When my husband and I bought our first home — a townhouse in South Surrey that needed work in practically every room — I genuinely thought I would just watch while he and my dad handled things. I was a Respiratory Therapist. I knew how to stay calm under pressure, how to assess a situation, how to act fast. But a paintbrush? A caulking gun? Those felt like tools that belonged to someone else.
I remember standing in our bathroom the first week we moved in. The grout was cracked. The caulk was peeling. The walls had been painted with something that looked suspiciously like a colour called "institutional beige." And I thought: we bought a project, and I have no idea how to do any of this.
"I kept waiting to feel ready. Eventually I realized the only way to feel ready was to just start."
The first thing I ever did myself
It was a paint job. A small bathroom — maybe 50 square feet, tiny window, terrible lighting. My husband showed me the basics: cut in with a brush, roll the walls, don't overload the roller. I watched him do one pass, and then he handed it to me.
I made every beginner mistake in the book. I overloaded the roller. I missed spots near the ceiling. I got paint on the trim. But when it was done — when that one tiny room was a colour I had chosen, applied by my own hands — something shifted.
It wasn't a big deal to anyone else. But to me, it felt enormous. I had done a thing I didn't think I could do. And I wanted to do the next thing.
Room by room, project by project
Over the next few years, I learned alongside my husband and dad the way most people learn DIY: by attempting something, making a mess of it, and figuring out what went wrong. I patched drywall for the first time after accidentally putting my elbow through a wall (don't ask). I recaulked windows, painted trim, installed shelves, and tiled a backsplash that I tore out and redid twice before it looked right.
None of it was perfect. All of it was progress.
What I didn't expect was how much it would change the way I felt about being in my own home. Every room I'd touched felt different to me — more mine, more like I belonged there. The intimidation I'd felt at the beginning started to feel like something from a different chapter. I wasn't a person who didn't know how to use tools. I was a person who had learned.
What the second house taught me
We sold the townhouse and bought a detached home a few years later. Another fixer-upper. Another long list of projects. But this time, I walked in with a completely different energy. I didn't see a list of problems. I saw a list of things I already knew how to handle.
That shift — from "I don't know how to do this" to "I know how to figure this out" — is what Home DIYs for Busy Women is really about.
"You don't need a background in renovation. You need someone willing to stand beside you and show you how."
Why I started teaching other women
I started talking about what I was doing online — Instagram, mostly — and the messages I got were always some version of the same thing: I wish I could do that. I've been wanting to change my bathroom but I don't know where to start. I'm scared I'll mess something up.
These were not women who lacked capability. They were busy women — working moms, professionals, women juggling a hundred things — who just hadn't had someone show them how. And the gap between where they were and where they wanted to be was often smaller than they thought. Not months of learning. Not a contractor quote. Just someone standing beside them in their home saying: here's the brush, here's the motion, here's what you're looking for.
That's what I do now. I go to women's homes in South Surrey and surrounding areas, and I teach hands-on. Painting, patching, caulking, installing shelves — whatever the project is, we do it together until you can do it on your own.
What I want you to know
If you're reading this and you have a room in your house that's been bothering you for months — or years — I want you to know that the gap between where you are and where you want to be is probably smaller than you think.
You don't need to be handy. You don't need a workshop full of tools. You don't need to have grown up watching someone do this. You just need to start somewhere, and be willing to make a couple of mistakes along the way.
The house will teach you, if you let it. That's what mine did for me.
— Sheri Walker · South Surrey, BC