Year 3 Home Renovations Update

Where did 3 years go? I’ll have to dig up the original house projects list we made to laugh at our expectations versus reality. It’s easy to think about all the big projects that you want to do in a house, but the little projects add up quickly! For example, I had no idea how much time and energy (and money tbh) our yard would take. Colin would want me to mention the amount of prep work that goes into every project. You can’t just start taking down walls. We have learned so these past 3 years and it makes me excited to keep going! Below is the list we made at the beginning of the year compared to what we accomplished in our year 3 home renovations.

2022 House Projects List

1. Kitchen Renovation
2. Guest Bathroom Renovation
3. Vegetable Garden
4. Expand Garden
5. New Roof
6. Improve Front Garden
7. Finish our bedroom
8. “Customize” guest bedroom closet
9. Rebuild staircase
10. Repaint Three Seasons Room

Another year without a kitchen renovation. I can’t deny how bummed I am about the kitchen progress, but it does help to look at this list and see everything we did manage in 2022! The biggest project this year was our guest bathroom renovation, but everything else on the list took a lot of time and energy as well. I also feel like we set ourselves up to have a very productive year in 2023. Let’s take a look at some before and after pictures of our year 3 home renovations.

Guest Bathroom Renovation

This bathroom was part of the Spring One Room Challenge. If you want more pictures and details, check out this post. We learned so much from our first bathroom renovation and I am proud to say that we absolutely LOVE this room. As always, we DIY’ed as much as we could, from the custom vanity to the tile floors. Plumbers replaced all the pipes and our neighbor helped with the electric, but everything else was done by myself and Colin. It is the happiest little bathroom now!

Vegetable Garden

Cucumbers. So. Many. Cucumbers. When we ran out of pickling jars we started leaving them in a bin in front of the house for neighbors to take. We also had an abundance of tomatoes that got eaten straight off the bush, turned into salsas and sauces, and shared with neighbors. It feels wrong to take any credit for their success since all I did was stick them in the ground. And not everything did so well. The basil was growing well until it all got a disease, the bell peppers only produced 1 pepper per plant, and the other herbs were dominated by the tomatoes and cucumbers. But I learned a lot! Next year we will be ready with a better plan.

Expand Garden

Colin was not pleased about this project, but I had a vision. The rest of our yard was wrapped by garden beds and I wanted to finish this spot to see less of the neighbors fence. We rented a sod cutter, leveled the ground, and filled the space with plants. We bought a Lavender Twist Redbud tree, my mom gave us two bushes that were in the wrong spot in her yard, and the rest of the space was filled with grasses and perennials. The after picture was from May and the area has grown in quite a bit since then. I’m one step closer to making the whole backyard a garden 🙂

New Roof

The roof was a completely unexpected project in our year 3 home renovations. The old roof very clearly needed to be replaced, but we were trying to hold out until 2023. When the kitchen renovation got pushed back we started considering a new roof this year. One massively expensive project at a time, right? The cards were in our favor for this project because Chicago experienced a huge hailstorm in June. That meant contractors were prowling the neighborhood trying to sell new roofs. I still don’t understand the logistics, but our insurance company paid for a new roof. Like free free because of the extensive hail damage. We worked with an amazing contractor and now we have a beautiful and safe roof. Thanks, universe.

Improve Front Garden

This project started back in February when I was daydreaming about warmer weather and being out in the garden. The front yard had a strip of grass between the house and the walkway that was patchy and hard to mow. I thought a little garden would look so much better in the spot. Fast forward to April and I was smothering the grass to prepare the area for plants. I also tore out the brick retaining wall, but that’s a story for a different blog post. Once the grass had died, I added a bunch of mushroom compost to the soil and planted a mix of grasses, perennials, and bushes. The new plants are still small, but I am excited to see how they fill in throughout the next few years.

Rebuild Staircase

I can’t accurately express how much time Colin spent researching and preparing for this project. At one point he told me it was all he thought about and that it kept him up at night. So I’m very happy for him that it is almost complete. Everything is structurally sound, but we haven’t put on new treads, banisters, etc. The pretty details. It will likely stay unfinished throughout the kitchen renovation. I’m not going to get into details about why we rebuilt the stairs because it deserves its own blog post. It’s all part of our grand kitchen renovation and it feels amazing to have phase 1 completed!

That’s it for our year 3 home renovations! As always, thank you for following along with us. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you all for reading the blog and encouraging us along the way. We love sharing our projects and home with you. Year 4 is gearing up to be a big one. The kitchen renovation has already (finally) started! Look out for a blog post outlining the projects we hope to complete. Our plan is to get started right away in the new year, so lots of updates are coming soon! And for those interested, here are our year 1 and year 2 lists.