In February, I painted the kitchen while Andrew was out of town for work.
We went from tan to gray.
Kitchen when we moved in. No, there isn't much difference.
The gray didn't turn out quite like I wanted it to.
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Early in the spring, we began our renovation on the master bathroom.
It took about four months, but we love the result!
After
After
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While progress was stalled on the bathroom, I re-painted my office.
The photo above was from my first round of paint when we moved in.
I went with a light pink and a navy accent wall.
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In July, I painted the garage a darker gray to hide the dirt that accumulates.
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When the bulbs all went out on our kitchen light, we
decided it was time to replace the one that had been cracked
since we moved in with this new one.
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In late August, I repainted our bedroom. Previously, we had a dark brown
accent wall behind our bed and the rest of the walls were a cream color.
Someone had patch painted with the wrong color paint, so there were
actually multiple ivory colors on the walls. I painted a the accent
wall a dark gray and the other walls a light gray.
In addition to all of these projects, we also had to replace the sump pump and the garbage disposal during the year. Our final major project for 2015 was to replace the air conditioner and furnace as well as have the vents cleaned. In 2016, we hope to turn our attention outside and work on the yard. Our front landscaping project fell a little short of my vision, so we are going to work on that in the spring.
First up on the list is to remove the birch tree in the front yard. When we moved in, I loved the shade the tree gave. However, we have discovered that the other tree in the front yard is taking over and slowly killing the birch tree. Take note people, when you plant things, they do eventually get larger. I have lost track of the number of things we have had to tear out of the yard because they weren't planted with the mature size in mind. While something may look small initially, it's a lot of fun watching it grow over time!
We are also planning to take out all the rock in the front landscape. Mulch is the way to go if you want good weed control. It's going to be a total pain to take all the rock out, and we aren't sure what we are going to do with it once it is pulled up, but it has to go. We also need to look at possibly moving some of the edging around as it hasn't stood up well this past season. We have edgers falling over and shifting all over the place.
We have intentions of working on the backyard as well this season. We would love to put a shed in this spring so we can get the lawn equipment out of the garage and free up space for Andrew's workshop.
We hope to put the shed out by the lilac bushes.
We also want to pull up the black plastic edging all along the deck and redo the landscaping between the fence and the deck. We did have a landscape company come out and give us an estimate on doing some of the work.
Maya is eyeballing the area we hope to re-landscape in the spring.
First up on the list, as soon as it turns warm, is finishing the cabinet doors for the built ins down in the basement. Andrew got his new saw on Black Friday which should make finishing the doors a snap!
Beyond the yard and beyond 2016, we have a long list of things we would like to do to the house:
Replace the front door and screen door
Replace the patio slider door
Replace the garage door
Redo the flooring on the main level
Redo the kitchen cabinets
Refinish the deck
Redo the half bathroom on the main level
Redo the guest bathroom on the 2nd floor
Redo the master closet
Replace lighting in the entry way
Replace lights on the front of the house
Replace light on the back deck. Ideally, we would add more lighting out back.
Additional storage/shelving in the laundry room
