2016 Home Goals: How things went

As 2016 draws to a close, I’m finding that I feel a little stuck blog-wise. House projects have slowed waaay way down for the holidays and we’ve just kind of been relaxing and enjoying time with family. That makes it a little difficult to create content for my home-focused blog. So, I hope you’ll forgive me for the temporary slow-down. We have fun projects planned for 2017, but before we get to that I wanted to do a recap on how things went this year.

You may have read my 2016 Home Goals [here]. I can’t believe I wrote that post almost a whole year ago! This past year has flown by – probably because we’ve been chasing around a little man the whole time and working like crazy on our house.

Here are a few of my favorite photos from 2016:

Below is the list of our 2016 Home Goals with notes on how things went! All in all, I think we did pretty well.

2016 Home Goals

• Finish painting our kitchen cabinets. This one is complete! It was a huge pain but I’m so glad we painted them because it looks a million times better. You can see my “How to Paint Kitchen Cabinets” post [here]. The photo below is our kitchen all decorated for Christmas.

You can see more photos from that post [here].

• Tear up the old carpet on the stairs + upstairs hallway/bedrooms/bathroom. This is sort of done. I posted a bunch of pictures of the staircase and hallway [here] – carpet was pulled everywhere except for the bedrooms and bathroom. I really want to move our bedrooms upstairs so I’m hoping we’ll complete that in 2017. I’m debating whether to refinish the wood floors in the bedrooms or just replace the carpet. Refinishing wood floors is so.much.work. but it looks so pretty when it’s finished. On the other hand, carpet is soft and cozy in bedrooms. The jury is still out on that one.

See the whole staircase post [here]. I also have a ton of inspiration photos gathered together [here].

• Finish epoxying the basement floor + top with polyurethane. This one is finished! You can see more about it [here].
• Epoxy the garage floor. Yeah we definitely did not get around to this one. The garage is currently holding…well, I don’t even know what all is in there. Extra wood boards, pallets, Christmas decorations, junk. It’s a mess ya’ll. We seriously need to clean it up but when you live in a fixer-upper, there has to be some place to store all the project materials. Right? I know, I’m making excuses. Don’t judge me.
• Finish painting the wall in the stairway. Done! I got sick of looking at a half-painted wall and knocked this one out one night.

You can see the whole staircase post [here].

• Paint the upstairs bedrooms and hallway. The hallway is painted but the bedrooms are not. I’ve painted all the walls in our house the exact same color, with the exception of the basement living room. When we moved in, I swear the walls were all a different color – pink, blue, neon green, pink sponge paint, etc. So I wanted to freshen everything up and make it all feel cohesive. Hence the one color throughout.

Install wood flooring in the dining room and kitchen. DONE and this is probably the best thing we’ve done in the house. It completely changed the feel of the house and I love it. When we moved in there were three different types of flooring: carpet in the living room, laminate in the kitchen, and then a different carpet in the dining/hearth room. We look for some cheap flooring optios and it’s all wood now and makes the space feel larger and cleaner.

See more of our antique ladder + pendant lights [here].

Check out the full Christmas dining + hearth room tour [here].

• Paint the built-in bookshelves in our dining room. Done! Just like the kitchen cabinets, these were a pain to do but the transformation was incredible. You can see some before photos [here].

See our Fall dining + hearth room tour [here].

• Find (or build) a dining room table. Done! And I got the best dining table chairs for my birthday. I’m in love!

• Plant a garden. We gave this one a solid effort but did not succeed, with the exception of about four green beans. Apparently we are not farmers. ;) No but really…I don’t think anything was planted in the massive garden for a long time before we moved in, so the soil was in terrible shape. We could bring in a bunch of garden soil and peat, etc. ….but we’ve also talked about just giving up and turning it into a fire pit area. To be honest this is kind of last on our list of to-do’s, but someday we need to do something with it.

WOW 2016 was busy! We completed a lot of things on our list and even did some projects we weren’t planning on. I’ve linked a few of those unexpected projects below under “you might like to read these posts next.”

I also want to share my 2017 plans with you soon, but figured this post was long enough. ;) Stay tuned!

You might like to read these posts next:

How to Shiplap a Wall for Cheap

Basement Remodel: An Update

Antique Ladder and Pendant Lights