2025: a year of living in the middle
Well here we are at the end of 2025! Looking back, it was a productive year… mostly 😉 We started with yet another move - this time to the Poplar Cottage (just temporarily!) - so we could kick off the Hill House renovation in earnest. At this point, we’re getting pretty good at moving. Ha!
Every December, we like to pause and wrap up the year by sharing the projects, posts, and old homes that defined it for us, and that’s exactly what we’re doing today.
holiday decor, Cathy’s jeans + boots
A Year of Living in the Middle
I’ve shared this quote before, but it feels especially fitting right now: “All change is hard at first, messy in the middle, and gorgeous at the end.” - Robin Sharma, The 5 AM Club
Moving from our dream country home to a fixer in town was a big shift, and two years later we’re still very much in the messy middle. For much of 2025, we bounced between two renovation projects - the Poplar Cottage and the Hill House - often walking between the two properties two or three times a day (they’re just four blocks apart).
There was siding at Poplar, tiling at the Hill House. Fence-building and gardening at Poplar, rough-in electrical at Hill. Back and forth we went, chasing that gorgeous end that’s still a little ways off. Back and forth, back and forth… until we finally (FINALLY!) finished the Poplar Cottage.
Let’s talk about the houses…
The Poplar Cottage: Finishing What We Started
You guys! We finished the Poplar Cottage this year!
In the end, it took five years. Five. Years. And while that slow pace probably led to a better final result, it also just felt… slow. This house taught us that some projects are simply hard. There are no shortcuts. No easy routes. The only way to ‘finished’ is straight through. But we kept going. And now, on the other side of it, we’re really proud of what we built.
Some highlights from Poplar this year:
Closing this chapter felt big, and deeply satisfying. More reveals and before-and-afters coming soon!
The Hill House: Quiet Progress
If Poplar was about endings, the Hill House was about beginnings. This year we nailed down the (probably final) floor plan, demo’d upstairs, added electric heat/cooling to the whole house, tiled one bathroom, and spent hours and hours designing behind the scenes.
We’re firmly in the messy stage of this renovation. Not everything photographed beautifully. Not everything felt blog-ready right away. But we’re laying the groundwork, the unglamorous but necessary part that sets the stage for all the pretty stuff to come.
This year we focused on:
We are so excited about this house (truly my favorite one to date - it’s just so perfect for us!), and we can’t wait to share more as it takes shape next year.
Thank you
If you’ve been here for years, thank you for sticking with us through the long projects and slower seasons. If you’ve joined more recently, we’re so glad you’re here! The Grit and Polish continues to be shaped by a deep love of old homes and I still can’t quite believe we get to renovate them and tell their stories for a living.
Having you here, cheering us on, and sharing your questions/thoughts/opinions along the way means so much to us. It’s a reminder that these old houses matter not just to us, but to a community that values craft, care, and homes built to last.
Wishing you the happiest of holidays! See you in 2026.
xx,
Cathy & Garrett
