I’m taking a cue from Princess Nebraska and creating a to do list for all of the house stuff I want (us) to tackle this year.
- Mat or rug in the garage entry
- Boot scraper in the same place
- Paint the 2 bathrooms
- Paint the stairwell
- Paint the laundry room
- Paint the garage entry
- Make garage entry less….crappy looking. Put up some images, maybe another hook set for coats/hats
- Install some hanging lines in the laundry room
- Make the guest room more like a guest room and less like a storage room with a bed (better lighting, less linen storage, hang images)
- Hang instagram prints in the kitchen
- Put shelf in the kitchen
- Shelf or shelves in Xander’s room
- More lights in the master bedroom. Maybe even one that works with the damn switch
- Get rid of old ratty towels and linens
- Clear out and refresh planting beds in yard
- Vegetable and herb gardens
- Hang prints in my office
- Organize closets in my office and Xander’s room
- Frame my Harry Potter poster(s)
- Order a canvas print with certificate and hang it
- Put rails or lattice around the deck
- Get some window boxes to hang off of deck
- Get patio furniture and grill (second hand, if possible)
- Get a compost bin for future gardens
- Fix crumbling driveway
- See if it’s possible to fix steep stairs to the front door, or put in a nice looking railing (these steps are treacherous in the winter)
- Clean or replace basement carpet
- Put some more touches in master bedroom (paint a border, maybe? add more images? put a floating shelf or two?)
- This one is probably way out of reach, but research how to make backyard more usable: remove the dead trees close to the house, put small retaining wall or fence before the steep drop off
There are other things we’d like to do, but only if we thought this was The Home we’d be in forever. Neither of us thinks this, so some projects seem pointless since we hope to find that Forever Home in the middle distant future. (Things like: changing the floors and counters in the kitchen, a bay window (or two) in the family/living rooms, level the yard and remove a lot of trees to let more light in, remodeling the bathrooms.) I don’t think the amount of money we’d spend on these projects would change the selling price enough to justify doing them.
Since I’ve never had a house before, and never done home projects, I don’t know how realistic this list is. I’m not expecting to get to everything, but these are the things we always mention when discussing the house.
Do you have any home improvement goals for the New Year?
