The sweet story of a couple who transformed a 15-pyeong old apartment into a home anyone would want to live in.

A couple who had to buy an old and worn-out house in the midst of a housing shortage decided to roll up their sleeves and take action, thinking that rather than complaining and settling for the current situation, they could live in a slightly cleaner and prettier house.


At first, they started by painting walls and putting interior film on the front door, but later they reached the level of making furniture by cutting wood and screwing screws themselves, and as they posted about the process of working together on their personal blog, word of mouth spread and they have now become famous with 15 million cumulative visitors.


When we talk about 'interior design,' we often think of the word 'construction,' but this book contains a story about 'a house that a couple personally worked on.'
The couple took their time, saved money, and designed an interior that took into account the tastes of the people living in the house. This book, which tells the story of their process, will give courage to those who wonder, "Can I transform my home on my own?" and will be a must-read for those who are just starting out in self-interior design.

'I want it to be clean, not old, and well-lit.
A house that feels warm.
I hope it's reasonably spacious there.
Of course, it would be better if it were pretty.'

This is probably the kind of home most people envision. However, due to various circumstances, many people end up living in homes that differ significantly from their expectations.

Our married life began in a rented house that we had purchased with a 20 million won loan.
It was a house on the very top floor of an apartment building that was over 20 years old and scheduled to be demolished within a few years.
It was an old house with mismatched windows and a broken door that looked like someone had broken it in a fight, but maybe it was because we had been living alone in a place with an outside bathroom before getting married, or maybe it was because we had a nice house for what we had, but we didn't really have any complaints.
Even though the house had a very strange wallpaper that was a mix of sky blue and purple, we, as newlyweds, didn't even bother painting the walls and set up our new home.

As time passed, my friends and seniors and juniors around me got married one by one, and we started going to housewarming parties more and more often.
One day, as usual, while I was visiting a housewarming party, my husband suddenly said.
“Honey, why do we always come back speechless after a housewarming party?”
We usually chattered and talked a lot, but when I heard my husband say that on the way back from the housewarming party, we really kept our mouths shut and didn't say a word, as if we had made a promise.

We had never thought, "Why is our house like this?" or talked about our house, but perhaps we weren't very happy with the reality of our house after seeing other couples' beautiful homes.
-----p11


'No, is this really the same house?', 'You did this yourself?'
I couldn't believe it even after looking at the before and after photos, so I looked at them again and again and called my husband.

“Honey, look at this.
This house was originally like this.
But this person himself fixed it like this, isn’t it amazing!!”
For those of us who were just hoping for a cheaper and more reasonable way to clean up, the Internet showed us something completely unexpected.
And the fact that so many people are taking care of their own homes is inspiring.
Why have we never thought of that?
If you need more information on types of wallpaper, plastering, painting, attaching wood panels to walls, etc., just look for what other people have posted.
It was a new world.
I spent the morning looking into the information, not even realizing how time passed.
I gained the courage to try it myself.
-----p18


As with everything in life, old houses have their pros and cons.
An old house is old and dirty, poorly insulated, and has many parts that need to be replaced or repaired, but over time, all the bad environmental hormones have been eliminated, and even small efforts can bring about significant changes.

I think the biggest appeal of an old house is that you can take on the challenge without much fear when trying to renovate it yourself, because even if you mess up, there's almost no chance that it will turn out worse than before.
-----p33


DIY is an abbreviation for “Do it yourself.”
It may sound like an unfamiliar term, but we all experience DIY from a young age.
From the flag boxes we made in elementary school home economics classes, to toys made from corn stalks, to even making Valentine's Day chocolates, the entire process of making something yourself is DIY.

It is correct to read it literally as “DIY”, but it is so hard that it is sometimes jokingly called “DIY”.
But it's literally just a joke, it's not that hard to DIY and it's not worth dying over.
After painting, reassembling, and refurbishing old furniture, you'll soon find yourself wanting to make things yourself using wood or other materials.
Finding the right furniture to fit into a given space can be challenging, and finding furniture with the style or functionality you want isn't as easy as it sounds.
But if you start making the things you need yourself through DIY, you can have furniture that matches the atmosphere of your home and is the size and design you want without spending a lot of money.
The more you create furniture and accessories that fit your home and needs, the more you fall in love with the charm of DIY.
People often ask where we learn this, but like most people who do interior design themselves, we have never learned it separately. We have learned it by reading other people's posts on blogs and cafes online.
If you go to a proper workshop and learn the basics, you can probably make more structured and sturdy furniture, but if you're trying to make it frugally, that's not easy.
It's a good idea to learn from scratch in a workshop and make it sturdy, but if that's not possible, there's plenty of information online, so it's not a bad idea to learn by getting what you need and making it yourself.
Since we do not manufacture and sell, there may be times when there are issues due to insufficient products. In such cases, we can operate our own A/S system.

------p205

--- From the text