Home Makeover Coming Up!

I can’t believe it’s been a year since we packed up the last of our things and moved from New Mexico to Colorado. For the most part, the days go quickly. I have a house full of busy little ones five days a week and they do keep me hopping. I do manage to find time to fit in the occasional home makeover.

As much as I love having a home daycare, I am pretty tired by the end of the day. I am fifty-three years old and I believe I’m starting to feel like it! My energy runs out before my to-do list is complete most days. I’ve learned to slow down a little bit when my sore back or the arthritis in my hands and feet remind me that I need to. I’m also better about asking for help. Mostly, I’ve come to realize that I can’t get it all done right now and that is perfectly okay!

Big DIY Plans

Soon, I’m going to be tackling some big home improvement projects. I do so love a good home makeover on a budget! I’ve got some major plans for the east side of our home. We didn’t do much to the rooms on the east side of the house when we first moved in, and focused more on the west side where the daycare is to have everything ready for my daycare license. The east end didn’t get a whole lot of love. But it’s going to, very soon!

Our daughter and her two children who live with us will be moving to their own place soon (probably in the next couple of weeks), so that will leave a bedroom, the sunroom, a bathroom and a very small room we had used for a TV/playroom available.

Since the end of 2023, I’ve made over my bedroom closet and I’ve almost finished giving our pantry a makeover. I started a YouTube channel and I’ve shared videos about those projects over there.

I still have a little bit to do on my pantry makeover. I have a terrible habit of nearing the end of one project and then starting a new one and never finishing the first! But I’ve promised myself I am not starting on a new major project until I am all finished with the pantry.

Grampy got me this sign for the pantry door for Valentine’s Day.

Bathroom Makeover…Doing the hardest project first!

As soon as I finish the pantry, I’ll be doing a major makeover of our second bathroom. It’s in pretty rough shape. It has the original 1972 harvest gold bathtub and sink, and yellow sunflower linoleum to match. There are some repairs I’ll need to do, but they are all things we can do ourselves, or maybe with the help of a son-in-law or two. The bathroom is also the laundry area and has a stackable washer and dryer, which I really like.

Here is the current bathroom flooring…

I created an collage of photos on Canva of the things I’ll be using for the bathroom makeover. I’m shopping Facebook Marketplace, our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore and clearance items to try to make it a budget-friendly project. It’s easy to get carried away with all the pretty things! I’ve got a rather large wish list on Amazon.

Pretty soon I’ll be removing the old medicine cabinet and vanity and replacing them, painting the walls, replacing the flooring and hopefully fixing (and not replacing) the bathtub. I think it’s going to be beautiful! (Or at least a really big improvement.)

This project will definitely be a test of my DIY skills. I’ll have Grampy to help with things like electrical and plumbing and lifting heavy things. I’ll get to do the fun things like planning and painting. I expect this project to take several weeks or even months. I will only have evenings and weekends to work on it. I’ve become pretty good at chipping away at a home makeover bit by bit, using little pockets of time here and there.

When the bathroom is complete, I’ll move on to the other three rooms I’d like to update: the bedroom, sunroom and playroom. They will be much simpler. I’ll be doing things like repainting, improving the storage areas, rearranging furniture and hanging new curtains. These rooms will be less expensive to do, and will be able to be done more quickly.

Incredibly blessed!

I love our little home, with its charm, character and quirkiness! I feel that each improvement we make is a way we show our thankfulness for having this home. This is the first time in our 27 years of marriage that we have owned our own home and land. We had some freedom to do improvements where we lived before, but there were a lot of limitations, our yard space was small and it was not the place we wanted to live forever. It’s different at this house. It needed (and still needs) lots of updating/repairs/maintenance, but each thing we do just helps us love it more because it is ours.

I don’t mind that I will be doing these home makeover projects slowly. That will give me more time to shop for budget-friendly and used materials, rather than going out and buying everything new. In my next post, I’ll share the things I’ve purchased so far, as well as their cost.

See you later!