The results are in from our 3rd year survey, and we have A LOT to chat about. First of all, thank you to everyone who took time out of their busy day to give us some feedback. We love hearing from you, we get energized from reading your comments, and we always come away with new ideas to make The DIY Playbook better!

Before we get into the details, we do want to mention that we know we can’t please everyone. Some of you requested more small DIY projects, others begged for big DIYs, some of you said to cut down on the relationship & family posts, others asked for more lifestyle content! So it just goes to show that we certainly can’t make everyone happy! After reading that feedback, it made us realize that we like our current mix of content….about 90% home/DIY and 10% other. It feels like a good balance to us, as we can showcase our passion for our homes while also giving you a glimpse into our personal lives.

But let’s get to the results….

Reader Stats

AGE: This one didn’t really surprise us…we’re 27 & 28, and many of our readers happen to be right around the same age too. But it is so cool to see that no matter your age, you’re still interested in creating a home that you love and maybe getting your hands dirty in the process. 

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Let us first say that this was a major FAIL on our part…we forgot to include a dating category and didn’t add it in until someone mentioned it. Oops! Palm to forehead. So this information is probably inaccurate. But it does look like we have a lot of married ladies out there. 

KIDS: Most of our readers do not have children, but some of you do and a few of you guys are even expecting (congrats!) Because of this, we do have some plans for nursery posts this spring. More on that later in today’s post…

BLOGGER STATUS: Most of you guys like reading blogs, but aren’t bloggers. But we do have a surprising number of readers who want to start their own blog! That’s really awesome (& we’re always here if you have any questions.)

RANDOM: Someone specifically asked how many Canadian readers we have, and last year 7% of our readers hailed from the Great White North!

Specific Post Requests

Maybe Aunt Bridget can design a nursery?? Mark your calendars, the DIY Playbook is tackling Bridget’s sister’s nursery in the beginning of June! We have a lot to learn when it comes to nursery decor/design so if you have any tips, we’re all ears!  

It would be really cool if you could do a home makeover on someone’s house (maybe a friend’s) that doesn’t require that much money, yet yields amazing results to the home. If we didn’t work full-time jobs, we would LOVE to do this all.day.long! But to be perfectly honest, the logistics of tackling someone else’s space on our limited schedules (aka on the weekends) isn’t realistic for us at the moment. Heck, we have a hard enough time juggling our own DIY projects. But perhaps someday this will be in the cards if we ever blog full-time!

A post on food prep for the week for lunches and recipes. Yes! You weren’t the only one who requested this. Since Matt & Finn do most of the lunch time meal prep, we’re going to wrangle them into a post about it this spring. Be forewarned, we eat kinda boring/healthy lunch food…but it keeps us on track and fueled up for work weeks!

I miss some of the renter friendly solutions Casey used to share. You’re definitely not alone! And even before this survey, renter-friendly posts have been on our minds too. We are in the process of figuring out how we can offer renter-friendly solutions, even though neither of us are renters anymore. We realize this information is still very valuable to some of our readers so it’s definitely a topic we are trying to incorporate again this year! Stay tuned…

Show more of the specific steps you take! We’re definitely trying to get better in this area, so thank you for the reminder! It’s hard because we don’t want to give too many specific details where the content becomes repetitive, tedious, and far too boring…but we also don’t want to breeze through large projects without sharing details that someone trying to recreate the look may need. With some large DIYs happening in Casey’s guest room (more on that tomorrow!), you better believe we’ll be giving you all of the step-by-steps just in case you want to tackle any of the projects in your own home. It’s time to step up our power tool game and get some hardcore DIYs going!

More rookie mistake posts and maybe some roundups of furniture/décor pieces you personally recommend or just like in general. YES!! We love sharing rookie mistake posts and definitely need to schedule more on our calendar! And we’ve been discussing trips together to places like Target (a favorite of ours!) to post about all of the amazing things currently on sale.  

FYI B&C

Sometimes, my page freezes on your page. I think it must have something to do with your ads. It also could be my browser…who knows. We are totally embarrassed! Thank you for bringing this to our attention. After we received this feedback, we immediately contacted our tech team to make some changes so this doesn’t happen again. And if anyone else ever experiences “issues”, please let us know ASAP! A few other readers mentioned that pictures look a bit wonky in Feedly. We both use Feedly to read our favorite blogs, and notice the same thing! We think it happens when we do a picture collage in wordpress….it just doesn’t translate well into Feedly. We’ll try to use less picture collages, but the blog will always look best when you visit the website on its own.

Love the addition of your names on each post to identify who wrote it! A reader actually gave us that suggestion LAST year in the blog birthday survey and we immediately looked at one another and said, “why didn’t we think of that?!” We immediately added it to each post and have been so grateful for that idea ever since.  

Love that this blog is real, by real people with lives, so I know everything on here is doable! Thank you, we really, really, really appreciate that. And yes, if we can do this, we feel very confident that anyone can! We’re not professional interior designers, or carpenters, or painters…we’re just everyday homeowners trying to make our places homey & special.

Is there a reason there isn’t an option for “in a relationship” in this survey? OMG, we are SO sorry for this oversight and feel totally embarrassed! How did we not catch that mistake when we were proofreading!? We promise that will NEVER happen again! 

Reader Advice:

Stay away from the sponsored posts and just be yourself. I know blogging isn’t free but I hate reading ads. We totally hear you and are so grateful for your honest feedback. We take our voice/influence here on the blog very seriously. We have vowed to each other to ONLY allow sponsors on our site that are an organic fit with our content and brand. We only want to promote products that feel authentic and ones we would buy ourselves outside of the blog. To be perfectly honest, we decline about 90% of the offers we receive regarding sponsored posts. And when we do take on sponsored posts (to help off set the overhead of running the blog), we work hard to host a giveaway when possible and weave the product into our normal posts so you don’t EVER feel like you’re reading an ad or missing out on worthy content that day. We try our best… but let’s be real, we’re not perfect and are constantly learning how to walk this fine line effectively. So thank you for your feedback and your patience as we navigate our way.  

I can’t think of a single post of yours that I read that I didn’t like. Your writing comes across as so genuine and vibrant, and I always get excited when I see you have a new post! <— in the most non-creepy way possible, do you live in Chicago?! Because you are the absolute sweetest and we need to be friends! Sincerely, thank you. xo

I love how you find great deals on home decor at stores like HomeGoods and Goodwill, showing all of us that decor can be both stylish and affordable. Unfortunately, the items you find aren’t often sold in Home Goods across the country. Can you please link to similar items that you find online in other stores so your looks can be replicated? Great tip, we can TOTALLY do that and will work on incorporating the “shop this similar look” as much as we can to make it easier to find/shop comparable items. 

I’d love to see you be a little more transparent about the costs of things. Obviously it’s your house and your choice, but I do think I would be more willing to try out some of your ideas if I knew what I was getting myself into. We couldn’t agree more. Thank you for pointing this out and pushing us to improve in this area.

I love the blog. I’ve been reading since the beginning and you’re my first stop when I get onto my computer in the morning… I relate to you so much and love your positive, upbeat attitudes. Thanks for writing and sharing! We feel overwhelmed by the support, words of encouragement and overall love you guys shared with us in the survey (sincerely, thank YOU… we feel like the luckiest girls in the world!). But when a few readers commented about our positive attitudes here on the DIY Playbook, we felt honored. We work hard to create a happy and positive world here on the blog and strive to bring a little extra “happy” into our reader’s every day routine… even if that happy only lasts for 30 seconds, to us, it’s worth it.  

Again, thank you to everyone who submitted feedback. We are so lucky to have such amazing readers and we look forward to YEAR 4!