golf course and my folks got divorced.
In just a couple of years, I also lost my three childhood dogs and my last two grandparents: my two Grandmas. I got back home just in time to experience a load of grief. It was rough there for a while for my whole family.
It was then that my grandparents’ empty farmhouse became a discussion and then hope. Of course, it just felt like home to me. The renovation was a tremendous trial lol to say the least! I had plenty of meltdowns over the year and a half not to mention not a few injuries! But when I moved in in 2015 it made it all worth it.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Grandma’s House DIY?
The blog follows our story of improving our 1915 farmhouse. It’s based on the fact that I just love making something new and usable again that someone else would have thrown out or torn down.
If we can do it ourselves then we figure it out. I explain just how we do everything on the blog with tutorials and tips as we go. It is all about self-reliance, do-it-yourself, refinishing old furniture, re-purposing old pieces, or building it from scratch instead of buying new and saving money every step of the way.
I think our blog’s popularity has a lot to do with how candid we are. There is no perfection around here (lol) – I honestly talk about all of our mistakes along with all of our triumphs. And, goodness knows, I think our home is beautiful but it doesn’t look like something out of a magazine, we live here of course and I make no effort to hide that and I think that’s why people follow us.
I think in the blogging world of perfect homes and lives, our blog is refreshing in its way.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
Wow, back in 2011 when the economy crashed and we lost the golf course and I finally got my butt home from Oklahoma it was a total rug swept right out from under my life. My folks got divorced, we sold just about everything and it was like I looked around and went, “OMG now what am I going to do?!”
I had no idea, I was in my late 20s and had been even looking at golf course management schools, etc. But it was just no longer in the cards for me. I don’t know if you would call those catastrophic years of my life good or bad luck lol but it changed my entire future. And now, years later, I have Grandma’s House DIY and, of course, I wouldn’t change anything.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.grandmashousediy.com/
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/grandmashousediy/
- Facebook: http://facebook.com/grandmashousediy/
- Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/grandmasHousDIY/
