It’s been quite a year for changes in our home!  I left my space as a vendor at Lucketts in January and that freed me up to work on my home more.  We had been putting off a lot of projects because I was so busy with my retail space, so now I actually had time to work on things for me!  I also ended up with a lot of home-related freelance projects for the kitchen and master suite, so those helped push me along. It’s awesome when your business and DIY to-do lists are one and the same!

As I was putting this post together, I can hardly believe how much we accomplished.  Here are the main projects we worked on…

We kicked off the new year by installing new engineered hardwood floors in our family room and master bedroom.

We repaved our driveway, which isn’t very fun or decorative, but it took something that’s been an eyesore since we bought the house and made it look really nice.  It also made it more functional.

We also put about $300 into landscaping the front yard…a little.  We spruced it up, anyway.

I went through three dining room tables.

We gave our master bathroom a total makeover.  We did a lot of the work ourselves, but had the tiling and electrical professionally done and we had some help removing the old tub and installing the new.

 I am happy every time I take a bath or shower in there.  It’s just beautiful.

We built and installed a custom range hood and butcher block counters in our kitchen…

…and my dad and I installed a marble tile back splash, which was a learning process for sure.

I added a new cow to my herd…”Gwendolyn” painted by Cindy Austin.

It’s not glamorous, but we painted the walls and floors and hung lights in the 1940’s part of the basement and that’s now become my main work area.  I really needed more room and this gave it to me without having to move or rent a space.

I’ve worked really hard on purging and organizing.  I still have a lot to do, but it’s getting better all the time…

I finally got my dream bed  and did some projects in the master bedroom … like planking the ceiling, swapping the ceiling fan for a chandelier, making new curtains and doing a starched fabric feature wall.

I made over some dining chairs found on Craig’s List…

And those were just the bigger projects!  We do still need to finish a lot of these projects, though.  For the freelance projects, we did just enough to make them photo-ready, so we still need to finish some trim work, install thresholds, etc.  Overall, though, I am absolutely thrilled with the projects we completed and most of them are things I envisioned the first day I set foot in our house.  It’s been a lot of fun to work on them with my family and see them come to a reality.

For 2014, we already have some things planned.  First of all, we want to finish the things that are unfinished from 2013 and the list looks a little something like this (hon, don’t freak out)…

• 3/4 height wainscoting in family room
• build out master closet
• work on the boy’s room (custom beds, storage, paint)
• refresh guest room
• family gallery wall & fresh paint in stairwell
• new slipcovers for family room wing chairs
• move my work space completely to the basement and give my current office to my husband

I guess that list isn’t too bad.  I’d like to work on the upstairs bathroom, but it really needs an overhaul (new sink, new toilet, reglazed tub, new tile, new floor) and I just don’t know if we’re ready for another bathroom renovation.  Maybe we’ll chip away at it.  Maybe we’ll just leave it alone.  I have lots of other smaller projects I’d like to complete as well, but I like the idea of working on whatever I’m excited about.  The good news is that we are running out of big projects, but we still have a few more…