Blog Anniversary II: Coming Up Soon(ish) on Plaster & Disaster

Welcome to Day 3 of our anniversary week! In case you’re tuning in late, on Monday we had a photoshoot, and on Tuesday we competed over who could do the best passing off their mediocre photography as art. Today we’re continuing to inspire you by talking a bit more about the house progress you’ll see (we hope…) on the blog this year.

We both included some house-related goals in the 2017 goals we set and shared last week, so today we’re each describing in a bit more detail what we have planned. If these projects don’t interest you, best to just tune out now and check back in next January.

Naomi

I mentioned three house-related goals as part of my overall goals for 2017:

1. Finish decorating/furnishing the dining room
2. Do a partial makeover of the bathroom
3. Start the exterior renovation

Maybe that doesn’t seem too ambitious for someone who supposedly writes a blog post about house projects every week, but let’s first establish the baseline: it is taking me over a year to decorate my bedroom.  I swear that is almost done, however, and then it is on to new projects!

First, an easy and fun one: I want to finally finish up my dining room.  I have a lot in there that I love (like a yellow console that I made over from a salvaged cabinet, my rug, and the chandelier of my dreams).  However, it also still hosts a lot of temporary stuff (like a table that I got for free with my first apartment) and usually has piles of disorganized storage in the corner.

I think that if I just pay this room a little bit of attention and invest in a few long-term pieces, it will turn into my favorite room in the house.

Next, I want to do a temporary makeover of the bathroom.  It truly needs a real renovation, with new tile, shower, fixtures, etc., but that won’t be the priority for us for a while, either with time or with money.  (We’ll want to tackle the exterior and the kitchen first, two big projects.)

However, this is a room where we’ve done very little and it shows.  The tile and tub were painted by the previous owner, and the paint is now peeling and gross.  There is very little storage, and the sink area is a sad, stained laminate.

I think with some temporary DIY fixes, I can make it a little prettier and more functional for a while while I focus on other things.  I am a big believer in half makeovers – a half makeover is the whole reason why my kitchen is livable right now, and not a gross yellow cave!

Finally, while I do all that, I want to get started on item #1 of the “serious renovation projects” list: the exterior.  This won’t be a DIY and will be pretty disruptive, which is why I’ve stalled for so long.

But it really needs to be done.  The outside of our house is discolored aluminum siding, and we want to replace that, finish insulating the walls and replacing the windows that we didn’t get to in our first renovation, and build some exterior spaces, like a porch and deck.  I’m not sure we’ll finish it this year, but I want to at least get it started!

So that is the plan!  However, this is a hobby, so it is entirely possible that I will get interested in and distracted by another project along the way.  I’ll see where the year takes me!

Sage

As you know, this past year we took a major step forward in the house and renovated our kitchen. It was a big project that consumed all our time and house-related spending, so the rest of the house definitely suffered from some neglect. That’s okay because the kitchen was something we definitely needed to get done, but now that it’s (mostly) wrapped up I have two goals for the house this year:

1. Make the basement less scary
2. Make the outside of the house less bleak

As far as the basement goes, we have a nice big partially-finished space to work with. We’ve done some projects down there already, including turning one corner into a home gym:

And making another corner into my workshop:

That said, there are still some scary and sadly underutilized areas of the basement, like the section where I hoard broken furniture:

And the area where we do our laundry (doesn’t it look so hygienic?):

And then there’s the corner where my table saw and the litter boxes live, a natural grouping (all the rest of the tools have migrated over to my workshop area).

Add to that the fact that during the kitchen renovation we stored 50% of our kitchen down here for months on end, and you’ve got yourself one chaotic basement. I have some simple projects in mind that I think will make some valuable improvements, so I want to tackle those this winter (Naomi, I made a pretty kitchen while you did your garage, so now it’s your turn to do something nice-looking for the blog while I work on a space that will never be more than “not as cavelike as it was before”).

Then assuming the spring comes (it usually does, but you can never assume — this time last year I assumed an orange reality show star/six-time bankruptcy filer/fascist could never become president of the U.S.), I want to turn our attention to the outside of our house. Two years ago we did a fair amount of work, planting a hedge and some flower beds.

The hedge has grown, which is awesome. Here’s Sam for scale to show progress over about 18 months:

But as anyone who owns a house knows, outdoor upkeep is a lot of work and we definitely have a lot of maintenance catch-up to do, plus some new projects like hopefully a new patio.

I don’t expect the basement and yard to completely fill 2017, but in terms of setting goals this is what I want to be sure we accomplish. Here’s hoping!

So there you have it, a bit more about what we plan to tackle at home in 2017. We hope you’re at least a little bit intrigued…. And in the meantime, we’re back tomorrow with more blog anniversary celebration with our favorite thing ever: ridiculous crafts. Those Tiny Bloggers might even make a cameo, we’ll see!