Home Improvements

One of my goals for March was to cross at least 5 things off the big list of house updates that I made in February. I’ve already accomplished way more than that! Here’s the rundown:

• I replaced the light covers/globes on the ceiling fan in our living room. The old ones were drab and beige; the new ones are bright and white.
• I updated the hall bathroom with a new shower curtain, floor mat and towels. This is girls’ bathroom but it’s also our primary guest bathroom since the other one is upstairs. I didn’t go overly kiddie, but it’s definitely brighter and happier now.

• I got new curtains from Land of Nod (on sale) for Emma’s room to replace the flimsy ones that I made 2.5 years ago and never really liked. I love them!
• I threw out 2 old scraggly plants and replaced them with new foliage. The two houseplants I bought claim to be “plants of steel” — seriously, it said that on their tags because they don’t need much sun or water — so we’ll see if they live up to that name.

• I took down the curtains in our master bathroom, which had been there for 6+ years but were too long, held up by an ugly tension rod, and generally boring. I replaced them with a curtain panel from West Elm. I upgraded to a prettier tension rod at the top, and used two other cheap tension rods to create a faux roman shade.
• I bought a pot lid rack for our cabinets to replace the old one, which never really worked as well as advertised and wasn’t big enough for all the lids we had down there anyway.
• I rearranged several pieces of furniture in the bonus room (and am in the process of selling a coffee table and sofa table) to create two zones — an office area and a TV/reading/hangout area.

• An electrician installed ceiling fans in Charlotte’s room and our guest room, swapped out the light fixture on the ceiling fan in our master bedroom so that it now takes bulbs with normal screw-in bases (hallelujah!), and fixed a can light in our kitchen that hadn’t worked in at least 2 years.

Whew! I definitely took care of the low hanging fruit first — things that could be fixed by simply buying something new, or that took an hour or less to finish. There are still several things to do in most rooms, and the next round of updates includes several items I plan to make or install myself. That will take more time. Still, I’m feeling really pleased with myself for staying motivated this month.