Checking in: 2011 home goals

Hello all! I hope your week is going well so far. It's really starting to feel like fall here -- the temps are down to the 30s at night (brr!) and the house is feeling a little chilly in the upper 50s/low 60s in the mornings, until the sun warms things up. But I will not turn on the heat yet. We'll see how long I can hold out :)

The year is three-quarters of the way over, and I thought it would be a good time to check in and see how I'm doing on those 2011 home goals I laid out waaaay back in February. I have to admit, I was feeling a little ambitious back then. I blame it on being a new homeowner and not really knowing enough about how long this stuff takes...and how short my attention span is :)

Goal #1: Paint, paint, paint!

So, for some insane reason, I believed that we would repaint all the rooms in our house in our first year of owning it. After actually painting a few rooms, it quickly became clear that yeahhhh...that ain't happening. We did paint the kitchen, the "lounge" (the awkward room next to the kitchen), the entryway, the downstairs hallway, the living room, the office (twice!) and the master bedroom.

The living room, post-paint

I really wanted to get those yellow bathrooms taken care of, but that's fallen pretty low on our priority list at this point. And while the two extra bedrooms also need a paint job, the one we use as a guest room is a decent enough color that I don't feel a rush to paint it, and the second spare bedroom will probably become a nursery one day, so since it's rarely used, it just makes sense to wait and paint it when we're ready to use it. And we can't agree on whether we like or dislike our dark red dining room, so that will stay for now.

I'm still feeling happy with what we accomplished for painting, and during the colder months while we're indoors, maybe we'll get the urge to paint a bathroom or two. But if we don't get to it, I won't feel too bad.

Goal #2: Put up photo ledges in the dining room.

Hasn't happened. I'm still thinking I'd like to do it, but since we're on the fence about painting that room, I'm waiting to see what we decide before putting up shelves.

The shelves would go where that poster is

Goal #3: Put in a new walkway.

Won't happen this year. As I mentioned in the spring, we decided not to tackle this project this year, since it happened to fall right around other big-ticket purchases, like our anniversary trip to Quebec and the hubs' motorcycle. We are definitely doing it next spring, though, because we hate that crushed gravel.

Your end is near, crushed gravel!

Goal #4: Make cute windowboxes for the shed.

Done! Although I didn't make them -- I painted ones I bought at Home Depot. I think they really add a lot to the shed, and it didn't take much time or money.

I am sad to report, however, that the mums have died, though the marigolds are going strong. The rain runs off the shed right into those boxes, and I think they are getting too wet -- at some point we'll install something on the roof to direct the rain away from them.

Goal #5: Buy furniture.

Mostly not done. We did buy a kitchen table that we (and by we, I mean the hubs) finished, as well as a desk for our office. And we scored some free-from-the-Dumpster bookshelves we still need to refinish.  I didn't realize how much time it takes to really decide a room's look and feel. Rather than rush into buying something as a placeholder, we're holding out until we know for sure what we want.

The desk

We do plan to buy living room couches/chairs/whatever we end up with this year. I still want to make a seating area in our little lounge, and set up a reading nook in our master bedroom. One of those may happen before Dec. 31, but it will depend on how good I am at saving my pennies.


Okay, so, not so hot on the home goals for 2011 -- but I'm going to go easy on myself, since it was my first year as a homeowner. Plus, we did accomplish things we hadn't planned on, like redoing the entryway and building shelves for the basement. And we are in the midst of planning a laundry room in our basement, which means moving our washer and dryer from the entryway closet, so we'll be putting up walls, installing flooring and doing some painting downstairs, as well as turning the laundry closet in the entryway into a bona fide closet for jackets and shoes.

And we'll still be working on our sadly neglected office redo. The next step is major organization, and it was just too hard to stay inside on gorgeous summer weekends. Once the weather turns cooler, we'll hunker down and tackle that office project once and for all (I hope!).

While we didn't get everything done we set out to, I'm really happy we took the time this year to enjoy our new house instead of tackling project after project. We relaxed, we entertained, we cooked, we planned, and we appreciated what we have. And that's also important for turning a house into a home.

Did you make home goals this year? How are you doing on them?