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2017 Plans and Goals and Inspiration for the Year

Are you a goal-setter? A New Year’s resolution maker?

I think differently about New Year’s resolutions now as the years go on…

Towards the end of December, I spend some time thinking about the past year;  about where I am in my life; about things that I’ve accomplished; and about things that I really want to change.

I do set some goals for things that I want to change; and in addition to my life and personal goals I have started to set some goals and plans for our home and came up with a timeline for them as well.

And you know what? It actually worked! I mean, I didn’t accomplish all of them… but it gave us a strong focus on what we wanted to do accomplish in our home over the course of the year.

Last January, when I shared my goals and plans for 2016, they were to:  

 in brief:

  1. Get Organized
  2. Tweak the Boys’ Bedroom
  3. Makeover the Basement Playroom / Family Room /Rec Room Space
  4. Build a Sunroom Addition
  5. Install a Fireplace & Paneling in the Living Room
  6. Freshen Up the Laundry Room

And how did we do??

Well….

Get Organized?

I don’t feel much more organized then I did last January when I set the goal… In fact, I’m carrying this over as my number one goal for 2017; and will be sharing the process with you over the next few weeks. More on that, tomorrow!

The areas that we did get a better handle on last year…

Tweak the Boys Room?

Check!!

We did tweak the boys’ bedroom and they have two lovely new Ikea-hacked dressers and a closet workspace.

Makeover the Basement Playroom / Family Room /Rec Room Space?

We did makeover our basement family room/rec room /playroom and love it! Though I have a fun little change to it that I’m going to share soon!

square FrogTape Paintover Challenge Basement Family Room Makeover Reveal DIY-7

Basement Family Room Makeover Reveal

Build a Sunroom Addition?

Okay, so that didn’t happen.

And, it may not happen.

This year… or perhaps ever. We just aren’t 100% sure that it’s the right choice for our house; and given that it’s a huge financial commitment we are putting it on hold for the time being. But #neversaynever

Install a Fireplace & Paneling in the Living Room?

The fireplace is in! And although the living room doesn’t have paneling, we did give it a complete makeover in the spring that included fresh white paint. For now the paneling goal is on hold as I’m pretty happy with how it’s looking, but I did start visualizing it with floor-to-ceiling board and batten the other day and it looked great in my head…

Freshen Up the Laundry Room?

The laundry room did not get touched!

And now… for 2017.

What are the plans? Goals? Hopes? Inspiration for our house?

  1. Get Organized
  2. Create a more efficient mud room and refresh the laundry room
  3. Redo the storage and tweak the craft room
  4. Organize the garage!
  5. Redo the deck surface and railings (a must-do)
  6. Finish landscaping including an area for a fire pit
  7. Continue to improve the lawn
  8. Replace the siding on the exterior of the house
  9. Build a Sunroom Addition {this is probably a dream goal once again}

Get Organized 

It’s really difficult to GET organized at the same time as you are undertaking major projects. In fact, it can be really tough to STAY organized when you are in the middle of projects. So I’m going to take a break from BIG projects for the next few weeks in order to focus on really purging and re-organizing our house. I’ll be back with my plan, tomorrow!

Create a more efficient mud room and refresh the laundry room

We’ve actually had a “real” winter this year which has meant all kinds of snow gear… heavy jackets, gloves, and hats in addition to the usual level of coats/backpacks/purses/gear that we have to manage in our tiny-hallway sized mudroom-combined with a laundry room space. I have to say that if I ever build a house; one thing I will put in is a big mud room area!

I dream of removing the closet from the craft room beside our laundry room and opening it up to create enough space for a REAL mud room area, like this…

mudroom

Via

Since I’ve fallen head-over-heels in love with Ikea PAX, we might even use a PAX unit to create a mudroom storage area for us. I have to admit that my husband isn’t entirely on board with this plan.. so, we’ll see!

Redo the storage in my craft room and tweak this space

Of course, this plan means that my craft room will need more storage. And in comes PAX to the rescue, once again! I truly can’t get over how efficient and amazing and how much storage that PAX units can have. I’m keeping my eye out for Ikea’s annual 15% off PAX sale…

I’d also like to tweak the craft room and turn it into a part office-part craft room space. It’s cute, but quite cramped right now, so it definitely needs a good purge and re-organization and I’m hoping that more efficient storage will mean that I can get rid of a couple of the larger storage units I have in there, freeing up more floor space and make it more comfortable to work in.

Organize the garage!

So if the whole mudroom construction project idea falls through, I’m thinking that option two would be to create a more efficient mudroom space in our garage, like this…

garage-mudroom

Via

As for the rest of the garage; I feel like it deserves it’s own whole category for organization. It’s definitely the place where stuff goes to lurk and decisions go to be postponed. If my craft room ends up as the “catch-all” for our house, then the garage is the catch-all for everything unwanted-unused-or-unsure-where-to-put. We’d love to turn it into a more functional, organized (and pretty?!?) space, like this…

organized-garage

Via

Redo the deck surface and railings

We started last fall with adding some structure to our deck to create stairs that lead from it down to the lawn and added some new hardscaping (concrete sidewalks etc.) along the side of the house. This year we need to finish that off and find some kind of a new surface for our cracked deck surface as well as new (glass) railings. Although kind of a boring-maintenance type project; I think the results will be awesome!

Finish the landscaping and continue to improve the lawns

Last spring we worked on improving our lawn in the front of the house. Then we went away for a few weeks in the summer, and some of our hard work definitely went to pot. But overall, the front is looking better then it did and we plan to focus on improving both it and the back lawn this year. We also hope to add some landscaping around the concrete walkways that we had poured in the fall.

Redo the siding

Our house is currently covered in white vinyl siding and we are wanting to give the exterior a more traditional lake-y feel by changing the siding to a mix of board and batten and shingles. We will likely go with a cement-based siding like Hardi-Plank; and will be hiring this job out though we might help or DIY aspects of it.

Build a Sunroom Addition

This continues to live out there on the “dream” list. I still swoon over this beautiful sunroom from The Lilypad Cottage

sunroom

And that’s it folks! For house goals, at least.

And who knows, maybe we will just sell it and start all over again? #neversaynever

What projects are you hoping to tackle during 2017?

 

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4 Comments

  1. I think everyone wants to be more organised even the super organised think they want to be more organise, me included I would love to be more organised.

    1. I agree, Jo-Anne! I think it’s because we all have too much stuff these days – we end up spending all kinds of time “managing” our stuff! Ugh… I really want to get away from that this year and simplify!

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