My husband and I enjoy thinking of the new year and what goals, dreams and projects we have for our home. I haven’t made a list for a few years, in fact the last one was in 2012 which by the way is a pretty comical post, you should read it.
So what better time than now to put down on virtual paper our list for this year. Obviously this is part dreams and part goals, it’s subject to change due to time and money constraints or even better, excess time and money. Oh man, wouldn’t that be great? Hey honey, somehow we have an extra 2 weeks and $10,000, what should we do? Woo hoo! Tattoos and boob jobs for everyone! I mean, get rid of the boob lights and order a new counter top!
Moving on to the goals this year. Let’s start with the mudroom seeing as I just blogged about it. I would love to figure out something in here, like the best way to store shoes, boots, hats and gloves? I blogged about this same thing back in 2012 so hopefully this will be the year we do something in here.
I would love to take out most of the closet wall on the right and make it open and have a wall with hooks and baskets for shoes. Something like this and dark too so the dirt and grime don’t show up!
Popcorn Ceilings
When we started taking it off (the popcorn ceiling) in the dining room this summer I said I would be happy if we only did the main floor ceilings and left the upstairs alone because we are the only ones who see it. That was fine until we did our master bathroom and oops, we did it again, we scraped off the popcorn. Oh baby, baby. I’m assuming the ceilings haven’t been painted in our home since it was built in 2000/2001. They are gross, can you see the yellow dinginess in the fireplace room? It’s hard to capture in photos but trust me, it’s like grungy yellow teeth vs nice clean white teeth.
We have the vaulted ceiling in the fireplace room and the ceiling in the front room left to do on the main floor. Upstairs we have one bathroom, a hallway and three bedroom ceilings to scrape. Good times.
Hallway flooring
Our little innocent schnauzer has decided the upstairs hallway is her new bathroom. Yup, it’s very convenient and smelly. We will be ripping out the stained yellow smelly carpeting and putting in our favorite laminate flooring, Saratoga Hickory from Home Depot. It’s already in our bedroom and the guest room/office upstairs so why not the hallway? I imagine it might end up in the bub’s room as well. Have I ever told you I don’t like carpeting?
This project may or may not lead to us ripping the carpet off the stairs and staining stair treads. We already had the landing done in preparation for this project. Anyone know where we can buy cheap stair treads? There’s the guilty party, looking so innocent sleeping on the rug. Good thing she’s old and cute.
Kids Bedrooms and the hubby’s office
We’ve tried a few combos of bedroom arrangements and we have moved my hubby’s office around probably 6 times or more in 4.5 years. We are still trying to figure out how to best use the rooms in this house. I will be repainting this room soon!
I am hoping when school is out we finally have rooms figured out for a few years anyways. If this doesn’t become his office, he really wants to turn it into a sauna. Not sure that we can swing that this year but maybe in a few years?
The Backyard
One of the things that sold us on this house was the awesome backyard! It’s huge, it’s fenced in and has a large deck. This is from my phone when we looked at the house in 2011.
Last summer we purchased some great outdoor seating for under the gazebo and it made us love our backyard even more!
Last year we decided that since we were staying in Minnesota, we were going to make our back yard as much of an oasis in the summer as we can. The patio set was a start and this year we are hoping to do some landscaping and a few minor projects.
– Rope lights on the stairs
– Small retaining wall under the deck to keep the rocks from sliding down into the stair landing
– Restain the deck and fence
– New Pool – put pea gravel around the outer area and make a landing for the ladder, also a path out of pavers from the stairs to the pool. OR build another little deck off of our stairs landing and move the pool over to the side yard.
Dream List
This list is mostly for dreaming but you just never know so let’s put it out there.
Fireplace Room
We would love to create some built-ins around the fireplace and bulk up the fireplace a bit with new tile and trim.
Plank ceilings in here with a new light fixture are another wish list item although I can’t decide if it’s too trendy.
New Counter tops and a back splash
As always, this is a list of things we’d like to accomplish in our home. If nothing gets accomplished, that’s ok. Well, we do have the flooring for the hallway and it smells so I would like to get that done this year not even for cosmetic reasons but because I can’t stand the smell, even after having the carpets cleaned.
But seriously, none of this matters in the long run. The people in this photo, they matter!
We love all the updates we’ve done to our home the past 4.5 years which you can check out here but MORE importantly we love who lives in our home and our neighborhood! We love hosting friends and family from out of town, having Downton Abbey dinner parties, once a month dinner group, bible study, book club, Super Bowl and birthday parties, youth group, small group and a myriad of other things. People matter and the people that come through the doors and into our home, I hope they know they matter.
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