2018 Home Goals – Update!

So I had most of this post written a few weeks before Layla made her appearance… but I slacked on taking some pictures for it. Blah blah blah.  Well, we’re back!  I must say getting this post up and chatting with David about some things around the house, we are kind of itching to get another project done… maybe we’ll pick something off of this list?!  Anyways, to be continued.  But enjoy this project update post… and maybe we’ll be able to knock something else off!

Since Baby Girl has yet to make her arrival (I really was expecting her to come at 37 weeks like Connor!!) I figured I’d do an update on our 2018 Home Goals post that I did back in April.  We were essentially viewing August as the end of the year for us, because, as you may (or may not) know… newborns are a lot of work, and we just don’t really anticipate getting a lot of big projects done for the rest of the year with the baby and then the holidays coming after that.

We did get some work done in our basement soon though.  Remember when I mentioned we found some mold in our basement in the last post? Well, we finally had some resolution to it and the work got done over the weekend (not by us!)  So we’ll provide an update for that soon.

Anyways… onto the project goal updates.  Overall, I feel pretty good!  We had some stretch items that we still haven’t gotten to yet, but it feels good to try and stretch yourself. Also, this basement mold “surprise” kind of sucked the life out of us for a little while too.  Anddd we may have added in a little bonus project of a little kitchen makeover in the process.  More on that later.

Outside

• Fix garage and landscaping drainage issue.
  • Check!
  • You can see more details on THIS POST on how we designed and installed the french drain for the gutter downspout and the sump pump pump-out line.  Here’s a little refresher if you forgot:
    

• Reshape and plant some flowers in our front beds by the street.
  • Half check.
  • We reduced the size of the beds by about 2 feet by planting more grass seed and lots of watering.  By the time it started to look halfway decent, we decided we should probably mulch it first before we plant new plants just for ease.  Well, we didn’t finish mulching it until late mid-July, and we figured at that point, anything that we planted would probably just burn and die. We had a crazy dry July and I don’t trust myself to be out there watering every night.  SO.  Next spring, we’re coming after you front beds!  I’ll have a plan in mind before then and plant the plants at the perfect time in the spring.  (Hopefully!) 
    

•  MULCH.
  
  • 95% Check??
  • We had it delivered finally after I had a recommendation from a neighbor (thanks Heather!) for a good place.  I had big plans of being able to knock it out pretty quickly between David and I.  Unfortunately, around the same time, I started to get sharp pains around my belly button that got aggravated when I did a lot of physical stuff/heavy lifting.  Turned out it may be an umbilical hernia that will hopefully go away whenever baby girl decides to arrive. (polier, it did!)  Anyways… I wasn’t able to help with this job at all, so it was all David and his little helper.  There was a ton to weed/lay down landscaping paper/mulch, and it’s about done.  Just having the weeds gone is the biggest improvement.
    

Inside

• Finish the nursery!
  • CHECK!!
  • We planned.

• We crafted.

• We conquered!

• Finish the family room curtains and find a rug
  • 50% check!
  • Still only have 1 out of the three sets of curtains made. I’m telling you, my sewing motivation is just not there. I think I’m coming up on almost a year soon since I’ve bought the fabric. Sigh.  I told myself that I would be making them this week or next if baby girl still wasn’t here, but I’ve got a bad case of sciatica which really makes me not want to even think about crawling all over the floor with fabric and and scissors (or as Connor likes to say “whizzers”).
  • BUT.  We’ve found the rugs!  I ordered them from Overstock awhile back and posted about them on Instagram a few times, but haven’t blogged about them, because I wanted to take nice pictures of the family room with the curtains all done too haha!  Here’s a peak at them.  We’ve had them for a few months now and love them!

• Finish the family room built ins 
  • no checks. 🙁
  • The cabinets have been sitting in place for about 2 6 months now.  This turned out to be a stretch item for us, even though I thought it was going to be at the top of our list!  I think the electrical work kind of threw us off from starting because we just didn’t feel like doing it.  Doing more visible things like flooring upstairs was more “fun”.
    

• Still dreaming about it though…

Finish most of the upstairs flooring

• This was totally a stretch item, but I’d say 50% check!
• We really wanted to do the upstairs hallway and the stairs, but we managed to do the hallway.  The hallway gave us a run for our money with all of the intricate cuts and lining up to the stairs and other transitions, so it took longer than we thought.  After we finished, we considered for a hot second doing the stairs, but we have a feeling that those are going to be pretty technical installations, too.  So we didn’t want to rush it, and have them be half finished.  I’ll write more details on this another time, once we have the stairs completed.  There are too many details to go over!
  

Hold a garage sale!!

• CHECK!
• I was SO HAPPY we did this!  It really felt like a breath of fresh air.  We did it on Memorial Day weekend (probably not the best weekend, but oh well). The stuff got piled in our living room the night before, we hauled it outside for the next day’s yard sale bright and early, and then nothing came back into the house (ok, a few exceptions for things we could try and sell online), but if they didn’t sell, they got taken straight to donation.  The spare bedroom and the storage room are breathable and walkable again, and I hope they stay that way forever!  We also raked in about $170.  Nothing amazing, but definitely a nice little chunk of change for stuff that was sitting around and collecting dust.  Maybe I’ll write a more specific post about it one day.

So, did we do everything on our goal list?  Nope.  Was that the point?  Nope.  I’m totally a list writer because it gives me direction and motivation towards things to work on.  I’m so happy that we managed as much as we did!  A lot of these things would have been hard to do with two kids around (I mean, let alone 1.  Special thanks to both sets of Grandparents for sleepovers!)

Once the rest of the year slows down and we find our new groove, I’m sure we’ll be right back into the bigger projects.  Until then, we’ve got plenty to still chat about with some other work we’ve done lately (ie, kitchen makeover, our outdoor swing, and a basement mold fiasco!) so we’ll be updating you soon on that.

What projects are you looking to get done before the end of the year??