Home Goals 2021, part 1

Ahhh, it’s finally time I sat down and put on (digital) paper my plans and goals for my home this new year.

Last year I was walking into a brand new-to-me home with all kinds of things I wanted to change and fix. It was a long sprint to get rid of some of the worst offenders, in my opinion. All of the green and yellow paint needed to go, and some of the light fixtures too.

But now I feel like my home is in a good spot. All of the worst parts have been changed, but I still have a long way to go to touch every space. And believe me, before I’m done with it, every space will be changed.

I still haven’t touched our master bathroom (other than paint), our laundry room, guest bedroom, dining room (other than paint) or playroom. And I’ve only changed out the light and mirror in our powder bathroom. So, there is still a ton of changes coming your way.

I love to see the home decorators who moved into a new house and start huge renovations. Those are so fun to watch! But I’m more of a – let’s get everything up to likable, first – and THEN we’ll go back in and do the major renovations and makeovers.

A lot of that has to do with time – and it’s just me over here doing the work while juggling motherhood, managing a home, cooking dinner each night. AND with my family home most of last year, I put many of my home stuff on the back burner.

And then there’s the budget. I don’t have some huge renovation budget. In this home I’m trying to find the balance between budget home decor and buying quality items I love that will last a long time. I think we’ll be in this home for many years, so I want to buy pieces that will live with us for a long time. And that’s not always inexpensive.

Last year I tried something new with my goal setting for home projects. I revisited them every 3 months and made new goals for the following quarter. Since the holiday season is such a wash AND it’s almost February now 🤪, my plan is to revisit my goals every 4 months this year. So I’ll have January through April, May through August & September through December Goals.

How I did on my Home Goals for 2020

I’m not going to go through each one, because I just shared my Before & After Home Tour and most everything I did was captured in detail in that post! So, check it out to see how far this house has come in a year.

And you can see all of the original goal posts here:

• Home Goals 2020, Part 1
• Home Goals 2020, Part 2
• Home Goals 2020, Part 3
• Home Goals 2020, Part 4

My Home Goals for 2021, part 1

January through April

My goals for these next four months include a lot of focus on the outside of our home. We mostly neglected the garage and outside of the house last year, but with the warmer weather coming, it’s time to tackle it!

1. Get an Estimate for Painting the Trim & Shutters

This is the first ever look at the exterior of our home. It’s a cape cod style home with beautiful real shutters and lots of attention to detail. And similar to the inside, the owners loved their yellow and green. It’s not as noticeable in these photos, but ALL of the trim is painted yellow. 😬 #notmyvibe

Side note – I think a power washer would do wonders to those front steps, don’t you? 😜

Even the back porch is painted a light yellow, which you can see in these photos.

I’d like to paint the ceiling of the back porch a haint blue. If you’re not familiar with the southern tradition of painting porch ceilings a light blue color, then it might seem odd. But it’s a common thing in the South.

I’m thinking about painting the white trim my favorite white: Simply White (Benjamin Moore). And I’m considering Graphite (Benjamin Moore) for the shutters and front door. It’s a soft black or charcoal and looks really good on the exterior of a home.

But before I commit to either color, I’ll be doing my usual test of painting the colors on a poster board and holding them up outside in a variety of places and lighting.

I create a mock up of what it might look like with the charcoal shutters and front door. I’d like to change out the front porch light as well.

I didn’t change the trim color in the mock-up because it looks close enough to white in the photo, but I believe it’ll look much better in person. And I know it’s not a drastic change, but it’s a phase 1 update.

Phase 2 will be to someday paint the brick, too. We’d love to use the Romabio masonry paint and have all of our brick lime washed. I’ve created a mock-up of that as well. 😍

I know, it’s beautiful. 😍 I LOVE how this looks and will be hanging this dream photo on my wall until it happens! But for now, we’re going to just handle the shutters and trim and will save up for a full makeover later on.

2. Fix the Grass

Due to an unfortunately incident last summer, our grass got fried. We hired a company to help maintain the weeds and instead they killed our grass. Womp. Womp.

It was a whole thing and they didn’t fix their mistake. So, we were stuck with a semi-destroyed yard and no budget to fix it. We’ve since hired another company to manage it, but they advised waiting until this spring to fix it.

So, while it’s not a super fun makeover, it’ll make me a whole lot happier to drive into the driveway with a beautiful green lawn instead of a brown, burned up lawn.

I’ll be sure to share our experience and how we fix it!

3. Finish the Kitchen Makeover

Whew! This makeover has dragged on for a while. If you need a refresher, this is the vision for my kitchen makeover from last July.

And you can see how far we have come in my Christmas kitchen tour.

But my biggest hold up was finding the right counter stools. I was on the hunt for a:

• swivel counter stool
• with a back
• that had a weight limit of more than 250 lbs.
• not upholstered
• AND that I loved

Of course the only one I could find that fit the bill was out of my price range. So, I kept looking – and I kept coming back to those chairs.

I finally made the decision to save up and buy the stools of my dreams. But the budgeter in me HAD to get them on sale. Well, they went on sale earlier this month and I ordered them STAT! As with all home goods right now, shipping is slow. But I know they will be here before March and I’ll be sharing them ASAP!

The only other item I need to get for my kitchen isn’t really in my kitchen, but it leads into the kitchen, so I’m including it. It’s the stair runner.

I shared this inspiration pic and goal in last year’s goals. But with the craziness at the end of the year, I just didn’t get it done. So, I hope to go look at samples for my stair runner later this week and get it ordered!

And then my kitchen makeover will be done – for now. ☺️ I’m really contemplating replacing the faucet before I do a reveal. But the faucet I want is a bit pricy, which will mean putting off other projects. So, we’ll see.

4. Organize the Garage

This project made it on the list because I am not sure I can handle my disorganized garage one more second! And I always try to choose projects in the spring where I would like my husband’s help. He’s more available in the spring because of his work schedule.

We have spent time organizing a garage before. I’ve even shared tips for organizing a garage. And it’s time to apply them here!

I think we will do a combination of cabinets, open shelves and on-the-wall storage. Something like this, plus more open shelving…

The thing is, we have a rather large 2-car garage and plenty of space. But we just dropped everything in it when we moved in and really haven’t touched it since. I think my husband’s truck might fit in there if we actually organize it!

What’s Missing?

If you’ve been around here a little while you might notice that finishing my master bedroom makeover didn’t make it on the list. And that’s because we have it at a good stopping point and I wanted to get these outdoor projects done in the spring. And I just don’t think I’ll have time to finish it. Maybe this summer!

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It’s so funny. I’ve been hemming and hawing all month trying to figure out what goals to have this year. And as soon as I wrote these down to share on the blog, I immediately started taking action.

I’ve already called about an estimate on painting the house trim & shutters. And I’ve already started planning the garage organization. All I needed was to write down my goals. It’s a testament to the fact that WRITING them down make a difference.

I’d love to hear some of your home goals this year! Feel free to share them below in the comments!