40 Improvements in 10 Years

It still blows my mind a little that we've been homeowners for 10 years now.  That just sounds a lot older than it feels.  Age is a funny thing.  Ten years ago I thought 30 sounded a lot older than I feel now.  Crazy how much things stay the same even as everything changes.
Even though we've done almost all the work ourselves, pouring a lot of sweat, work, and money into our house, it still amazes me at how different our house looks from 10 years ago.  I look at the early pictures and am amazed we saw anything we wanted in it!  Almost every wall has been painted, inside and out.  A lot of light fixtures changed, 4 new floorings down, and of course adding our own furniture (which happened gradually!).  Room by room, here we go.  40 home projects in 10 years.

PORCH

1) Took down the ugly valance
2) Painted the walls

FRONT ROOM

3) Painted the walls and ceiling
4) Replaced the super ugly curtains with something much more our taste

5) Replaced both ceiling fans
6) Painted the backside of the door from here to the porch.  Replaced the blind.

MY OFFICE

7) Painted walls and cabinet doors
8) Tore out the carpet and put down a bamboo floor. (here)
9) Replaced the ceiling light with a fan (which I'm not a huge fan of aesthetically but use too much to get rid of)
10) Painted inside all cabinets (here and here)
11) Removed the cabinets below the window seat, leveled out with the rest of the floor, added bamboo flooring to match the rest of the room. (here)

MATT'S OFFICE

12) Replaced the ceiling light with a fan (literally the only thing we've done in there, non-furniture wise).
 
KITCHEN

13) Painted all cabinet doors (some before and afters here)
14) Painted the walls
15) Replaced the backdoor.
16) Replaced the kitchen floor
17) Replaced the kitchen lights.
18) Replaced the kitchen lights again, 4 years later.

19) Painted inside all upper kitchen cabinets. (here, here, here, here, here, and here)

DOWNSTAIRS LANDING

20) Completely gutted - tearing down paneling, tearing down plaster, drywalling, painting, hanging new lights, replacing all the carpet, new blind.  This took about 2 months. (Some progress pictures here, here, here, and here)

BATHROOM

21) Painted the bathroom (initially, first room we painted)
22) Removed bathroom window.
23) Completely gutted the bathroom - tearing out all floors and walls.  New subfloor, studs, insulation, walls, plumbing, and electrical.  Moved all fixture locations.  Replaced all fixtures.  Put down a pebble floor.  Tiled shower surround.  Amazed ourselves.  This took 2+ months.  (A lot of progress posts here)  The BIGGEST home project we will ever take on. 

UPSTAIRS LANDING

24) Switched out our attic entrance with a door on hinges.
25) Added an outlet to our upstairs landing.
26) Added lights and a switch to our attic.

LUKE'S ROOM

27) Painted the walls

OUR ROOM

28) Painted the walls, room and closet

BASEMENT
(No pictures because, while I might blog about a lot of things, I don't want to show the internet a picture of the basement.  There is always some project going on down there.)
29) Built additional shelving and storage.  Got rid of an extra washer or dryer (I forget which) that was down there when we moved in.
30) Replaced our water heater.  After it broke and flooded the basement.  On a very cold day in January.

OUTSIDE/YARDS

31) Completely scraping down, sanding, and repainting the entire outside of our house, an entirely new color.  This took a whole summer.
32) Tore out 30+ plants outside, completely eliminated 1 flower bed and bushes around the patio.  Expanded another flower bed into a garden.  Basically tore out all the landscaping that was there (I counted 3 bushes that have lasted since our first walk through plus one more I moved.)
33) Replaced the paver patio with stamped concrete.
34) Expanded our patio with a play area for Luke and an additional flower bed.  (Will be blogged about in the spring!)

35) Put in drainage by our garage entrance.
36) Painted the outside AC unit and various other things on the side of the house (meters and such)

GARAGE

Yes, that is our Christmas tree just hanging out in the backyard.

37) Replaced the big garage door (one of the few things we've hired out).

38) Painted the garage, 2 years after the house
39) Replaced rotting siding boards on the garage.

40) Added a lot of shelves to the garage (will be blogged about in the spring).

Favorite project: THE BATHROOM.  I love the bathroom, small as it still is.  Crappiest process but the BEST end result and improvement of any project we've ever done.  


Really, it's a lot more than 40 projects because I counted HUGE projects (BATHROOM) as one and that alone could have been 40.  But the basic gist, we've done a lot to our house in the last 10 years and we still have many more plans to go, mainly for our bedroom (I think it's in dire need of some work, ESPECIALLY white trim but Matt has yet to be convinced of that one and, trust me, I'm working on him almost daily) and the kitchen.  And we did a lot to the yard last year but still have quite the list of things to finish up for this summer (re-edging all the front beds, mulching, figuring out a patio arrangement that works with the giant picnic table Matt built).  We hope to live here another 5 years to make it 15 but that all is pending children, of course (those much imagined twins could speed up that move).  All in all, I'm so happy that we live here and it feels so much like HOME for the three of us.  I already get sad thinking about moving!