We are in the midst of one of the most annoying home renovation projects that one can have done — getting the floors refinished in a house we're currently living in. Three fourths of out home is original hardwood floor, which is awesome, except that it means basically moving. We've taken everything we own and put it either in a storage unit or in the non-wooden floor rooms, which are the den, the kitchen, and the bathrooms.
But it's a once-and-done scenario so we're dealing with an extremely inconvenient week. Doing this task has me thinking about the next things to do for our home now that I got the kitchen paid off 100%. Here are my pie-in-the-sky ideas for what I'd like to do over the next year. If you're my husband, please stop reading this.
January-February: Continue to streamline our possessions so that they don't own us. Taking everything out was a great starting point for purging items, and I took a backseat-load of things to Goodwill this week. As we bring things back in, I plan to get rid of more things that we forgot we even had, and to tackle the attic in February for another reason.
March-April: Depending on the weather, these months I'd like to put a large privacy fence gate up on the side of our house where there is just chain link now. Also, I want to start putting more insulation down in the attic, which is dependent on February's attic clean out. I've been watching YouTube videos on how to do it properly and like the fact that buying the right R-value can net us some green energy credits come tax time.
May-June: Get a new door that leads to the backyard installed, probably early May before the flies descend. I'm obsessed with the Pulse collection of mid century modern style doors from ThermaTrue, and have one in the same room. My biggest decision will be which style to go with, as letting light in is my main concern, but I think this one is the winner.
July-August: Two years ago we sat down with someone to discuss solar panels for our roof. But we needed to have a bunch of tree trimming done before the panels could even happen. We finally got the trees trimmed late last year, which exposes our roof to a lot more sunlight. We're finally ready to pursue the panels again, and it seems like they are getting less expensive and more efficient each year.
September-December: It's hard to think this far out but I want to get quotes on several outdoor projects and decide which one to tackle first. From insulating and drywalling the garage, to updating the metal porch railing to columns, to doing some hardscaping in the backyard, I don't know what to start with. But leaving this til later in the year will give us time to save up more money since these are going to be some costly not necessary projects.
Another project I don't have a timeline for is getting the backsplash tiled. I found this awesome tile on Wayfair that I got a sample to see in real life. It's the perfect color and I love the Moroccan style of it. The timing of this will probably depend on when I find someone to help me tile (or real talk, I'll probably hire this out) and spontaneously make the probably $500+ order.
