It's crazy to think that we've been homeowners for an entire year. It was a dream that I honestly thought would never become a reality for us because of my insanely high student loan debt (and consequently terrible credit). But we made it work, and here we are a year later in a house that we love just as much as the day we signed on the dotted line.
We've had big goals for the house, most of which have not been tackled because we haven't had the money for any big projects. Now that we're a family of four, I will be on maternity leave for 12 weeks, and we'll be paying for childcare for two little ones, we likely won't see our bigger projects to completion in year two either. However, I'm content with the small progress that we have made over the last 12 months, and will more than happy to see our house slowly come together over time as we get older and more stable.
I thought it would be fun to see the progress that we've made in the last year, as well as check-in to see what remaining items I have on my to-do list to look back on in the years to come. If you'd like to see the "full tour" of our house from when we first bought it, go here.
EXTERIOR
All three pictures above were taken by a realtor before we moved in, but with the exception of adding our house number to our mailbox, we've done absolutely nothing to the exterior of the house. The one thing we do really need to address, however, is the front porch. There is no handrail or railing around the entire front porch which is a big safety hazard for little ones. Thankfully, it's not too high off the ground, but Charlie did fall off the stairs once so it's something we obviously want to do sooner rather than later.
Exterior To-Do's:
1. Add handrail and railing around front porch.
2. Build a raised bed in our backyard.
KITCHEN
I thought about closing the pantry door, but let's be real- it looks like that 99.9% of the time, so why hide it? Obviously, we bought a refrigerator- our first big appliance purchase of our adult lives! I love that I have that space above the cabinets to display my German beer stein collection that my Mom passed down to me. We did buy curtains for both the windows, but the walls are so thick that we've had a difficult time trying to install the brackets and continue to push this project to the backburner. We did recently (finally!) put a baby gate up in the doorway which has been amazing. God love our rambunctious child, but I definitely prefer cooking without a toddler underfoot.
Kitchen To-Do's:
1. Hang curtains and valances!
2. Figure out a better, or at least more aesthetically pleasing, trash and recycling situation.
3. Mount a paper towel holder.
DINING ROOM
Since this photo was taken, I've since put a potted aloe vera plant in the macrame holder, so it doesn't look like a random rope hanging from our ceiling. Just out of frame on the left side, there's also a gallery wall that I want to continue to grow because all the pictures are wedding, our first anniversary, or Charlie's newborn pictures. We get anniversary pictures taken every year, so I want to figure out a cute way to display each year. Other than that though, this is pretty much it!
Dining Room To-Do's:
1. Work on updating gallery wall.
2. Add more decor to right wall.
3. Find some kind of table for the right wall to house our purses/bags and mail.
4. Replace chandelier.
BATHROOM
We hung blinds (sorry, neighbors) and our own shower curtain. They were in our basement being washed when I took this, but we do have black bath mats that would usually be found in front of the sink and toilet. This room really doesn't need many improvements in my opinion, except for some hardware- we still have no towel racks!
Bathroom To-Do's:
1. Hang towel and hand towel racks.
2. Look into framing the mirror to make it less plain.
3. Install a valance over the mini-blinds. (I didn't think about this until seeing how plain the window looks in this picture!)
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Originally, I was going to include all our rooms in one post, but because I can't get it together to do a write-up on our living room and bedrooms, stay tuned for Part Two!
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