The Five-year Plan (5YP)

When we moved into the house, we were so gung-ho to convert this humble abode into the Loveshack 2.0.  Yes, we were the naive first-time "houseowners" who thought it would only take a year to whip this place into shape.  Of course, we should have known better considering it took us three years to finally make the condo feel like home and that was a measly 880 sq. ft.

we came up with the five-year plan.  Here are the things we hope to accomplish before 2014 (gawd, do I feel old):

Move the laundry room to the basement and convert the old laundry closet into an office.  People thought we were nuts to move the existing laundry "room" all the way to the faraway land known as the basement.  Since we're in a bungalow, it would have been extremely convenient to have the washer and dryer right next to the master bedroom.  But I like to air out my dirty laundry all over the place.  There's no way this little hole-in-the-wall would have been able to handle it all.

We've completed about 50% of the laundry room and I'll share where we're at in future posts.

Update the kitchen.  Cons: pink flowers on the tile and linoleum, super inefficient 80s appliances, pink ruffly window treatments, dated cabinetry and not-so-great countertop.  Pros: Great layout with an eat-in area, and all of the above!  What's not to love about this kitchen?  We could really see the potential when we first walked in.  We're really looking forward to giving this room a much needed facelift.

Create a workspace in the garage.  After three years of single-stall surface parking, we finally have a garage to keep the cars (and all our junk) nice and dry.  It currently houses a ton more junk (I swear our stuff multiplies when we're not looking).  It will be nice to have an organized place for everything.

 

 

Update the bathrooms.  Both the main bathroom and the master ensuite had great layouts.  We'll just be focusing on updating the fixtures.  In a major way.

Main/Guest Bathroom:

Master Ensuite:

We've redone about 95% of the main bathroom and are just working on injecting some personality into the room.  With the exception of swapping out the ginormous toilet for a low-flow model, we haven't even started thinking about what we're going to do in the master ensuite.

Give the fireplace mantle a facelift.  A lift here, some new tile there and she'll be ready for her closeup.  Maybe then we'll finally face our fear and finally light the thing.

 

 

Renovate the basement.  The job that actually requires a sidekick (aka Dad).  Considering we've been in the house just shy of two years, we've already added an extra 1,200 sq. ft. of living space.

Redo the deck and snazz up the landscaping.  Okay, pop quiz.  True or false: All little old ladies love to garden.  In our case, false (or at least it seemed that way when we first moved in).  We're basically starting from scratch when it comes to our landscaping.  I'm thinking a couple of square-foot veggie gardens, a low maintenance flower garden and some new trees.  I'll have to enlist my own sidekick for this project (aka Mom) as I have no idea where to start and I've got the biggest black thumb there is.  Also, the deck needs to be redone because I almost stepped right through it last summer.  It's an accident just waiting to happen...

Miscellaneous.  We've also got your standard smaller projects too, like updating the fixtures and changing out some flooring, but these are the bigger projects that we'd like to tackle for now.  We've already started on some of these, and I'll post updates as they happen.

I'm glad we were able to give ourselves a real working timeline for all of this work.  It gives us the time to live in the space and get a feel for how we want to make it work for us (and to save up for all of the projects we want to complete).  I also have tend to compare our place to those of my favorite home decorating bloggers and then beat myself up for not having spaces that look as glamorous as there's do.  But then I have to remind myself that we don't live in those spaces and we just have to love where we live.  I've finally learned to embrace the perfectly imperfect, which pretty much sums up this little loveshack.