If you own your own home and you’ve made improvements you will have undoubtedly discovered that ‘homes’ are an ongoing project, never really “finished”.  When we moved into our home we knew it had our basic needs covered—3 bedrooms/2 bathrooms, kitchen, dining room, family room, living room and plenty of yard space to raise our 2 grown sons.

Photo courtesy of: Cottage Living Magazine

It also had harvest gold Formica (not that there’s anything wrong with that, right?), very old aluminum windows that barely opened and white shag carpet (yeah, white carpet and 2 boys, age 4 and newborn, you do the math).  As most young families,  we were operating on a shoe string budget but my husband agreed to let me tile the kitchen and replace the aluminum window with a wood bay window.  I remember like it was yesterday, when we finished those 2 pricey (at least to us) projects, my darling husband said, “Now the kitchen is pretty much done, right?”  Little did he know that the work had only just begun…we have made renovations large and small to the kitchen several times.

Not my kitchen--photos of my kitchen will come later

After living in our home for 28 years I marvel at 1) how time flies and 2) how once you’ve finished a remodeling job that seems like only yesterday, when its actually been 10 years and some components of the room have started to wear and need repair or replacement.

Is a home really ever finished? I don’t think so.  Maybe that is what’s fun about home ownership.  You can always find a little project to work on.  At least for those of us who thrive on feathering the nest, we enjoy the search for new fabrics, paint, wallpaper and the like.

I love the look of this library.

My current wish list includes refinishing the hardwood floors—which would involve moving out for a couple of days during the final stain/sealing process.  We would also have to board our 2 dogs and 1 cat, cha-ching$$$.  Overwhelming in scope right now, it will be on the list for a couple more years.

Putting new sod in the back yard—we currently have a mixture of may kinds of grass, some of which are actual weeds.

Madison agrees, we need new grass.

And finally, the one home improvement project on the ‘wish list’ that I should begin (since it’s more of a DIY kind of project) is to remove wallpaper from the library walls, replace the door casings (which haven never been replaced and are very unattractive), recover the sofa and paint the room.

What projects are on your list of things to do around the house and which one will you do first?