After 9 years, I still love our house. I don't have that itch to browse local real estate listings on my iPad late at night. While houses on the north side of town are much bigger... we love our location. We are close to trails and parks, playgrounds and our pool, sports fields and only a mile from downtown. We love our neighborhood and neighbors. This house is far from perfect and often feels really cramped with two kids... but this house has our heart. And when things feel too tight, I usually just remind myself that it's not the walls closing in on us, but the piles of stuff. Organizing, editing and donating goes a long way.
Truly the only room that has me grumbling is the kitchen. And it's as good as it can be for the space - we've maximized efficiency, it's organized. But we don't have a dishwasher. And we can't have one until we can 1) move the half bath and 2) redo the kitchen. And if we're moving the half bath, that would require a small addition, so we might as well add in closets on the first floor as well, which would address my other pet peeve with the house.
The upstairs is in a good place, minus a few details like the upstairs tub needing to be re-glazed again soon (it has a lifespan of 7-10 years) and needing to update the boys bedrooms on a rolling basis to accommodate them as they grow and their interests change.
The dining room is a little crowded, acting as the dining room, the office, homework area, craft and project space, overwintering plant station, back door station. But we're making it work. The playroom was professionally organized with a thousand containers and we just have to maintain it (with great effort). The living room is the best it's ever been with maximized storage, the sectional and built-in bookcases. It is my favorite room in the house (which is good since we spent most of our time in there!).
Year 9 Projects:
- *Garden Redo (ongoing)
- Garden Redo Project: Fencing
- Garden Redo Project: Demo of old garden
- Planted lots of flowers
- Added low fencing around every garden bed to protect it from Morgan Mayhem
- Moved chicken wire to wood fence to stop Morgan from digging
- Massive reorganizing of all spots around the house
- Reorganizing of the basement (still going)
- Painted living room pillow covers
- *New modular sectional for the living room with removable covers and storage ottoman
- New TV stand in the living room with wool baskets
- Updated the garden path with slates
- Painted the foundation gray
- *Replaced the rotted porch railing with vinyl
- Added lots of perennials in the fall for the garden
- My amazing sister got married in Cape Cod
- We went on a family cruise in the Caribbean
- *Styled the living room bookcases and put out our new rug
- Battled Morgan Mayhem in the garden all summer (digging! destruction!)
- *Updated the patio to be an oasis - shade, under deck lattice, new furniture, flowers
- Planted the raised bed garden
*Starred projects are the big massive projects we tackled
This year I'm planning on... finishing mulching and finishing the raised bed garden project, then repainting the garage for sure. I'm planning on making some updates to the boys' bedrooms (they are constantly changing). I would also like to finish reorganizing the basement, figure out attractive but efficient storage for the backdoor station in the dining room, have Mike finally finish our kitchen lighting and patch the ceiling, fix the door frame on the side door and the side garage door, and maybe even squeeze in working on our backyard drainage issues. I always have more plans than time...!
Here's to year 10!
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