2021 Home Projects Recap

I though it might be fun to review all the work I did last year on the house, to gear up for my 2022 projects! Below are all the before and after pictures, though the entryway isn't quite the after it is now, because we've changed light fixtures.

Entryway

The entryway was my gateway drug into updating our house. In the before you can see that the walls were a dark beige and the floors were a rusty looking blue color (this picture is actually from the MLS listing for our house because I forgot to take a proper before picture when I started).

I  had never painted tile before, but figured this would be a good place to test it out, and ended up using a Rust-Oleum Home tile painting kit, in white. The painting was easy, but the top coat was harder than I thought it would be (it goes on clear, so it's hard to know if you've got the right coverage). I did 3 top coats (with dry time in-between) for extra durability given it's an entryway, and I went with white, given not many people use this space in general.

Now that a year has gone by, I can safely say that it's held up nicely! There aren't any cracks or chips in the paint, but I do clean the floor more often than I thought I would given ... well, it's white.

Dining Room

The dining room is definitely one of my favorite projects! It was the second room I tackled, and it needed A LOT of love.

In this room we painted everything the same white color I used in the entryway (Alabaster White, by Sherwin-Williams). We also swapped tables around (the black table had previously been in our kitchen, but was a better fit here) and I painted two pieces of furniture for the room (our buffet table and a pie safe, which aren't pictured here).

I carried over the same floating shelves in this room, which I used in our entryway (and actually used throughout the rest of the house), and ordered 3 giant Small Woods Portraits – and I LOVE them!

Sunroom

Our sunroom was by far the most tedious project in terms of painting. The room had extremely high ceilings, and was wood-planked with cracks – meaning that hand painting with rollers took FOREVER to get into every nook and cranny. For that reason, I finally caved in and bought a paint gun. The paint gun cut my paint time in half, and was able to get in between every small crevasse.

In addition to painting the walls and ceiling, I also painted the floors with a black, durable deck paint, bought a clearance carpet at Lowe's, hung 3 giant curtain rods and Edison Bulb outdoor lights.

This room is definitely the hangout spot on Friday nights during the early summer, and the propane heater/fireplace (which you can't see) makes this a fun room to hang out in during the winter too!

Basement Office

Our house is massive in size, and includes a fully finished basement, complete with a bedroom. The basement itself used to be a daycare, and I believe this portion of the basement was used as an office – so I continued to use it as an office.

There's really no getting around cinderblock in a basement, unless you want to hang drywall – and that was definitely not happening – so I ended up painting the entire room in Light French Gray (by Sherwin-Williams). I also used faux shiplap wallpaper on the far wall, to make the room less boring.

In addition to the updates to door and trim color, I also built a custom desk using wood storage cubes and two pieces of closet shelving (attached at the ends to the cube shelves).

The only downside to having a cute basement office in Michigan is that you really can't use it during the winter, because it's way too cold.

Primary Bathroom

The first floor bathroom is actually a shared bathroom between the primary bedroom and the rest of the main floor. It's nice to have the access to the bathroom from the bedroom, but I'm not really a fan of sharing my bathroom space with every guest in the house. Eventually, we'll build a powder room off the dining room, but that's definitely not a project that will happen anytime soon. For that reason, I decided to update our bathroom, to at least  give it the same vibes I am going for in the rest of the house.

In this room I painted the tile again, with the leftover tile paint I had from my entryway project. I also gave the walls a fresh coat of paint and tackled updating the vanity. I absolutely hate honey oak colored cabinets, so I painted the entire vanity in a navy blue and bought antique looking knobs on Amazon to replace the worn down ones that were previously installed.

We also hung those same floating shelves (which are not level, because I did it myself 😬), bought new shower curtains, installed a new mirror I bought secondhand in Ann Arbor, and bought a new light fixture.

Though this still isn't my dream bathroom... it's definitely in a much better state than it was before!

What's planned for 2022?

For 2022 my main goal would be to tackle the second level of the house and our kitchen. I've already started updating my oldest daughter's room, but the bedroom projects consist more or less of just adding fresh paint and then painting all the trim white.

The kitchen, however, is another beast of a project.

I made a few updates to it last year, to wrap the peninsula in shiplap wallpaper, replace the hardware, and paint the backsplash (it used to have pears and other fruit on every other tile), but it's still covered in honey oak cabinets and has white formica counter tops. WHITE FORMICA. If you're obsessed with bleach and cleaning like myself, you can already guess these are now tinted yellow.

The plan for the kitchen will be to paint all the cabinets white, and attempt to paint the countertops, to give them a faux marble look. I've watched about 100 hours of YouTube video on how to DIY this ... and we're going to give it a try. For $100 of product, in an effort to avoid buying a new countertop that would be around $3-$5k, I'm willing to take the risk. Worst case scenario it looks like shit, which is no different than where we are now.

Anyway, we'll see how it all turns out!