House Goals for 2012

When I saw The Nester's post on her planned home goals linky party, I immediately knew it was just what I needed to do to get my butt in gear and actually get some pending house projects done this year.  Now that I have a blog, I can more easily hold myself accountable to things I said I will do - so hopefully in less than 12 months I'll have a post crossing off my checklist!  For the past two years or so, I've been extremely lazy about doing anything to this house - I think it was mostly burn-out since we did so much work to move in.  But now, I've got some newfound motivation and am ready to get 'er done (time and budget permitting, of course).  Without further adieu, here's my house goals list (in no particular order).

Source: houseandhome.com via Wendyjp on Pinterest

Spruce up the entry - I painted our front door a deep, dark blue two years ago, and last year (started, but never finished) painting our shutters the same color as well.  I'd like to finish the shutters, paint the garage door, and make my entry look more like this.

Source: marthastewart.com via Jessica on Pinterest

When we first moved, we got rid of a coat closet in the foyer to make room for a (mostly decorative) entry table and vignette.  After living here for a few years, though, it's clear that, in the absence of much more storage space on the first floor, that coat closet is key.  Add to that the fact that a leak in our roof prompted us to remove the ceiling in the foyer (in 2009), which we have yet to put back.  This year we hope to complete both projects, which will include putting in new insulation, sheetrocking the ceiling, and rebuilding the coat closet - and in doing so spruce up our entry.  I hope our closet ends up looking something like this.

When we bought the house, we knew we'd do two stages of renovations.  Stage 1 we did in 2008 to make the house liveable.  Stage 2 got relegated to the bottom of the list once the crisis and life in general got in the way.  While we're not yet ready to embark on the major projects (we're talking MBR suite addition, family room addition, new stairs, new floors, etc.), I would like to work on getting some estimates in to have a sense of how much this will cost us and at least make some progress on setting up a timeline and budget for it all.  The picture above isn't our house, but one that started off very similar to ours and was expanded much in the same direction as we'd like to take ours.

Source: favoritepaintcolors.blogspot.com via Wendyjp on Pinterest

Decorating-wise, most of my attention has been on the first floor.  Our second floor isn't shabby but it's mostly been thrown together as opposed to well thought out.  I'd like to change that, and, starting with the Master Bedroom, make it a more serene and pretty liveable space for us.  Here is just one of the many inspiration pictures of the look I'm going for.

Source: google.com via Megan on Pinterest

Though we have four bedrooms with four closets, we are literally using all the closet space in this house at the moment!  Part of the problem is that both Esposito and I have an absurd amount of clothes and shoes.  The second part is that we never took the time to update our closets to better reflect our items (i.e. we have a single hanging rod in each closet).  We need to pare down our items and create a closet that works for the both of us, and leaves space in the other bedrooms for future additions to our family and guests.  Esposito has already started the task - he donated three bag fulls of unwanted clothes last week - but there is certainly more work to be done.  Now, I don't have the space to create my dream walk-in closet (at least not until we do the addition - see goal 3 above), but at the very minimum I'd like to create a pretty, and functional space for our clothes.
 

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One of the reasons we purchased this house was because we loved the lot size - we have a big yard which is great for our dogs and summers.  Along with a big yard comes a lot of maintenance, though, and we've spent a good amount of time and money in just keeping up with it without much of either left over to make it a true retreat.  Esposito is quite the outdoorsman when it comes to yardwork, so this is really his goal (promise - he told me so on New Years!), and we have a slew of outdoor projects in the pipeline, including a new deck, river rock surround around the house, a new shed, etc.



Source: amazon.com via Paige on Pinterest



Now, I'm not a dirty person, but I can be messy.  And Esposito is typically just lazy;)/  While I do have my weekly cleaning routine that takes place on Saturday mornings, I would like to work on keeping up with cleaning the house on a more regular basis so that I'm not spending the better part of my weekend doing so.  This will involve setting up a routine for myself to do every weeknight.  So far in 2012 I've been good, hopefully I can keep it going!

Those are my house goals for 2012, head on over to The Nester to see what other bloggers are making theirs! Are you making any house/home-related goals this year?