Another year is upon us and with it comes more DIY projects and home renovations! 2021 was a whirlwind of a year for us: we bought a home out of state, gutted all the flooring on move-in day, and started the process of a whole-home renovation, all while living, sleeping, unpacking, and working out of the house!

Now that the house is deemed ‘livable’ again (yay for floors!), I am so excited about all of the new projects that 2022 has in store for us.

There are four main large priority projects, along with a handful of smaller projects, on our project board for this year:

Guest Bathroom Renovation

We’re kicking off the year by finishing our guest bathroom mini-renovation. Before the holidays, we started this project by installing new floors, so now we need to complete this room with fresh paint, new fixtures, and new accessories.

Side note: when we purchased this home last May, the previous owners had carpet everywhere, and I mean everywhere – including the bathrooms (yuck!). We immediately ripped the carpet out of the entire house on closing day and have lived on subfloors since. I can’t say that I recommend only subfloors in your bathrooms, but I’ll definitely argue that carpet is 1,000 times more disgusting.

Perimeter Fencing

This one will be a quick and easy weekend project! When we moved in last summer, we put up a small fence for our dogs roughly the same size as our previous home’s backyard. Since we have three dogs who all love to run, we want to enlarge an area for them to have more room to stretch their legs. Our dream would be to have a split rail wood fence, but with the cost of materials and labor right now, we may just end up with t-posts.

Vegetable Garden

I am so excited about this project! Since we now live on three luscious acres of land (instead of a tiny plot in the city), we have ample space to build a proper vegetable garden.

The ultimate goal is to have a large, fenced-off, 30×40 garden area with:

• multiple raised garden beds,
• a small seating area to relax,
• a garden shed,
• a small greenhouse with a work table,
• and a chicken coop.

Since our dream garden is a huge task to tackle before spring, we will split it into phases.

The first phase will get us ready for the growing season:

• install a fence with gates to keep the dogs out,
• build and fill a couple of raised garden beds,
• and mulch the paths to keep the weeds at bay.

The rest of the garden plan will slowly happen over the next year, so we can take our time and enjoy the fruits of our labor (get it? hah!)

Rolling Workbench

So, this project was supposed to get done last fall during our garage makeover. Except, neither of those projects actually happened… whoops! However, to work on the office and master closet renovations, we will need a large work table to cut plywood sheets on. This is where a rolling workbench comes in! The plan is to build the table to hold both our table saw and miter saw so we can get those giant tools off the garage floor and out of the way.

This should be a simple weekend project, but you and I both know how simple weekend projects tend to go!

Home Office Renovation

Another major project this year will be renovating my home office. Right now, it’s just an open room with a desk and a small bookshelf shoved up against one wall making it “my office.” The rest of the space has been taken over by gym equipment and a random collection of items that should really be somewhere else. Since I work from home 100% remotely, I spend the majority of my day in my home office, and I desperately need to give it a considerable overhaul so I stay sane!

I plan to install full-length, built-in cabinetry on two sides of the room with ample storage space and a desk workstation to suit all of my needs. And of course, paint! Be on the lookout for the design plan for this space because it will be one you don’t want to miss!

Primary Bathroom Phase 1

This will be the last major project of the year that we will tackle, and it will most likely stretch into 2023 since it’s such a massive project. (And I don’t know about you, but every DIY project that happens during the holidays tends to stop in its tracks. Every. Time. Come on, who wants to turn their house into a war zone when there are cute decorations to put up and parties to host?!)

Our plan is to renovate our entire primary bathroom in phases.

Phase 1 will include:

• install new flooring (still living on subfloors in here),
• refinish the existing vanity area,
• demo and enlarging the toilet alcove to create a toilet room with a door,
• build and install a custom closet system for the master closet.

Phase 2 will include:

• demo the existing shower and tub
• build a much larger, two-person shower and a linen closet instead (No tub necessary for us!)

What’s next?

That pretty much wraps up our priority project list for 2022. Trying to be mindful and realistic about how long it will take us to finish a project tends to be a big guessing game. We try to be pretty conservative when selecting projects for the year and staying flexible since life does get busy and plans do change. Besides, who enjoys feeling bad about not getting all the projects done that you wanted to? We definitely don’t! So, selecting a small number of projects each year is key.

And who knows, if there’s some spare time left this year, we would love to work on a few other projects as well. These could include:

• sprucing up the front porch,
• painting our kitchen cabinets,
• or even starting on our laundry room refresh.

There may also be a couple of projects we started in 2021 and were put on the back burner because they are so boring… aka painting our baseboards and trim. I know some people enjoy painting, but I certainly do not! (Unpopular opinion, I know.)

Do you think we can get all our priority projects done this year? I’m guessing our Primary Bath project will start this year but definitely stretch into 2023, and that’s ok!