Today we’d like to introduce you to Micah & Kayla Gardner.
Hi Micah & Kayla, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Our Peak Journey started with a New Year’s resolution! On January 1, 2019, we put an offer in on a fixer-upper in Apex, and shortly after, it was accepted. A short while later, we moved into our sweet little fixer-upper and decided to start documenting our journey to make it our own.
Over the years, we’ve tackled projects big and small, made plenty of mistakes, changed our minds more than once, and slowly transformed our house into a home that feels like us!
What started as a way to document the progress of our fixer-upper became Our Peak Journey, a place where we share our home projects and DIYs, the local and small businesses we love, and pieces of our life in Apex and beyond. Our house is still very much a work in progress (and we’re starting to think it always will be!), but that’s part of what we love about it. The journey has always been just as important to us as the finished product.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Absolutely not! That’s part of the fun of buying a fixer-upper: you never quite know when a simple task will turn into your next project.
One of our favorite stories happened shortly after we moved in. I decided to clean our mailbox, which seemed innocent enough. Come to find out, it had extensive wood rot on the inside, and as soon as I took a scrub brush to it, the entire thing fell over! We ended up propping our mailbox back together for weeks while we waited for our HOA-approved mailbox mender to come fix it.
Fun fact: the mail carrier will, in fact, continue delivering your bills even when your mailbox is broken into two pieces!
That moment pretty accurately sums up life with our house. We’ve encountered plenty of projects that turned out to be much bigger than we anticipated, learned new skills out of necessity, and had our fair share of “what have we gotten ourselves into?” moments. But we’ve also learned to laugh when things don’t go according to plan, problem-solve together, and appreciate the process of figuring it out as we go.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Our Peak Journey is our little corner of the internet where we document the process of turning our Apex fixer-upper into a home that feels like us. We share everything from DIY projects and home improvements to decorating, gardening, and all of the trial and error that comes with learning how to take care of and improve a home.
We aren’t professional renovators or designers, and that’s really part of what makes Our Peak Journey ours. Most of what we’ve learned has come from researching, trying something ourselves, occasionally getting it wrong, and figuring out how to make it work. We hope sharing that process makes home improvement feel a little more approachable and shows that you don’t have to be an expert or renovate an entire house overnight to create a home you love.
Over time, Our Peak Journey has also grown beyond our house. We love highlighting local and small businesses and sharing some of the places and experiences we discover around Apex, the Triangle, and beyond. Our home is where the journey started, but the account has really become a collection of the things, places, projects, and people that make our life here feel like home.
We’re probably most proud that when we look back through Our Peak Journey, we don’t just see before-and-after photos. We see years of memories, projects we tackled together, things we learned, places we’ve explored, and a home that has grown and changed right alongside us.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
When it comes to our house, we’ve learned that there’s a fine line between being willing to take a risk and knowing when something is better left to the professionals! We try to start by asking ourselves what the consequences would be if we were to get something wrong. Regrouting tile? We’re probably willing to give it a shot. Tiling an entire shower and potentially creating a very expensive water problem? That’s where we might call in someone with a little more experience.
That said, we’re also just delusional enough to take on projects that are slightly outside our comfort zone. Some of our favorite projects have started with, “Do you think we could do this ourselves?” Usually that leads to a lot of research, a few YouTube videos, scrolling through TikTok tutorials, consulting the occasional ChatGPT project partner, and eventually deciding, “Okay…we can probably do this.”
I think that’s how we view risk in general when it comes to DIY: you don’t have to already know how to do something to be able to learn how to do it. There’s a lot of value in trusting yourself enough to try, while also being humble enough to recognize when you need help. We’ve definitely become more confident over the years because every project we figure out makes the next intimidating one feel a little more possible.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ourpeakjourney
