Who We Are

Claire Lives started about three years ago when I was off work from the NHS dealing with burnout and panic attacks, sitting in my tired terrace in Leeds thinking about how much the magnolia walls were contributing to how rubbish I felt. I’m Claire, I was a nurse for eighteen years before I had to leave, and this whole thing began as me trying to make my house less depressing during a really difficult time in my life.

The early version was just me documenting our renovation projects – painting our bedroom dusty pink when I’d never chosen a bold colour before, transforming our awful avocado bathroom suite, learning that making your space nicer actually helps your mental health in quite direct ways. Started sharing photos to keep my sisters updated, ended up with other people following along who were also using home projects as therapy or just trying to make their houses work on limited budgets.

About a year in, I realised my perspective was pretty narrow. Former NHS nurse, small terrace in Leeds, working with whatever money we had left after my husband Phil’s plumbing work covered the bills. That’s valid but it’s not everyone’s experience with homes and design. If this was going to be actually useful beyond my specific situation, I needed other voices – people in different circumstances, different stages of life, different challenges.

So I reached out to people I’d connected with through Instagram and the blog, asked if they wanted to contribute. Wasn’t looking for professional interior designers or people with perfect homes – wanted real people dealing with real houses and real constraints who could write honestly about what they were figuring out.

Sarah was the first to join. She spent twelve years managing a Boots in Nottingham, saved for ages to buy a tiny two-bed terrace in Bulwell with her husband Danny. The house needed everything – horrific peach and brown bathroom, dated kitchen, floral wallpaper throughout, the whole nightmare. They couldn’t afford to gut it all at once so Sarah taught herself DIY from YouTube videos, started small with the bathroom, gradually transformed the whole place on a tight budget. She left Boots about eighteen months ago when the company was restructuring, now does content around home improvement more seriously. Everything she writes is shaped by having done almost everything herself without professional help – the mistakes, the learning curve, the satisfaction of actually building something with your own hands. She’s proof you don’t need loads of money or training to make your home nice, just determination and willingness to mess things up and try again.

Raj works in fintech in Manchester, writes code all day, and bought one of those identical beige new-build flats in Chorlton when he was 28. The flat was fine – clean, modern, totally functional – but had absolutely no personality. Looked exactly like the show flat, felt like living in a hotel room. After a breakup left him living alone in this bland box feeling pretty rubbish, his mate told him the place was depressing and he needed to make it actually his. Raj had never thought about design before, just bought whatever was cheap and functional from IKEA. Got into it through that software developer approach of breaking problems down methodically, researching solutions, testing things. Painted one wall teal, which terrified him but transformed the room. Now the flat looks completely different – he’s ripped out carpet for engineered wood, painted every room, learned about scale and proportion and lighting. His content is about small space solutions and new-build transformations, particularly for people who never thought about design and don’t have natural instincts for it.

Then there’s Marcus, who teaches geography at a secondary school in Bristol and spends his days trying to convince teenagers that oxbow lakes matter. Bought a Victorian conversion flat in Easton that had high ceilings and original features but hadn’t been updated since the 80s. Lived there eighteen months barely changing anything because teaching expands to fill all available time and he just didn’t think about it. His girlfriend moved in, was horrified, basically said they needed to sort the flat out. They started with the bedroom, found good floorboards under beige carpet, painted walls moody dark blue despite his concerns. That first project gave him confidence they could transform the place themselves. Now they’ve done most of the flat – warm terracotta living room, completely redone bathroom, painted kitchen cabinets. Marcus writes about juggling home projects with teaching schedules, small space living on a teacher salary, learning DIY properly when you’ve only got school holidays for big projects.

Aisha rounds out the group – 26, got a three-year-old daughter and seven months pregnant with number two, which means she’s constantly exhausted and preventing a toddler from doing dangerous things. Her partner Liam works logistics doing shift work, so she’s often on her own. They bought a three-bed semi in Dunstable that needed work – floral wallpaper, dated kitchen, avocado bathroom suite from 1985. Had no money to fix it after the deposit, Aisha felt genuinely depressed about bringing up kids in such a tired ugly house. Started making small budget changes – painted her daughter’s room pink for £80, did the living room in warm cream with cheap accessories, tackled the bathroom in stages. Everything she writes is shaped by renovating with small children around – you can’t do messy projects when toddlers are awake, can’t have anything too precious because kids destroy things, have to balance wanting things nice with accepting there’ll be crayon on walls and sticky fingerprints everywhere. Her content is for young parents trying to create nice homes while dealing with limited money, exhaustion, and constant chaos.

Together we cover quite different situations – former nurse using renovation as therapy, first-time buyer who taught herself everything from YouTube, software developer who never thought about design, teacher juggling projects with work, young mum dealing with toddlers and tight budgets, and me still figuring things out in our Leeds terrace. Different ages, different circumstances, different challenges with our homes.

We don’t always agree on approaches. Sarah’s very hands-on DIY everything herself, Raj is more about careful planning and measured decisions, Marcus has to fit everything around teaching term, Aisha’s working around naptime and pregnancy exhaustion, I’m focused on design choices that support wellbeing. But that’s useful – there’s no one right way to approach making your home work for you.

None of us are professional interior designers or qualified builders. Sarah’s learning DIY as she goes. Raj is a software developer. I’m a former nurse doing part-time care work. Marcus teaches geography. Aisha’s juggling part-time office work and childcare. We just care enough about our homes to put time and effort into them, and we’re sharing what we figure out along the way.

Claire Lives exists because I needed a project during a difficult time and discovered that making your space nicer genuinely affects your mental health and quality of life. Then I found other people who had their own reasons for caring about their homes – Sarah’s determination to create something on her own, Raj’s journey from not thinking about design to being really into it, Marcus wanting a space that feels like home not just somewhere to keep stuff between work shifts, Aisha trying to build something nice for her family despite chaos and exhaustion.

So no, this isn’t some professional design site with perfect show-homes and unlimited budgets. It’s five people with regular jobs and real houses, writing about what we’re actually doing and learning, admitting when we mess things up, showing the reality of home renovation and design when you’re working with constraints.

If that sounds like your situation too, you’re probably in the right place. Make a cup of tea (or whatever you drink), maybe go look at that room in your house that’s been annoying you for months, and stick around.