renter DIY – A Washington, D.C. renter says she has spent roughly $30,000 to $35,000 over three years improving her apartment—painting every room, installing peel-and-stick floor tiles, and rebuilding parts of her kitchen—after a serious mice problem. She says her landlord
For Imani Keal, the decision to take a circular saw into her own apartment didn’t start as a lifestyle choice. It started with mice.
Keal. a Washington. D.C.-based influencer. says she has transformed almost every corner of her apartment by herself—painting every room. installing new peel-and-stick floor tiles in the kitchen. and doing much of the work on the light fixtures. “For most of the things in here, if it is required to be built, I built it. I do everything,” she said.
The project that pushed her into full DIY mode was her kitchen. Keal described finding “a colony of mice living in the wall behind my kitchen.” She said a “little teeny tiny hole” gave them access, and they were coming through and moving around her kitchen. “I wasn’t having that anymore,” she said.
Her landlord, Keal said, wasn’t immediately comfortable with the scope of what she wanted to do. “Let me be very clear. They weren’t,” she said. But she described a deal: if the mice problem was significant and wasn’t addressed. the situation had to move forward. She said her landlord offered. “We’ll give you a credit to fix the problem and then you can fix it yourself.”.
She said the landlord rebuilt the floors and the wall. Keal then stepped in with her own spending and her own plans—buying cabinetry, painting, purchasing the fridge, putting everything back on the wall, and finishing the kitchen so it looks the way it does now.
Over the course of three years, Keal said she has invested between $30,000 and $35,000 in the apartment. She acknowledged that number can shock people. Her response is simple: she lives there, and she wants it to look the way she wants it to.
“I live here and I think that I deserve to have a beautiful space to live in,” she said. She added she didn’t want to stay in something “ugly” just because other people might be upset about how she spends her money.
Keal also frames the investment as more than personal taste. She said she turned DIY work into a career, saying she has “made significantly more money by doing all of these things than I have spent on the apartment.”
And she makes a comparison that feels personal rather than polished: she has hobbies the way other people do. “Some people have hobbies where they will go out and tinker with a car,” she said. “Some people want to go to a run club. Some people want to play pickleball. I want to learn how to use a circular saw and build furniture in my apartment. This is my hobby.”.
She said the hardest task she has done is plumbing. “To me, the potential for damage that can come from water is a lot greater than other things,” she said. She traced that fear to a painful early experience at her mother’s house. where she accidentally turned the stop valve and water began shooting out. Keal said it dripped down the chandelier in her mother’s living room and the hardwood floor had to be replaced.
Keal also said she didn’t begin as an expert. When she was younger, she said her sister was “really known as the kid that would come and put an Ikea thing together.” Later, Keal described a moment when she wanted a particular look and couldn’t find it.
She said the pandemic changed everything. At the time. she was working at two different restaurants and had a full-time job. but then she said she was laid off from both restaurant jobs and her main job’s hours were cut. Keal said she went from being out a lot to being in the house. with more time but fewer places to spend money—especially when it came to furniture and parts.
“There’s so many things that I wanted that I couldn’t afford. ” she said. and because “nobody was open. ” she couldn’t just buy what she wanted. She pointed to Ace Hardware as one option that stayed open longer than most—saying she would spend a lot of time going there because it was “the only place you could go.”.
That history adds weight to a question many renters eventually face: what happens when you’ve put real money and effort into a place you don’t own?
Keal said the feeling is fine—because the alternative is something she has seen happen to other people. She described friends and acquaintances who get excited about buying a house. then move in to something that’s still “hideous.” Keal said they keep “the same teeny tiny Ikea couch. ” don’t buy a bigger rug. and don’t end up living in the space they were hoping to improve.
Even after spending a lot, she said, those changes often never arrive—while the home remains stuck in the same version of itself. Her point isn’t that renters shouldn’t invest. It’s that delaying your life until you own the home can leave you stuck.
“When I buy a home, then they buy the house and the house is hideous,” she said, repeating the thought to make it clear what she meant.
Keal said she has every intention of living fully in the apartment she has now. “I have every intention of living the life that I was granted to the fullest,” she said. “I’m going to do everything that I want, everything that is within my means and is possible for me to have a good life.”
She acknowledged what comes next after years of work, though: taking things down when she leaves. “And if that means that I have to spend a couple of days after five years of enjoying the same apartment, taking the wallpaper down, okay, sure,” she said. “Whatever.”
Her plan, she added, is built around the reality of renting. She said she designed an entertainment system so it can be taken apart—built in five pieces that can be “easily be taken apart and walked out of this apartment and then moved into wherever I moved next.”
She isn’t presenting DIY as a fantasy. She’s presenting it as a decision made with tradeoffs in mind—one shaped by necessity, reinforced by experience, and carried forward with the understanding that renters always live with an exit route.
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