Home Improvement List

Current junk room/future guest room on the left; current guest room/future baby room on the right

Now that we’re back from vacation, I’m starting to think more seriously about the baby room. I think I’ve already mentioned that the first step is actually to clean our our “junk room” — i.e. the room that has no purpose other than to store random items. That will become the guest room, and our current guest room will become the baby room! I never gave any thought to just using the junk room as the baby room because it’s small, oddly shaped, and only has one window that faces our fence and neighbor’s house. It’s the least desirable bedroom by far, so it just makes sense for it to become the guest room since that will be the least-used room in the house.

Anyway, thinking about the baby room makes me think about all sorts of other improvements I’d like to make to our house! We have no actual plans to do a lot of these things before the baby arrives (although the things I do hope to accomplish are in bold), but it’s always nice to dream! Here’s the list that’s been evolving since we moved in almost 3 years ago, in no particular order:

• Furnish and decorate the nursery
  
• Turn the 3rd bedroom into a nice, comfy guest room
• Replace the carpet in the family room with wood or laminate flooring
• Get a rug for the dining room
• Build an over-the-machines counter in our laundry room (a la Young House Love)
• Repaint all the trim and doors (everything is currently off-white, and I’d rather it was white, and yes I know this is a huge and TEDIOUS task so it will probably never happen!)
• Build some sort of  craft table for the bonus room (a la Someday Crafts)
• Finish installing the cabinet hardware in our kitchen (there are about 6 drawers I never finished last year)
• Revamp/reorganize the kitchen cabinets and pantry to better fit how we actually use the kitchen (everything is still where it was when we moved in)
• Get a new light fixture to replace the “boob light” in the bonus room
• Paint the master bedroom
• Paint the study
• Decide what to do with the wall o’ windows in the family room (cornices, curtains, etc?)
• “Frame” the huge wall mirror in the master bathroom (a la something like this) — or remove it entirely and replace with 2 smaller mirrors
• Same as above with the mirror in the guest bathroom
• Make some large DIY art for above the bed in the master bedroom
• Clean out one side of the garage so we can park the TBD new car in there
• Install tree spotlights outside (we have them already; they go with the flower bed lighting we did two summers ago)
• Replace the front porch can light with a pretty pendant of some kind (which I thought of after coming across the Can Converter)
• Redo the front flower beds (I plan to hire someone to do this for me)
• Build a bed around the crape myrtle, oleander, and hibiscus that are planted along the fence in the backyard
• Get gutters installed on the back of the house
• Buy a grill (especially since we have a gift card from my parents specifically for this!)