It’s been seven months since we’ve moved in and I’m back to provide an update on the same list of items I drafted before we moved in. Let’s take a look at how we’re doing on the new house to-do list, shall we?
New House Essentials from February 2019
Living Room Couches and End Tables(2 months)Laundry Room Shelving and Storage(2 months)Kitchen Table and Chairs(2 months)Deadbolt for Basement and Bedroom Doors(2 months)New Office Chair(7 months, also got a permanent desk!)Mudroom Bench and Storage(7 months)Rest of Living Room Decor(2 months)Lay Patio(7 months)Put up a Fence(7 months)- Purchase Patio Furniture (UPDATE: got lounge chairs, no dining yet)
- Build Bonfire Pit
- Plant Privacy Landscaping in Backyard
Buy Lawnmower and Gardening Equipment(7 months)- Vanity for Master Bedroom
Fitness Equipment Storage for Loft(2 months)- Identify garden area (and possibly start planting this spring)
Entry Hallway Frame Gallery(7 months)- Garage Tool Bench
The ‘Slight Changes of Plans’ Items from last New House To-Do Update
- Paint Living Room and Master Bedroom
- All painting is on hold until our 1-year meeting with the builder to get nail pops and chips in drywall fixed under warranty. If we painted first we’d have to paint over any patching and by then the colors could be off due to sun fading, etc. We want to wait and do it right the first and only time.
Fun fact: new houses take about a year to ‘settle’ into the foundation and as result there are occasional nail pops. Plus, they’re willing to fix a few other blemishes that happened over the first year, so it’s well worth the wait!
- All painting is on hold until our 1-year meeting with the builder to get nail pops and chips in drywall fixed under warranty. If we painted first we’d have to paint over any patching and by then the colors could be off due to sun fading, etc. We want to wait and do it right the first and only time.
- Purchase Formal Dining Table, Plates and Settings
- As I touched on in the 2-month check in, we aren’t making our dining room area a dining room and therefore, aren’t looking for formal dining settings right now. Our kitchen table is huge and we can always set up an additional table the once per year we’d need it. Saves money on a set and decor and it’s super easy to decorate a folding table to mask that it’s not a permanent piece. Win-win.
- As I touched on in the 2-month check in, we aren’t making our dining room area a dining room and therefore, aren’t looking for formal dining settings right now. Our kitchen table is huge and we can always set up an additional table the once per year we’d need it. Saves money on a set and decor and it’s super easy to decorate a folding table to mask that it’s not a permanent piece. Win-win.
- Build Kevin’s Basement Office
- Since Kevin has a solid upstairs office right now we’re focusing our time, energy and money in different projects. We’ll eventually be finishing the basement but there is no foreseeable time frame yet. The Insta fam will be the first to know when it’s time though. Stay tuned!
Mudroom Bench and Storage
We went above and beyond on this one. Kevin’s mom was getting rid of a big 4×4 cubby from Ikea that we gladly took and use daily in our mudroom. Target carries the standard 12×12 drawers that go in almost every unit like this so I picked up four in grey.
Taking it one step further, I did a little research and saw Ikea makes drawers and doors you can install and got a few. They’re perfect for hiding sunscreen, bug spray and other eye sore-y essentials. The drawers are perfect for our puppy poop bags and pet essentials. I highly recommend these storage solutions if you have a handy man to install and a big cubby to put them in!
The next project will be getting some more decor in this space. It’s functional but it’s not beautiful. This wall especially really needs something on it to pop!
New Office Chair (and Desk)
My new chair is perfect. I wanted a white one to avoid too many dark colors in my office and this one was the perfect price. It’s actually an Amazon Basic, which for those who don’t know is essentially Amazon’s generic brand of items and they’re usually a great bargain and good (or better) quality.
My only knock would be I still use a back support pillow, but that’s with almost any chair I could find. I like to sit up very straight and tall when working so this does the trick and I already had it laying around! Note: I’ve since switched to this lighter pink lumbar pillow to soften the look. I highly recommend it! Also comes in black.
Lay Patio and Purchase Patio Furniture
We built a patio! We also got a little bit of furniture, but more importantly, we mulched around the entire perimeter of the new slab of concrete we’ve been hanging out on. Still working on finding that more permanent dining table and chairs for the space, but for now we have a little cafe table and three chairs to allow us to dine on the veraaaanda. #fancy
Buy Lawnmower and Gardening Equipment
Full disclosure: Bickell does not love this as much as he looks like he does…we just caught him at the right time 🙂
But Kevin does love this as much as Bickell looks he does! He rides happily every weekend, mowing the yard and making it look more beautiful than it already was. Here’s to not having as many weeds next year, though.
Entry Hallway Frame Gallery
THIS. This beauty.
Even Kevin remembers that I’ve been talking about making this a reality since before we closed on the house. We have a beautiful, long hallway wall that needed some love and we’ve done well by adding in a few different sections of decor, including this gorgeous gallery right in our entryway.
The key is to wait for frames this big to go on sale. They were originally $42.99 at Michael’s and I found them half off! Can’t beat $21.50 for a beautiful 16×20 frame that even came with the 11×14 mat. Total bargain. And would you believe I printed these 11×14 poster sized prints at Walgreens? They were about $8/photograph after my 25% off coupon, but I’d suggest waiting for an even better coupon. You could always grab the photos before the frames, too. Just keep them somewhere safe, and this way you take advantage of a good coupon while it’s hot.
Any new items or projects?
Oh, you better believe it…
Dining Area Hutch – On the hunt
I’m dying for a sweet little hutch for the one wall in our dining area that backs up to our powder room. It’s kind of hard to hang things on it because there’s a lot of plumbing behind that wall so I’m using that as my motivation to a find no-hang decor…enter: a cute farmy-but-modern hutch. Will keep y’all posted on Insta as things develop on that front. *fingers crossed*
Kitchen Island and Table Lights – Installed
We had our kitchen island and table lights swapped out! The counter was verrrry inexpensive. About $80 for the two lights and my father-in-law helped Kevin install them for free dollllla (#rightprice). Our kitchen table light was a little more involved. The builders (dumbly, in my humble opinion) put the kitchen table electrical box waaaaay too close to the sliding door, so we had it moved away by about 4 feet. We had a professional do that so as to ensure it was done properly and to-code. That, plus the cost of the light ended up being a bit more than the island lights, but we really saved on those, so it balanced.
Next up in the kitchen will be hardware. Pulling drawers open by their sides is getting old fast. 🙂
The Drywall Saga – Complete
I shared on Insta stories our whole saga with wet spots on our ceiling, drywall holes and insulation work. The pictures and videos painted a pretty accurate picture of just how awful that type of work can be. Thankfully, it was all covered under our home warranty (standard with new construction) but the whole ordeal took about two months from wet spot to resolution. I’ll be sharing that in full detail in its own post in the next few weeks.
What About Remaining New House To-Do Items?
Oh, they’ll get done. But it might be next year for most of them, particularly the outside ones. There’s no point in building a garden in a hurry, or an outdoor dining set, when we won’t be using them much more this season anyway.
Additionally, we aren’t in a huge hurry to plant privacy landscaping until we know there will be people behind us (have I ever mentioned we back up to a completely open crop field at the moment? It’s the BEST.). The second we see any machines out there laying down infrastructure, we’ll be hitting the nursery. Until then, we’ll be gazing at fireflies in an unobstructed open field each night.
We have some lofty ideas about a garage tool bench situation, but for now, we actually have a really solid setup. I’d almost even consider it about done until we need our third stall for anything bigger than our riding mower. It’s not the big built-in situation we’d imagined, but we have other priorities and have already made a great storage situation with well-organized wire shelving.
Stay tuned for the next update
I’ll be back next to check in around the 1-year mark to let you guys know where we’re at. Hoping I have all sorts of goodies to share! Until then, catch us working hard over on Instagram.
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