Hi, I’m Erin Campbell — I’ve spent the last several years figuring out my own home, one project at a time.

How this actually started

In 2018, my husband and I bought a 1970s ranch house outside Columbus that needed everything. The living room had popcorn ceilings and exactly one overhead light. The hallway floors were bare and cold every winter morning. I got quotes for an electrician to add recessed lighting and a designer to help with rugs and layout, and between the two, the estimate came back over $9,000 before a single fixture was installed. That wasn’t happening on our budget, so I told my husband I’d figure it out myself, and he gave me one weekend to prove it wasn’t a terrible idea.

Learning by doing it wrong first

I started with library books on residential wiring and a stack of forum threads I printed out and highlighted like I was back in school. The first hole I cut for a recessed light landed two inches off, right into a joist, and I patched drywall for the first time that same afternoon. I started keeping a notebook — measurements that worked, spacing that didn’t, which rug pad actually stopped a runner from sliding on hardwood versus which one didn’t. Four years and three more rooms later, that notebook turned into something closer to a system: measure twice, check the attic before you cut, and never trust a “standard size” without putting a tape measure on your actual space.

The room that changed how I worked

The turning point was our living room ceiling. I rushed the spacing on the first round of recessed lights, eyeballing distances instead of measuring them, and ended up with two dark patches no amount of bulb-swapping could fix. I had to pull three housings back out, re-mark everything five feet apart like I should have the first time, and redo it properly. That mistake cost me a Saturday and about $40 in extra hardware, but it’s also the reason I never skip the marking and attic-check step now, no matter how small the room is.

Why I started writing it down for other people

My sister-in-law asked me to help her size a stair runner the following spring, and a neighbor asked about recessed lighting spacing not long after that. I kept explaining the same things — measure your actual stairs, don’t trust the bag’s “standard fit,” check your attic before you cut anything — and at some point typing it out once made more sense than repeating myself. Craft Boom started as that typed-out version, and it’s stayed close to that same purpose since.

What you’ll actually find here

Most home decor sites I read while researching our house assumed either a full renovation budget or a rental where you can’t drill a single hole. I write for the in-between: people who own their space, want it to look intentional, and need the real measurements and real failure points before they commit to a purchase or a Saturday project. If a runner rug size or a lighting layout has a trick that isn’t obvious until you’ve measured it wrong once, that’s the part I try to put on the page.

Thanks for reading this far — it means you’re probably mid-project right now, and I hope something here saves you a patched wall or a returned rug. — Erin