The House on the Hill

One Room Challenge Spring 2019: Week Two

April 11, 2019

It’s week two and I already feel behind! This is basically the project of 1,000 issues (aren’t they all?) and our attempts to move an air register and to wire the new light and switch for the pantry have both failed so far. We have made some progress though – I’ve been working on demoing all of the old tile and we’ve got some new drywall up in the pantry. This weekend we should finally be able to move the air vent, wire the new light and switch, finish putting up the drywall, and start painting the dining room. I’m hoping we can also get the new pantry entrance opened up and the old entrance closed off but we really only have one work day and a child that doesn’t sleep through construction.

Since I don’t have a lot of visual progress to share, I thought I would share a bit more about our plan for the dining room now that we have a better idea of what direction we’re going.

First, we picked a color! I sampled 7 different greens that ranged from bright to blue to almost black and we landed on Northern Glen by Behr.

I had a list of 5 greens to try initially that I found on Pinterest but when I went to Home Depot, they could only find 3 of them to paint match. While they were getting those samples together, I browsed the paint chips and that’s when I saw Northern Glen. It’s dark and it’s a true green which I love (not too brown, not too blue). I’m planning on putting up some faux board and batten around the dining room and painting it this color. The top part of the walls will be Benjamin Moore China White which is the color we chose for our foyer and will eventually go in the family room, too.

I would love to get a new dining table but for now we’re sticking with the one Kyle built when we first moved into this house 6 (!!) years ago and the dining chairs his parents got us as a gift a few years ago. I still love the chairs (I don’t have a picture of the current chairs, sorry!) but would love to get the seats recovered at some point; just not sure what direction I want to go with those.

We’re also contemplating switching out that light fixture. We bought it years ago at Costco and put it in the dining room and another in the stairwell. I still love it but with the green and the wood-look floors I’m thinking a wood bead chandelier might look really pretty in here. We have one that we bought for our bedroom and haven’t put up yet so we’re playing with the idea of seeing how it looks in here. We would have to rewire this light anyway to lower it down to the appropriate height so we may as well just see which fixture we like better. Here’sthe chandelier that we still have boxed up somewhere:

Of course part of me thinks it might just turns into a dusty nightmare so I don’t know.

We’re also carrying our laminate floors into the dining room and pantry from the foyer and I’m so excited to get rid of this gross flesh colored tile! It’s been a long time coming. I briefly thought that Home Depot didn’t carry our flooring anymore and decided to just put our house on the market and be done with it because that’s a completely calm and logical decision to make. In the end, it turns out they just moved it to a different spot so we’ll save the moving boxes for another day.

There are a couple of things I want for this room that I’m not sure will happen in the next four weeks.
• I would really love to get a big rug to go under the table but I’m cheap and rugs are expensive.
• I’m pretty set on finding an antique door for the pantry but since those are harder to source than normal doors, I’m not sure I’ll be able to find one in time.
• We need something to the left of where the new garage access door will be – maybe a hutch? Or just a side table of some sort? I need to wait and see what the spacing is like once the door is in but we’d like a place for a bowl for our keys and to drop our mail. For now we might just move our giant armoire over but it doesn’t really help us with the keys/mail situation.

So that’s it for this week! Make sure you check out all of the other guest designers right here.

One Room Challenge Spring 2019: Week One

April 4, 2019

It’s that time again!

This will be our 4^th One Room Challenge but we completely failed to finish our spaces for #2 and #3. I’m hoping to turn things around with this one though. If you’re not familiar, the One Room Challenge is a biannual event where designers, bloggers, and Instagrammers work to finish a space in 6 weeks. It’s not a competition, but instead it promotes community. It also gives you a deadline which can work as a major motivator if you have a space you are wanting to re-do or finish.

If you’ve been following along, you know that we were already attempting to renovate our laundry room but after several setbacks, the laundry room renovation turned into a laundry room and separate pantry renovation. I’m guessing you guys think this will be our One Room Challenge space and you would be right and wrong.

The budget we started with has been cut down a good bit since I ended up needing several hotel stays, several tanks of gas, and food while traveling when my dad was in the hospital (for those that don’t know, my father was recently hospitalized for about a week and a half after suffering a major heart attack and has since passed). Because of that, I have decided to put the laundry room on hold for just a little bit while we work on the pantry. We still have a couple of things we’ll have to do in the laundry room to make our other spaces work but trying to finish the pantry and laundry room completely in 6 weeks especially when I’m not sure how the budget is going to shake out just seems like I’d be setting myself up to fail. Both projects will add function to our house but the pantry excites me more at the moment. So for now, I’m sticking with our closet-to-pantry project.

Here’s how the closet (which we used for our cats) looked a few weeks ago:

And here is where we’re at now:

Here is our pantry to-do list:

Finish demo
Have exposed pipes cut and capped
Have vent moved to make room for new entrance
Frame new entrance in dining room
Close up old entrance in hallway
Install lighting
Add light switch
Add outlet (this is a maybe right now)
Hang/finish drywall in pantry
Build cabinets and shelves
Lay flooring
Paint
Add counter (this is a maybe depending on the cabinet/shelving configuration we decide on)
Find antique door for entrance (fingers crossed!)

So now you’re probably thinking “You’re just doing a pantry? Really? What are you doing with the other 4 weeks?” First, keep in mind that we’re building up from the studs here and we only really get to work on our house on the weekends (and one of those during the ORC is already full meaning no work will get done). Second, since we’re adding a pantry where there used to be a closet and re-configuring the layout so that the entrance is in the dining room, I thought it might be fun to add the dining room into our ORC plans. All we’ve done to the dining room since we moved in is paint it 1.25 times and change out the ceiling fan for a light fixture (the room was marketed as a “Florida room”) so it’s probably about time to make it look decent.

Here’s a listing photo from when we first saw the house:

And here it is right now in all of its glory:

The dining room project will be pretty small but I’m hoping it will have a big impact. Eventually we’ll change out the crown molding, add a couple of windows, add built-ins, and change out the existing window for a sliding door but that’s all down the road. Here’s the initial to-do list for the One Room Challenge:

Clean out room (move my workstation upstairs, move out furniture and random crap)
Remove tile floors and layer of plywood underneath (already started)
Remove baseboards (the tile was laid after so the baseboards are stuck until the tile is gone)
Remove window trim
Remove blinds
Add faux board and batten
Add garage access door
Install new trim for window and new doors (garage and pantry)
Lay flooring
Install new baseboards
Paint trim
Paint walls
Paint Ceiling (this is a maybe since the ceiling continues into the kitchen and down the hall into the foyer)
New blinds
Paint armoire (this is a maybe right now)
Paint/replace dresser (also a maybe)
Bring furniture back in

So, that’s the plan! I’ll be honest and say I don’t have a design plan 100% nailed down but I’ve picked up some paint samples and have an idea of what I want. I really can’t design the pantry until we’ve got the new entrance framed out and the old entrance closed in but I have a rough idea of what I want to do in there, too.

Now go check out what everyone else is up to here! There are always so many gorgeous transformations that come out of the One Room Challenge and I can’t wait to see them.

Laundry Room Renovation: When One Project Becomes Two and a Half

March 19, 2019

Last time I posted about the laundry room, I mentioned that we had once again had to change our plan. This project has given us some serious issues from the start but as of right now, the newest floor plan we’ve come up with is a go!

This means that instead of one project, we actually have two and a half.

First, the former laundry room with garage access will transition to purely a laundry room with lots of storage. We’re still planning on removing the wall between the laundry room and the hall closet/built-in bench to open the space up and adding floor to ceiling cabinets.

Our new plan for the laundry area is to leave the washer and dryer side by side instead of stacking them. We want to build a platform for the machines to sit on that would have some storage capability or potentially house the litter box for our cats and we’ll add back some upper cabinets, too. Now that we won’t have the access to the garage in this space, we can frame that door in and put in floor to ceiling cabinets for plenty of storage (I’m thinking cleaning supplies, pet supplies, maybe some seasonal decor, etc).

The second project is transitioning the old cat closet to a new pantry!

Our plan here is to relocate the entry from the hallway to the dining room. I’d really love to use an antique door with a large glass pane here but I’m not sure I’ll be able to find one. Moving the door to the long side of the pantry will allow us to put in shelving across the back wall and around the short wall on the left. I’m trying to decide exactly what I want to do in here and whether I want open shelving around the whole space or if I want a mixture of shallow cabinets and open shelving. Not sure but I’m pretty sure this is where I’m going to put the orange grove mural I ordered from Society6.

We’ll be able to move a lot of our lesser used kitchen stuff in here (large serving dishes, pastry board, stand mixer, items we use when we host a party, etc). The best part is that this will open up the other hall closet for who knows what.

And in case you’re wondering, the dining room is project #2.5. Here’s a listing photo:

This room was marketed as a Florida room (which it 100% is not) but for us it makes the most sense as a dining room. We haven’t done much of anything in this room other than paint and change out the ceiling fan to a pendant light and I don’t plan on this becoming an entire makeover right now but since we’ll be adding two doors to the wall on the right (one to the pantry and one to the garage), I’m thinking of maybe adding some sort of wall treatment like faux board and batten across the room. I’m kind of thinking about using dark green in here but that also seems to have blown up across Instagram and design blogs so I’m hesitant (although that didn’t stop me and my love of navy so we’ll see).

We’re waiting on one quote to come through before we get started and I’m not sure what our schedule is looking like at the moment but I’m hoping we can finally start making some progress soon now that we have a floor plan that will actually work!

Weekend Report

March 8, 2019

Y’all it has been a week. I am super pumped it’s the weekend!

-Tomorrow I get to see my best friend and her girls (and her husband I guess. HI, TOM). It’s been way too long and I’m excited to finally meet her baby girl who was born at the end of last year.

-OG had the flu last weekend and it wasn’t as bad as I feared but still not great. As much as I love being with her, I think we were all glad to get back to our schedules on Tuesday. I even went into the office for a few hours just to get out of the house (I normally work from home on Tuesdays).

-I’m planning on talking about our new new laundry plan next week since our old new plan isn’t going to work. You can read about that here if you missed it.

-The wall mural I ordered for the laundry room was delivered this week and it’s gorgeous and I love it but it won’t work in the laundry room now. Any suggestions?

-We are coming up on our 6 year house anniversary! Sometimes it feels like we haven’t done anything in this house and then I look back at pictures and realize we’ve actually done quite a lot. I’m planning on putting together an anniversary post next month with a few before and after photos although we don’t have many (or maybe not any) true afters. Lots of “in progress” shots that are far better than the before.

The fact that we’ve lived here almost 6 years is huge. My family moved from house to house when I was growing up (I lived at over 20 addresses by the time I was out of college) and it’s been nice to be so settled. Sometimes we talk about putting our house on the market because we could make a good deal of money off of it but then where would we go? We’ve both agreed that while this might not be our forever house like we intended it to be, we’d have to find something pretty special to make us move. Either that or we’d have to outgrow our house.

-I am one of those rare people who doesn’t like to travel. I’m really a homebody and crave the comfort of being at home on my sofa but I have the strongest sense of wanderlust right now. Like, if I could pack up today and go I think I would. I’m desperate to get back to Alaska. We went on a cruise in 2013 and I’ve wanted to go back ever since but lately it’s pretty much all I want to do. It’s definitely out this year but maybe next year? We’ll see. Of all the vacations we could go on it’s probably the most expensive so it would probably come down to a big house project vs. a vacation.

Here’s a shot of the Mendenhall Glacier from our last trip:

Happy weekend!

Laundry Room Renovation – The Plot Twist

March 5, 2019

Well, there have been some interesting developments in the laundry room renovation. We started getting plumbing quotes over the weekend to move our washer from its current location to the newly planned laundry nook. As a reminder, here’s the current floor plan:

And the floor plan we had settled on after our initial floor plan didn’t work out:

After looking into everything, it turns out that the only place to really have the washer downstairs is right where it is.

WOMP WOMP.

I won’t get too into the specifics, but basically the way the plumbing would have to be run into the nook would cause us to lose about 8 inches from the back wall which would make it way too tight to comfortably do laundry. The nook was already going to be cozy and losing 8 inches just makes it nearly non-functional. We do potentially have the option to move it upstairs which is appealing since that’s where all of the bedrooms and full bathrooms are but the only place for it there is our bathroom which would work but our bathroom is already on the small side and I don’t really want to have to squeeze another function into that space.

So, the fact that we have to leave the washer and dryer where they are is bummer number one. Bummer number two is the garage entry. We had hoped to slide the garage access a few feet to the right so that we could add cabinets to the current laundry room to give us some much needed storage. The problem with that is that the spot we wanted to move it is actually the worst possible spot to move it because there’s so much going on structurally. Beams, posts, etc. So not only can we not move the washer and dryer into their little nook but we also can’t move the door which means there’s no room for cabinets. Sure, we could put one large floor to ceiling cabinet where the old hall closet/bench was but that wouldn’t make the space feel any bigger and could potentially cause even more space/bottleneck issues. And then there’s bummer number three; the ceilings. The ceilings in the old cat closet and the laundry room are about 6.5′ which means they are super low. I think standard ceiling height is 8′ and even that’s a little low for me but it’s what we have in most of the house. I don’t know what mess somebody did to this house but the plumbing is crazy and unless we want to basically change the plumbing layout in our entire house, we can’t raise the ceilings much. We can maybe get 2″ through most of the space.

What does that all mean? It basically means that we can’t do much of anything that we intended to do and I tore all of the drywall down in the old cat closet for almost nothing. I mean, the drywall really needed to be done because as you can imagine, having a closet dedicated to cats caused some unpleasant lingering odors.

BUT! Not all hope is lost. The problem with the existing laundry/garage access combo is that it’s just too small of a space to accommodate both. We also desperately need more storage but that’s just a bonus of any new floor plan at this point. So, if we can’t move the laundry we’ll just have to move the garage access. New floor plan #3:

To be completely transparent, we think we can easily move the garage access to the back wall of the garage into the dining room but we don’t know that for sure. We’ll have to open up the wall to make sure we’re not dealing with anything too structural but if we can move it, we’ll be able to keep the laundry as is (which means no big plumbing cost) and we’ll be able to add about 5ft of cabinetry which means lots of storage. Coming into the house from the dining room will actually be great for bringing in groceries and it only slightly changes the future plans we had for the room so even though I had some initial hesitation there, we’re starting to get really excited about this possibility. We are not combining the existing laundry room and the cat closet anymore so instead that cat closet will become a pantry (more storage!!) and we’ll move the entrance to it to the dining room side as well instead of the hallway. We do have one air vent that will need to move to make this happen but that’s really it. I would love to find an old weathered half lite door to use for the new pantry or maybe buy a new one and make it look weathered.

The downside to the new laundry plan is that there isn’t really much wall space to use that wallpaper that I ordered so right now I’m trying to decide if I’m going to use it somewhere else (the new pantry maybe?) or if I’m going to return it. The upside is that now we get two spaces to design and we have an opportunity to try to learn/improve some new skills.

Remember when I said this project was going to be slow? Well, now it’s going to be on pause for a bit because we’ll have to do some clean out in our garage before we can get to the area that we need to open up for the new access into the house. We won’t even have a chance to start doing that until next weekend because this weekend is already packed. I’m thinking we might actually save this project just a few more weeks for the Spring One Room Challenge but there will be lots of planning and investigating in the meantime to make sure that this plan will even work.

Fingers crossed!

Laundry Room Renovation – The Plan

February 26, 2019

I am so excited about this laundry room renovation but so overwhelmed at the same time. We’ve taken a room down to the studs before but this is the first time that we’re actually taking down walls and moving things around to change the way a room works. We’ve never had plumbing moved and we’ve only had minimal electric work done. Other than building our deck, I’d say this is the biggest and most complex project we’ve done which means this post will probably be a long one.

First off, I’m pretty sure of the design plan but I won’t know for sure until we have the floor plan nailed down 100% and we won’t know that until after we meet with our plumber to talk about moving the washer hook ups. I do know that I want to use navy cabinets (real shocker there, am I right?) and potentially some sort of wall treatment like board and batten or maybe some tongue and groove planks to match the playroom in the front of the house. I know that I definitely want to use this wall mural from Society6 and we’ll need some hooks and maybe a bench to keep the mudroom functionality of the space. The built-in bench we had really just collected junk so if we do get a bench it’ll be something small that doesn’t work as well for a crap pile.

I don’t usually use a lot of bold design in our house because I get tired of patterns really easily but I love this large print mural. I haven’t decided if I’ll use it to cover a full wall or if I’ll use it above a wall treatment. I think I need the space to be finished to the point of drywall before I really decide on that. Originally, I was on the lookout for a lemon print paper because I love yellow and navy together but everything was such a small print and looked too busy. Young House Love used this wall mural in one of their beach houses and as soon as I saw it, I knew it was the one.

So basically the potential design plan is this: white walls, carry the laminate floors through from the rest of the downstairs, navy cabinets, bold wallpaper, and a possible wall treatment for the lower half of the walls.

Now let’s talk about the floor plan. This is the current floor plan (obviously not drawn to scale but you get the idea):

What you can’t tell from this is how tiny the laundry room really is (5ft x 6ft) which has to accommodate our washer and dryer and two doors that swing into the room. The bench was a closet with bi-fold doors when we moved in and the barn door was added last year across a wide opening that separates the foyer from the laundry/closet/powder room area.

When we first started talking about this space, we came up with this floor plan:

This basically just opened the room up on both sides, taking down all of the walls, and allowing us to push the washer and dryer back a couple of feet and adding cabinets.

After we started tearing down the drywall in the cat closet, we decided to change our plan. There’s just too much plumbing and electric to move and we have a pretty firm budget for this project so we don’t want to have to worry about costs escalating out of control. So for right now we’ve landed on this floor plan but obviously things could still change:

With this option, we can leave half of the wall between the cat closet and the current laundry room where most of the plumbing and electric is. We’ll tuck the stacked washer and dryer into the nook that would be created by doing that and open up the other half of the wall as the entry point since the cat closet door in the hallway will be going away and replaced with drywall. Then, we can add cabinets in the current laundry room for some much needed storage. We’re also hoping we can move the garage entry to where the bench was just to give us the maximum amount of storage space.

I hope you guys will hang with me through this. I know our projects tend to go slowly but we can pretty much only work on weekends and we plan on hiring out the plumbing because that’s something I don’t want us to mess with and screw up. It will be slow but depending on permits and the plumber, I’m hoping we can at least start putting the space back together with new drywall sooner rather than later. We’ve already torn out all of the drywall in the cat closet and some around the bench area and now we plan on holding off on anything else until the plumber comes out to quote us on moving our washer hook ups and maybe some of the plumbing in the ceiling. I’m going to do a little tour on my Instagram Story today that I think I’ll add to a highlight as well to give you guys a better idea of the space and how they all currently work (or don’t work) together.

Here’s our giant to-do list or at least all of the things I can think of. These are not necessarily in any sort of order:

– Demo cat closet
– Demo bench/closet
– Remove wall between existing laundry room and bench/closet
– Remove part of wall between existing laundry room and cat closet
– Get permits
– Call plumber for quote
– Have washer/dryer plumbing hooks ups moved
– If possible, have plumbing in ceiling re-routed so we can raise ceiling
– Have misc plumbing moved out of the way and hidden behind walls
– Move outlets for washer/dryer
– Remove tile in existing laundry room
– Level floors
– Remove cat closet door and replace with drywall
– Install can lights
– Move garage entry door (if possible)
– Frame in old garage entry and add drywall
– Put up new drywall where necessary (some walls, ceiling throughout)
– Prime/paint walls and ceiling
– Install floors
– Install trim
– Hook up and stack washer and dryer in new location
– Buy/paint/install cabinets
– Buy/install wall mural
– Wall treatment?
– Add hooks
– Buy/build bench
– Fix poorly done electric from past owners (or builder, hard to tell)

Laundry Room Renovation

February 19, 2019

It’s happening!

We had originally said we weren’t going to do any new projects this year but I am super excited to tell you guys that we have decided to go ahead and renovate our laundry room! This picture is several years old but the room is an out of control mess right now so here it is at its nicest.

The laundry room in our house is tiny. I think it’s roughly a 5×6 space that fits our washer and dryer, the door to the garage (which opens into the laundry room), and another door into the rest of the house (which also opens into the laundry room). It’s also the very first room we “finished” when we moved in by painting the cabinets and walls and adding a counter over the washer and dryer. This is what it looked like when we moved in.

Before adding the barn door in our foyer, we would regularly keep the laundry room door closed so that we didn’t have to worry about any of our pets running out when we came in from the garage. Any time we would both be coming in or out we’d have to do this weird little shuffle dance so that we could close the garage door before opening the other door. It was incredibly obnoxious to do with the two of us, even worse with groceries, and nearly impossible once we added a car seat we had to carry in and out of the house.

Now that we have the barn door in place, we have been leaving the laundry room door open and it has helped some but the space is still way too tight. We’re planning on taking down the wall between the laundry room and that built in bench and luckily for us, there is also a closet right behind the laundry room that we can expand into.

For years we have used this as a place for our cats to do their business and hang out. I feel kind of bad evicting them but we can gain another 2-2.5ft to our laundry room by taking the wall down between the two spaces which I have already started doing.

Here’s the first draft of the new layout which I already know will need to change:

That empty corner space is where we had planned on stacking the washer and dryer. Adding the cabinetry is going to add so much function to our downstairs that I can hardly stand it! First though, we have to finish opening up the walls and see what we can do about what’s behind them. I’ve already found a good bit of plumbing, some of which we’d like to move and some we’re hoping we can work around. We also need to take a look in the ceiling because the ceilings in the laundry room and the cat closet are both low – probably about 7ft as opposed to a normal 8ft ceiling.

I’ll get more into the details of what needs to be done, what we plan to do, and what we plan to hire out later this week. We had planned on saving this project for the Spring One Room Challenge but in what is shocking news to absolutely no one, I am way too impatient to wait another couple of months so here we go!

Finishing the Foyer

January 25, 2019

I normally do my Weekender post on Fridays, or at least the Fridays that I remember to do them, but I promised a foyer post this week so here we go!

I mentioned before that 2019 will be the year we actually finish a bunch of projects that are already in progress. We have a few different areas to choose from and we decided to start downstairs in the foyer. Here’s an accurate depiction of how the space has looked since the day after Odessa’s birthday party.

The foyer is mostly finished; it really just needs baseboards, crown molding, and window/door trim. Oh and we have to repair the window sill because Barley has to constantly stand on it to bark at every living thing that passes and let’s just say she’s not the smallest dog.

Before we can do any of that though, we have to pull up the floors and re-install them. We originally installed the floors as a temporary fix but turns out we love them and the dogs can run and slide across them all day without scratching them so we want to put them throughout the downstairs. The problem is that to do that we have to install them from the front of the house going toward the back of the house and right now they’re the other way around. It shouldn’t be too bad since they are super easy to install so at least there’s that.

So that’s hiccup #1 with finishing the foyer (because it doesn’t make sense to put in baseboards before the floors are done). #2 involves the “mudroom” bench and laundry room.

We have big, big plans for the laundry room in the next couple of years. It’s a project we never really thought of as a priority but honestly it will have such a domino effect on how the entire rest of the downstairs functions that it’s something we’re trying to move up the list. When I say big plans, I mean completely changing the lay out and blowing out walls and that includes the wall between the current laundry room and the little bench nook by the powder room and taking out the bench itself. Since we want to carry the flooring into these areas as well, we’re going to need to go ahead and at least tear the bench out and potentially that wall so we can install the flooring properly.

Fun fact: the paint samples at the top of that photo have been there for approximately 5.5 years.

I’m a little sad about ripping the bench out because it’s the first thing we ever built but it tends to just be a place we throw crap so it’s probably better this way.

Once the floors are done we can install all of the new trim and the foyer will be mostly finished! We’re going to get a new front door this spring which should be the last thing we need to finish this space.

The Weekender

January 18, 2019

Hooray, it’s the weekend!

We’re getting ready to start on our first project of the year and I’m so ready! We decided out of our list of 2019 projects to start with the foyer first. I’ve got a blog post almost ready to go for next week and we’re planning on starting this weekend. It really doesn’t need much but before we can start the actual finishing process we have some floor work to do. More on that next week!

A couple of weekends ago we hosted OG’s 1st birthday party at our house and it was so much fun! We are so thankful to be surrounded by such great friends and family.

Confession: the bottle brush trees and tablecloths are still sitting piled up in the family room and snowflakes are still hung from the ceiling. We’ll get to it eventually. I didn’t get any pictures of everything completely set up or my kid before she got covered in strawberries but that’s okay.

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I’ve been day dreaming about our laundry room a lot lately and it’s been really hard to not just go ahead and start tearing it apart. We’re not even close to working on that project though so for now I’ll just keep dreaming, I guess.

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I hope you all have a great weekend!

2018 Project Review and 2019 Plans

December 26, 2018

This year has absolutely flown by and I cannot believe that yesterday was Christmas and next week will be 2019. I swear time seems to move faster and faster each year and with our new addition, the passing of this year has been extra bittersweet.

We went into the year with a list of projects we thought would be nice to get done but no real expectations. We were expecting our first child and had no clue what our free time would look like. I remember reading all of these blogs from DIYers who would tackle projects during nap time which we probably would have done but turns out, our kid isn’t much of a napper. For most of her (almost) first year of life, she’s given us mostly 20-30 naps once or twice a day and then we don’t dare make any noise that might wake her up. But that has meant lots of couch time snuggling with my pups so I was okay with not getting much done.

So I thought it would be a good idea to look back at the projects on our list for 2018, the projects we actually started, and the ones (if any) that we completed. I was going to do a separate post for 2019 plans but let’s be real, the 2019 project list is just what we didn’t finish in 2018.

Master Bedroom.

We started this in 2017 and it’s still not done. It took a total backseat to everything else this year but it’s at the top of our list for this winter. Here is the list we had going into 2018:

Add crown moulding
Create a built in area for the dogs in our former reach in closet so we can store their giant crates
Add shelving above built in dog area
Paint bedroom doors
Purchase decor

We didn’t do any of those things except part of the last one and going into 2019 we’ve made some changes to our plan. We decided against crown moulding but that means we need to go back and paint all the way to the ceiling. We also changed our plan for the dogs and the closet nook so now our list looks like this:

Touch up paint to the ceiling
Move dogs to the sink area of our bathroom (we’ve already installed a gate)
Install and paint tongue and groove boards inside closet nook to match outside
Finish trimming outside of nook
Move electric fireplace into room
Hang TV above fireplace
Paint bedroom doors
Build/stain/install art ledges
Purchase decor (we bought a chandelier but still need to buy lamps and a rug and maybe new bedding? )

Master Bathroom.

We didn’t even touch this room but we desperately need to get it at least functional so that we can have more than 1.5 bathrooms. The list for 2018 was:

Re-install existing tub
Hang/Mud/Sand drywall as necessary (one wall)
Add tub surround to replace former tile
Lay vinyl flooring
Paint
Re-install existing toilet
Add towel hooks

We did 0% of that list and like the master bedroom list, this one has also changed. We really want to get this done but honestly it’ll just depend on budget since we have a lot going on next year outside of house expenses. This is what we’d like to get done in 2019:

Move tub drain, have shower pan poured, tile shower (instead of re-installing a tub we don’t even want)
Hang/Mud/Sand drywall
Lay vinyl flooring (temporary until our big remodel down the road)
Paint
Install new toilet (existing is being moved to hall bath to replace broken one)
Add towel hooks
Fix venting (it’s just venting into the attic right now)
Remove wall between wet room and sink area? MAYBE.

Foyer.

This is one space we actually did work on thanks to the One Room Challenge but it’s still unfinished. This is what the space looked like shortly after we moved in.

2018 List:

~~Re-paint~~
Fix front door (it sticks) – not the door pictured above.
~~Skim coat wall to fix failed wallpaper removal attempt~~
Replace crown moulding
Replace baseboards
Remove laundry room door
~~Add barn doors~~

Here’s how it looks now:

In additional to re-painting, skim coating the wall, and adding barn doors, we also switched out the light fixture. Here’s what we need to finish in 2019:

Buy, stain, and install new front door (ours contains led paint which we had sealed with new paint but one of our pups has been jumping on the door and scratching it, exposing lead paint which isn’t safe for any of us).
Patch floors as necessary
Install/paint new crown moulding
Install/paint new baseboards
Install/paint new door/window trim

Family Room.

We had hoped to tackle this room when we did the foyer but there was a bit of a snowball effect when we started really thinking about it so we decided to hold off. We definitely want to finish it this year though.

2018 List:

Re-paint
Replace baseboards
Replace crown moulding
Add built-ins to TV wall
~~Purchase/install blinds~~
Purchase/install new curtain rod
Purchase Rug

2019:

Re-paint
Replace baseboards
Replace crown moulding
Replace window trim
Remove door jamb between family room and kitchen
Add electric fireplace to TV wall (So excited about this one!)
Add built-ins to TV wall
Purchase/install new curtain rods
Purchase Rug
Purchase new curtains?

Guest Room.

Oh man this room. Office, guest room, storage. It’s currently filled with junk. We badly need to purge our crap.

2018:

~~Finish Installing new floors~~
Install/Paint baseboards
Add function to closet
Purchase/install blinds
Replace window trim
Replace door trim

No changes for 2019!

Linen Closet.

We didn’t have an actual to-do list for this space and we still don’t but we know it needs to be addressed. Still on the hunt for a piece of furniture we can use but we may end up having to build something.

Gravel Patio and Paver Walkway.

This wasn’t even on our list for 2018 but we ended up trying to install a gravel patio and concrete paver walkway during the Fall One Room Challenge. We had an unusually rainy Fall and we weren’t able to finish before the temps dropped but these spaces are on the top of our list once the weather warms up in 2019. I think Kyle would also like to try to get our yard more under control and do some landscaping.

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Looking forward to 2019, there aren’t many other projects we plan on doing but here are a couple of “maybe” projects:

Hall Bath

We did a small make over on this space already but I’d like to add more wall tile and re-paint the walls to be a soft pink.

Painting

We’ve painted and re-painted most of the house but we still need to repaint the dining room, stairwell, and upstairs hallway.

Stairwell

I would really love to add some sort of interest to this wall or at least hang some art. I think I’d like to do some sort of trim but nothing I’ve seen so far really stands out to me. It might be nice to carry over the diagonal wood from the front room but that can get pricey pretty quickly so we’ll see.

Laundry Room.

This one is probably too big of a project to do next year since it involves removing walls, re-routing plumbing and electric, and potentially raising a ceiling but we are going to at least get some quotes for the work we don’t feel comfortable doing ourselves.

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So that’s it! We’re going to spend the rest of 2018 hanging out with family and gearing up for Odessa’s first birthday but after that I think we’ll be ready to hit the ground running. I can’t wait to see what we can get done in 2019!