Happy New Year! After a much-needed break from work and blogging, I’m feeling refreshed and ready to tackle some home projects in the new year! Scott and I recently sat down and figured out our priorities for this year. We have quite a few unfinished projects that we want to complete, and a few new projects that should make our house work much better for us!

Today, I’m sharing what projects we want to tackle this year! While we have plenty of items on our list, I’m just going to focus on the 10 bigger projects here. Throughout this post, I’ll include a few photos that show what some of our rooms look like currently, and discuss our plan of action for each project. If you’ve missed my previous updates, you can catch up on all our house progress here. I’ve talked through our buying process, a few intense months of renovations, and our 1 year progress!

Our 2020 House To-Do List

1. Finish the kitchen pantry and doorway.

We framed in the pantry before even moving into the house, but the drywalling process has been moving pretty slowly. The pantry will add a lot more storage to our (pretty small) kitchen, so it’s definitely something we want to get done sooner rather than later!

Where we stand now:

• Framing is all done.
• We installed drywall and are over halfway done with all the taping and mudding.
• The shelving system is all planned out and ready to order (we’re using the Elfa system from the Container Store). Right now, we have a bookshelf in our pantry that is standing in for shelving.

What we still need to do:

• Finish mudding/taping the drywall and paint.
• Paint and install the pantry doors.
• Trim out the kitchen/dining room doorway.
• Order and install the pantry shelving system.

2. Install a stair runner.

Jamie has already started climbing stairs, and loves to practice (supervised, of course!) whenever we don’t have the baby gate closed. The wooden stairs are pretty slippery for him, so we want to install a stair runner to make the steps safer. The runner will also serve as a visual divide between our upstairs (hardwood) floors and our downstairs (laminate) ones.

Where we stand now:

• We refinished the stair treads and painted the risers and trim.
• We bought the rug to use as a runner and padding to go underneath.

What we still need to do:

• A few small paint touch-ups.
• Maybe install some “squeak-no-more” screws to reduce creaking.
• Put down the padding and staple up the runner. This project should go pretty quickly once we actually sit down and do it!

3. Organize and clean out the junk room spare bedroom.

We started the year off with a bang and have actually done a lot of work on this project already! Our spare bedroom (affectionately called the junk room) has been filled with boxes since we moved in. It’s already SO much better, and I’m ready to make more progress! (I am weirdly excited to have an empty room in our house. I’m going to go in there and enjoy the minimalism when I need some peace.)

Where we stand now:

• Organized everything into keep, trash, and donate piles. We stored what we’re keeping, donated what we can, and threw away the rest.
• Moved lots of tubs onto shelves in the basement.

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What we still need to do:

• Move a few tubs and old baby clothes up to the attic (once we’ve taken down our Christmas stuff, we’ll do this).
• Clean off the one remaining bookshelf in the room.
• Paint and reinstall the closet doors.
• Paint the room (we primed but put off painting before moving in because of the time crunch).

4. Finish installing baseboards.

Ah, the baseboards. What I assumed would be the most difficult part (making and painting the boards) took us almost no time (thanks to my in-laws for doing most of the work!). I wasn’t sure whether or not the air compressor for the nail gun would bother Jamie, so we held off for awhile. Now that he’s older and (1) a better napper and (2) less afraid of noises when he’s awake, it should be easier to find time to do this. I think that once we add baseboards, our rooms will look exponentially more finished, so I’m looking forward to checking this one off our list!

Where we stand now:

• Nursery baseboards are totally complete.
• We started installing the living room baseboards, but haven’t made much progress yet!

What we still need to do:

• Install baseboards, fill nail holes, and caulk literally every other room in our house.

5. Finish the deck.

When we bought our house, it had a deck, but the boards were rotted and not salvageable. Originally, we planned on completing this project last summer, but weren’t able to finish. We love our backyard and REALLY want to be able to take advantage of the deck this summer, so hopefully we’ll complete it before then!

Where we stand now:

• Removed the old deck boards and made sure the underlying supports are strong and secure.
• Painted the tops of the joists black so they’re less visible.
• Laid down new weed barrier, made sure drainage was good.
• Ordered all the new deck boards and fasteners (we’re using Trex composite boards).

What we still need to do:

• Install the deck boards. Another project that won’t take a ton of time to complete – hoping we can get this done in a during the winter or spring!

6. Clear out the side of the house and prep for an eventual garden.

For the past several years, I’ve been dreaming of building a kitchen garden on the side of our house. It’s a perfect, south-facing spot that gets plenty of sun and won’t take away from our yard space. (I have one small raised bed in the backyard, but it doesn’t get enough sun to grow much there.) Right now, the area is filled with weeds that we have to cut down every year. The weeds keep growing back, so we need to do something there, but we aren’t ready to build the whole garden yet. (That project probably won’t happen for several more years.)

Where we stand now:

• Cut down tons and tons of weeds, pulled down the ivy climbing up our house (twice).

What we still need to do:

• Get rid of all the weeds and maybe lay down some gravel and/or weed barrier to keep new ones from growing.

7. Fix the falling retaining wall.

The retaining wall has been falling since before we bought the house, and we haven’t quite gotten around to fixing it yet. In the future, we’ll probably totally re-do the wall with different rocks and better stability/drainage. For now, we’re just trying to keep it from falling more so we can keep our driveway clear. (Note: when Scott read this post, he said that he’d rather not do the tearing down/rebuilding work twice, so we may end up re-doing it earlier than I thought!)

Where we stand now:

• Cleared out the rocks that have fallen down into the driveway.
• Cut back a lot of plant overgrowth.

What we still need to do:

• Cut down the rest of the overgrown plants that are weighing the wall down.
• Rebuild the wall.

8. Finish the master bedroom and closet.

Our master bedroom is totally livable, but there are a few aesthetic updates and sticking points that we’d like to address! It’s likely that we’ll tackle this project sometime after the spare room is clear. That way, we can live in the spare room for a few weeks while working on the master. The biggest change will be updating our (sad, small, builder-grade, reach-in) closet. Neither of us have a ton of clothes, but we would love to have a bit more hanging space in our room! Maximizing the closet should also be a nice update should we want to sell this house in the future.

Where we stand now:

• We haven’t done anything to “finish” the room since moving in – but it’s painted and we have all our furniture already.
• Started planning the closet organization to maximize the small space.

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What we still need to do:

• Move everything out of our closet, sand and refinish the closet floors.
• Paint the closet, windows, trim, and doors.
• Remove the existing closet stuff and install a new closet system.
• Lay down a rug under our bed.

9. Prep to build Scott’s office downstairs.

We have a room in our basement that was previously finished, but had to be stripped when mold remediation was done. Eventually, we want to semi-soundproof the room and make it an office and drum room for Scott (and our current office will become a playroom/guest room). Right now, the room houses all our baseboards and tools, so it’s unlikely we’ll finish it anytime soon, but I’d love to start making some progress in here.

Where we stand now:

• Haven’t started anything. It’ll be hard to do much in here until we finish the baseboards, since they’re currently taking up most of the floor space in the room.

What we still need to do:

• Get the baseboards out of here.
• Organize our tools and supplies, and move them to our garage workbench.
• Lots of planning.
• Potentially begin to finish the room (e.g., electrical work, framing, insulation).

10. Refresh the powder bathroom.

Our downstairs powder room isn’t very visually appealing, which always bothers me since it’s the one that guests would typically use. There’s a big hole in the ceiling from when we had mold remediation done, and some of the drywall is damaged from a previous leak. Eventually, we want to add a shower to this half bath so we can have two full bathrooms in our house, but that’ll be far in the future. However, it does mean that we don’t want to fix the drywall now when we’ll have to redo it in the future anyways. That being said, we’d like to make this bathroom feel a little nicer, so I think we’ll do a simple, very budget-friendly makeover this year.

Where we stand now:

• Replaced the toilet and cleaned everything.
• Replaced the broken doorknob with one that reliably locks.
• Big hole in the ceiling.

What we still need to do:

• Install peel-and-stick wallpaper and paint.
• Replace outlets and light switches with nice white ones.
• Maybe install a new vanity light and/or faucet – we’ll see!

And there you have it – our list of big projects for this year! A few smaller things on our list include: replacing our kitchen fan with a new light, painting and reinstalling a few more doors, working on our lawn, and replacing our utility sink downstairs.

Setting goals like this is always helpful because it gets Scott and I on the same page about what our priorities are. That way, if we have a day or weekend (or a few hours) to dedicate to a project, we have an idea of what we should work on. Right now, we’re focused on areas that will make a big difference functionally, and will work on more aesthetic updates in the future. We have a LOT of work to do, but are very excited to continue improving our home!