Elsie’s 2022 Project List – A Beautiful Mess

What could be nicer than creating a project list for the new year? I love making a project list for my home at the beginning of each year.

At the end of the year it always kind of changes and evolves (and I never get it all finished!), But at the end of the year I’m usually surprised at how much we’ve finished.

Here you can see the goals of the past year and here the annual review of the past year. In this post I share my project list for 2022 and my decision not do this year too.

Here is my mood board so you can get an idea of ​​the general mood and color family that I want to stay in.

My top priorities are that the rooms feel super cozy and that they are versatile for my love of holiday decorations, theme parties for my kids and changing accent colors according to mood or season.

Input. If you follow us on IG you will have seen that I am well into this renovation. To a lot Headache, we decided to close our entrance on the second floor.

By adding this new ceiling / floor we got an entrance that is much easier to decorate and a small bonus room above the entrance (more on this below).

We are currently adding some moldings to this room and planning a wallpapered ceiling. Oh, and we only chose herringbone for the entrance when we replaced the tile in November.

Living room. When you enter the house, this room is directly on your left. We add internals and paint it a mood color (it’s not a dark color, but it feels moody to me compared to what I usually choose).

We originally wanted to keep the fireplace, but it was damaged during the tile demonstration and could no longer be recovered. In the end we designed a new fireplace that I love even more. It has a seat and feels really nice for the size of the room.

So everything ends well. I can’t wait to show you this finished space!

Dining room. This room is being renovated. We added a wall with a domed opening to make it less open (but still a lot open).

I decided to make bookshelves around the dining table and add an artificial fireplace. There will be a window seat under the window.

This one is a little harder to imagine, but in my head it’s AMAZING and I can’t wait for you to see it.

I was inspired by a restaurant we ate at once that had bookshelves with books and small tea lights all over the place. I think it will be so cozy and fun to decorate.

Powder bathroom. Aug, finally! This has been out of service for months since we did the hardwood floors.

It was surprisingly very difficult for me to design. I haven’t chosen the wallpaper and color yet, but I’ve chosen everything else. It will be cute and blend in very well with the rest of the rooms.

Art space. I have to praise Collin for doing so much nice job in this room before leaving. He expanded the shelves to touch the ceiling and they are now both nicer and more functional.

It is currently full to the brim with furniture as we are renovating the other rooms. I haven’t had access to it in months and really miss it.

It has some drywall holes that need mending (here’s a hack for mending a drywall hole) and needs a little decoration, but it’s nearing completion.

Movie room. Another one that’s SO close. All I really need to do is tweak the art and get a new coffee table and we can rotate this space. Cant wait to share it with you – it should be ready by next month.

Last year I decided to buy a pottery wheel and kiln. I was planning on putting them in our garage and my husband really wanted me to use this little built-on shed instead.

I hesitated because there was no water pipe and no easy access to our house.

I spent so much time and money getting this room ready in 2021. Aside from buying a stove and a wheel, we had to add a sink (and they had to turn the faucet into a frost-proof outdoor faucet).

I had to get a new roof on the shed because it was leaking and I had to open new doors because the doors had no windows before and it wasn’t weatherproof.

All of that is finally done and now I’m just waiting for an appointment to install the oven and vent. We are so close! By the way, I’m really glad Jeremy talked me out of the garage now.

Landing and hidden space. At the top of our stairs is a small hallway that leads to our bedroom (as well as the hallway to the other rooms).

Then where you see the rail here, the new floor has been added over the entrance. So now we have that little extra room connected to that landing. It’s a small room, basically a large closet.

I bought a vintage closet from Etsy and it will become the door to the hidden room. We decided to make it a kids library.

One of my biggest educational goals for the next 10 years is to encourage my children to become readers, and I think this will be a good step in that direction.

Master bedroom. Our bedroom is really big and weird. When we moved in, I freaked out because all of our furniture looked shrunk. We certainly had problems with scaling. It took me a long time to come up with ideas for the best layout as it looks more like a square shape than a rectangle.

We don’t have enough space for a complete living room furniture (sofas, chairs, coffee table), but clearly more furniture is needed than just the bed and the chest of drawers. I would say it was probably the hardest room in our ’90s puzzle.

I’m excited to show you what I have planned, but I keep my fingers crossed that we can make it feel the way we want it to. I’m the most nervous in this room.

Other plans: A few more rooms that we have on our list as either “Hell Yeah” or “Maybe” this year are: Jeremy’s office (it’s almost finished but needs a pesky drywall patching job that would disrupt its work), Master Bathroom (if our contractor can meet our budget we will probably get started this spring!)

The other thing I’m thinking about is adding a playhouse to our back yard. We really loved our last one and if we make it I don’t want to wait too long as kids grow up fast. On the fence with that.

What’s not our list: I can’t believe it, but we decided not to do our big kitchen renovation this year. The reason is that if we wanted to finish it by the end of summer we would have to start now to be on schedule.

Since we’ve just renovated over the holidays, I’m not in the right head to plan my dream kitchen this season and I don’t want to regret it. So we decided to wait for this project until 2023.

If all goes well, we will complete our renovations and I will spend next fall and Christmas enjoying our new spaces, using my functional 90s kitchen to bake Christmas cookies and planning our dream kitchen.

Right now I think January 2023 would be a good time to start the demo. It’s a huge project that will leave us without a kitchen or laundry room for months, and I just don’t feel that for 2022.

Plus, as I looked through our list of everything we’re up to this year, I felt we already have more than enough renovation work for the blog, so it can’t hurt to have more time for the future. I don’t want to overcrowd or rush my schedule as it really is a dream project.

I am very excited to share this year’s renovations with you! Which room are you most looking forward to? xx- Elsie