It has been almost two years since we purchased our first home and we absolutely love it! We have grown into this home and have slowly been making it our own. When we first moved into our house, Drew and I made an “ultimate house to-do list”. This list includes quick-fixes to “dream home” type renovations that we would like to complete during our lifetime.
Each year, we like to make a short list of items to complete before our annual Halloween party. We use the party as our motivation to get items on our list checked-off! This past year, we completed our backyard oasis and bought a new couch. This year, we’re focusing on painting and staining!
Master List
Exterior
- Replace the mailbox.
- Power wash our driveway and front walkway.
- Get keypad lock for our gate.
- Replace sconce.
- Purchase tall plant to cover window by front door.
Interior
- Paint the entire house!
- Stain or paint the staircase banister.
- Paint kitchen cabinets.
- Replace light in entryway.
- Add drawer pulls and knobs on kitchen cabinets.
- Install automatic battery-powered light in master bathroom linen closet.
- Reorganize pantry and fridge.
- Replace rug in dining room.
- Add board and batten in dining room.
I think these are all achievable this year and who knows, we may feel a little more ambitious and knock off some larger items on our ultimate to-do list.
Replace the mailbox.
When we moved into the house, we were did not pay any attention to things that could be easily fixed – and the mailbox was one of them. It works perfectly fine as a mailbox should, but is a rusty eyesore. I want to replace it with a more modern, quieter and less rusty version (like this one).
Power wash our driveway and front walkway.
I hate to admit this, but we haven’t done this since we moved in almost two years ago. That’s a lot of rain, dirt and who knows what else. Luckily, my dad has a power washer we can borrow to refresh our driveway and walkway to our front door. Hopefully that can take a few years of grime off and add some life to our curb appeal.
Get keypad lock for our gate.
Our neighborhood is safe, but we always keep our front gate locked. We usually go into the house via the garage so we only unlock our gate when we are expecting guests. However, because I want to transition to a “smart house”, I would love to replace are manual lock with an automatic one (wifi enables, of course). That way we don’t have to go out to unlock the gate and can do it from our phones (hi, I’m Vivian and very lazy).
Replace sconce.
Similar to our mailbox, this scone is old old old. There is a lot of rust and doesn’t have the curb appeal I would like. We have toyed with the idea of maybe doing a sconce with a real fire. I honestly am not sure how or even if that should work, but we will find out when we get there.
Purchase tall plant to cover window by front door.
At our front door, we have a tall window that peers straight into our living room. To add some privacy to our home, I would like to put a tall plant to cover that window. Preferably, I would like a fake plant because I won’t have to worry about keeping it alive and it will last throughout the seasons.
Paint the entire house!
This is something we almost did last year. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for us, I couldn’t decide on a color. We purchased many samples of grey, navy and white paint. I almost settled on a grey, but I think that trend is, dare I say…over?! We currently have tan colored walls, but they are a little too yellow for my taste. I think I want to go for a lighter, less yellow tan color to lighten up the space. I also want to add an accent wall somewhere in our house (maybe even wallpaper).
Stain or paint the staircase banister.
Once we paint the walls, I want our staircase banister to match. It is currently your standard brown wood stain with white poles. Depending on what color we go with for the wall, we may stain it a darker wood or paint it a different color (hello, black banister?). I would love to completely rip our banister out (and at that rate redo the layout of our first floor) but we can revisit that another year.
Paint kitchen cabinets.
We have your classic light brown oak cabinets. They are perfectly great, but seem a little dated and scream early 2000s to me. For some reason, I am drawn to navy or olive green upper cabinets and a darker bottom cabinet color. Again, this all depends on what color we decide to paint our walls. If we have warm colored walls, I may go with a darker colored wall to offset. I also need to consider that our counter tops are a tan granite…so we will see!
Replace light in entry way.
Our entryway doesn’t get much light, and I think it’s because of our “button” light. I want to replace this with a light that is more open and doesn’t have a frosted glass cover over it. I am also a fan of white light, but I feel that tan colored walls call for yellow light (which Drew is a fan of). We have discussed adding LED lights that can switch between white and yellow lights so that might be a great compromise.
Add drawer pulls and knobs on kitchen cabinets.
As part of our kitchen face-lift, we must add drawer pulls and knobs on all of the kitchen cabinets. To be quite honest, our drawers are hard to pull open now anyway so these had to be added sooner or later. When I wanted to paint our cabinets white, I visioned sleek black pulls and knobs. Now that I am thinking about doing olive or navy cabinets, I’m thinking bronze or gold hardware would be a better fit. I may need to think this through so the color I pick ties into the hardware throughout home (ie. color of the hinges and door knob colors).
Install automatic battery-powered light in master bathroom linen closet.
A few months ago, I removed the doors to our linen closet in our master bathroom to open the space. Unfortunately, there is still not a lot of light in that space. I found a battery-powered motion-sensing light that we can install to the ceiling of the closet. We have this in our coat closet downstairs and it works perfectly! It stays on for maybe 30 seconds before automatically turning off. I could probably do this myself, I just need to get better acquainted with how to use all of Drew’s power tools.
Reorganize pantry and fridge.
I. Love. Organizing. I would want to be a professional organizer in another life (or maybe later in this current life). In the meantime, I will just organize every corner of our house. I’ve organized my jewelry, my office closet and even our koozies. I want to come up with a pantry and refrigerator system that works for us!
Replace rug in dining room.
Let’s just say Gordo chewed up this rug the minute it came in. Lesson learned on this one! I had doubts when I bought the rug but had hope that Gordo knew better. But he’s a puppy and I’m a dummy and it is ripped apart. I am going to aim for a rug that is not woven and is dog-proof but still soft for us.
Add board and batten in dining room.
My dream! We have this chair railing in our dining room (aka a line of wood in the middle of our wall). I’m not the biggest fan of this look so I want to give it a modern face-lift and make it board and batten! One of my favorite bloggers, The DIY Playbook, added this to their walls and ever since I have wanted to add that in our home.
