Below I'm sharing our 2021 project goals and the plans we have to keep our home transformation going. Every year, at the start of the year, I like to sit down and really think about what our house project goals are for the year. Since Todd and I do all of these projects on a budget, with cash, setting aside the funds and creating those budgets is essential in actually finishing projects. House projects and budgets go hand in hand, and I've learned when we have a designated amount set aside, it's easier and more fun to create a budget for each project we'd like to complete! Even with as much progress as we've made in our Willow house, there's still more spaces to finish, projects to ...
Remodeling
2020 Project Overview
How did we do on our project goals for 2020? Find out below as I share our 2020 project overview. Now that we're fresh into a new year, I wanted to look back and share our 2020 project overview and see how we came out on all of our project goals we set at the beginning of the year. It's no secret, we had a lot of projects on our agenda and we had high hopes that we'd be able to complete all of them. But even if we didn't completely finish the list, we're still happy with all the progress we've made on the house. And, oh ya, we had a baby too, which just about changes everything! 2020 Project Overview 1. New Garage Doors: Complete Mark this one off the list! We had our new ...
Vertical Planking & Open Shelves In The Kitchen
See how we installed vertical planking & open shelves in the kitchen to make it feel bigger and brighter! Our kitchen has come a long, long way. After we had our backsplash installed, it was time to add vertical planking and open shelves in the kitchen. From the very beginning when we were designing the kitchen, I knew I wanted open shelves to make the kitchen feel larger. We don't have a big kitchen, but the new addition of the open shelves makes the kitchen appear bigger and less crowded. Before we could have the shelves installed, the first step was adding the vertical planking. Todd and I decided to tackle the project a few weeks before I was due to have our baby ...
Laminate Countertops & Backsplash
The secret is out: Our kitchen has laminate countertops & backsplash! See how we made it look like real marble! It's been a hot minute since I've shared anything about our kitchen, but so much has changed lately! It's time I shared an update on one of the biggest additions yet, our laminate countertops and backsplash! When we designed the kitchen, we knew we'd need to splurge and save in different areas with the countertop and backsplash being one of them. But just because we needed to save in that area, didn't mean they needed to look cheap! Quite the opposite really! Laminate has come a long, long way from what it used to look like. These days, you can get patterns that look ...
Our New Back Patio
Late last summer we had our back concrete patio replaced. It was such an exciting and house transforming project! We did all the demo ourselves and even though it was hard work, it was so fun to see that beat up, cracked and crumbling patio removed and replaced with a much better and larger concrete patio! Before we had the patio replaced, I shared our inspiration and plans for the new patio, and then some of our progress with demo, but I realized I never shared the new, finished patio! Let's take a walk down memory lane and look back at where we started... Our Old Back Patio Not only was the patio small for the house, but it was pieced together, crumbling apart ...
Customizing Our Ikea Pax Dining Room Cabinet
Today I'm sharing how we customized our Ikea Pax dining room cabinet. It's the perfect way to add character to Ikea cabinets while staying on budget. Our kitchen is small. We don't have a ton of storage, and that's something our entire house lacks as well. Getting creative and adding places to store our items has been on my project list since we moved in. In order to help add storage space to our kitchen, we added an Ikea Pax cabinet to our dining room. It instantly solved the problem of adding more storage space to our kitchen, but it also stuck out like a sore thumb, not really blending into our kitchen. With our kitchen and dining room essentially one space, I really wanted the ...
New Garage Doors
Our New Garage Doors are installed and our exterior is looking better than ever! If you remember back when I shared our 2020 project goal list, adding new garage doors was at the top of our list. We worked on the exterior of our home so much last summer, and we made really great progress with new paint, windows, the addition of our front pergola, and all the landscaping we completed. The last really big item to finish things off, was having new garage doors installed. I've mentioned it time and time again, but the previous owners of this home really beat things up. They didn't take very good care of the house or property and the garage doors were just as much evidence of that as ...
DIY Staircase Makeover
Are you ready for a big transformation? Our DIY staircase makeover has made a huge difference for our home! If there's been one project that's been glaringly obvious that we need to finish, it's our stairs. When we were knee deep in demo'ing the house, we went through and removed all the old, super gross carpet, but other projects became more important and we ended up moving in with the stairs still in pretty rough shape. We've hated them, but we've dealt, just as anyone does when living in a fixer upper. With this project being one we wanted to complete this year, and the fact that it's been holding us up from finishing any base trim that connects to the stairs, we decided the ...
How To Install Wall Moulding
We've been doing some work in our master bathroom and it's coming along beautifully. When coming up with the design plan for this bathroom, I really wanted to add some extra character, especially with the bathroom being such a small space. Wall moulding was an essential part of my plan, and we just recently installed a few walls, with one more to go. Today though, I wanted to share our method on how to install wall moulding. It's such a beautiful way to add character to any space. How To Install Wall Moulding Before we get started, if you haven't caught up with progress in our master bathroom, you can read my last update here. This bathroom has come such a long ...
Five Tips For Living Through A Remodel
Living through a remodel isn't the easiest thing. We spent months working on our Willow House, making it livable, before we ever moved in. But even with all that time and hard work spent on making this house something we could move into, there were so many different items that would still need finished after we moved in. Now that we've lived here for over a year, we've both learned several lessons about what it's really like living through a remodel. Today, I wanted to share five tips for living through a remodel. It's not always as glamorous as what it's made out to be, but it is worth it! Five Tips For Living Through A Remodel Tip # 1: Be Patient I think it goes without ...
An Update On Our Master Bathroom
It's time I shared an update on our master bathroom! We've made such incredible progress, and here soon, I look forward to revealing the finished space! Before that happens though, we have a few things left to finish. Let's take a look at how far we've come! The last time I talked about our master bathroom, I shared our design plan for the room... And a few pictures of the different elements we're planning on using in the bathroom... Today though, I wanted to share just how much progress we've made in our master bathroom, and what we have left to do before the room is finished. Just to refresh your memory, here's a look back at what we started with... Here's the ...
Installing & Painting Our Interior Doors
Let's just take a minute to celebrate the accomplishment of installing and painting our interior doors! It's been a long road getting here, but it's such a sweet victory in having every single interior door installed! Let me just tell you, you'll never fully appreciate the function and beauty of a door until you've lived without them for nearly a year! Yes, a year! When choosing our interior doors, I knew I wanted something a little more traditional in style, but we also didn't want to order custom doors. We found our door style in stock at Lowes, and since we've slowly been adding them to each room for the last year or so, it worked best for us to be able to buy them when we needed ...
Master Bathroom Design Plan
I can't even explain how excited we are to start on our master bathroom remodel! It's been a project we've wanted to do, but held off from finishing while we prioritized other projects that needed done first. It's finally here though, and I've spent so much time working on the new floor plan for the bathroom, as well as the design plan for the space. Before I share the design plan, and the new layout, let's take a walk down memory lane and look back at where we started... The Master Bathroom Before: When we first bought the house, this room appeared to have been one of the only rooms in the house that had undergone some sort of an upgrade. Even with that said, the ...
Our Project Goals For 2020
Since we're still fresh into a new year, and baby girl will be joining us in July, Todd and I took the time to sit down and go over our house project goals for 2020. We have several spaces and areas we'd like to finish this year, so it felt right to sit down and work up a list so we have a good idea what we're looking at, and which projects we need to budget for. While living in a fixer upper, there's never a shortage of new projects that come up. We tackled so many big things last year... projects that really set the foundation for this house and the direction we see everything going. Now that the majority of those larger projects are finished (yay!), we get to add in all the fun ...
Designing And Buying Our Ikea Kitchen
I'm late in sharing this post, but better late than never, right? Designing and buying our Ikea kitchen was a new experience for us. We'd never went through the process of designing, creating and purchasing Ikea cabinets, and while it was definitely an experience, we're still glad we did it. When we first bought our Willow House, basically everything needed gutted. There really wasn't anything worth saving, and the kitchen cabinets were in really, really rough shape. We knew, just like with the rest of the house, the kitchen would be getting new everything. And because we needed to remodel the house on a budget, we'd be leaning on Ikea for the cabinets because of their solid ...
Four Reasons We Chose Carpet For Our Bedrooms
Since I recently shared the tutorial for installing our laminate flooring throughout the house, I wanted to also share the four reasons we chose carpet for our bedrooms rather than installing the laminate floors. To be honest, we thought long and hard about installing the laminate in our bedrooms as well, but in the end, carpet won out. I know there are so many people who prefer a hard surface flooring throughout their entire home, but that's just not us. Here's why. 1. Carpet Is Soft & Warm Underfoot One of the biggest deciding factors, was the fact that carpet is soft and warm underfoot. We enjoy stepping out of bed and landing on a soft, plush surface. Sure, we could ...
Painted Front Door Interior
There are a few existing things in our house that we're temporarily keeping until the time comes to upgrade and replace them... our front door and the stair hand rail being two of them. In order to stay and blend in, they both desperately needed painted. I'll share more about the handrail later, but when we painted our exterior, I went ahead and painted the exterior side of our front door as well. Since we were still knee deep in demo'ing out the inside of the house, I didn't spend the time painting the interior side, knowing it would get scuffed up. After we moved in, the interior side of our front door looked really out of place. I put it off for a little while, making it out to be a ...
How We Installed Our Laminate Floors
Picking out flooring for the new house was one of the very first things Todd and I started doing once we bought the house. Even though there was so much demo and other things we had to start in on, I wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to source flooring we liked. Today, I'm sharing all about our process in picking the flooring we chose, and how we installed our laminate floors! Affiliate links are provided below. Full disclosure here. Like most people, our goal was to find flooring that would be durable, but also reasonable in price so that we'd have money for all the other things this house needed in order for us to move in. We searched high and low to find the best ...
Building Our Front Pergola
Adding character to our tri-level home was one of the first projects I wanted to tackle. In order to make the outside match our inside, I knew we'd need to get creative and break the mold with transforming our traditional 1970's home. The idea of building our front pergola over the tri-level portion of the house didn't really come to me until a few months of owning the house. After months of driving up to the house and feeling bored with the exterior, I knew we'd need to add an extra layer of character that would transform the house from the labeled 1970's tri-level into something we'd love today. One day, as we were backing out of the driveway, I told Todd to stop the truck. After ...
We’ve Owned Our Home For One Year!
It's crazy to think we've owned our home for one year! Last year at this time we were signing the papers and getting keys. Right after that, literally that same day, I came up to the house and started picking out exterior paint colors. We've always had big plans for this house. From the first time walking through it, as dirty, dated and disgusting as it was, there was always potential. There was always a solid foundation we knew we could make even better. Because today marks such a big day, let's take a peek down memory lane and see just how far we've come in the first year of owning our home. Right after we bought the house, I walked through with my camera and took a video. I ...
Replacing Our Back Patio
I mentioned a few weeks ago when I shared all about our new windows that we were getting ready to replace our back patio. Like pretty much everything else with the house, the patio is in really rough shape. We have so many plans for the backyard, but before we can start on any of them, or the mountain of landscaping we have to do, the patio needs to be the first thing we change before moving forward. Even though we've repainted the house, installed a new roof, soffit, gutters and windows, we still have so much to do... as you can see! Replacing our back patio is the first step to really being able to start working on the back of the house. Here's what our existing patio ...
