Projects for 2021

Christy shared her goals for 2021 here so I guess today is my turn, though I admittedly have low aspirations. I feel like I am trying to head into the new year on the defensive rather than the offensive, and am mostly just praying for a quiet year without too much stress! I do, however, have a bunch of home projects going on so I will be staying busy, I thought I would share more about our upcoming projects today.

Last fall it became clear that we should make some adjustments to our home to accommodate the new living/learning/working situation most of us are in. My husband works for a major technology company and they aren’t going back to the office anytime soon, and my (non-college age) kids are both in virtual school at least several days a week. When we built this home I think we did a good job planning out the space as we needed it at that time, but we never anticipated all the time at home (together) that 2020 would necessitate.

This home included a home office for me to escape to and be productive during the day, you can see more in posts here and here. However, I started using this space less and less over the last year as I preferred to instead to be comfortable on my living room couch near the fireplace, especially once the holiday decor was up! This central location also gave me the ability to keep tabs on my kids throughout the day as they were in virtual school (and coming and going to the kitchen as kids tend to do) too. I found it easier to not be tucked down the hall away in the office out of the loop.

I didn’t want to take on major changes to our home right before the holidays but I started planning to switch things around as soon as Christmas was over. For the last two weeks, while we also relaxed over the break, I completely dismantled my home office. I also took down almost all our Christmas decor (except for the big tree seen above, it will come down later this week) and reorganized our basement storage room, something that always seems to need to happen before the decorations are stored again. I also overhauled my daughter’s room to create a new dedicated desk area for her and to create enough space for the gray settee that had been in my office. Finally, I also started setting up a new office space for me in our loft area. Suffice to say, our house pretty much has been in complete chaos for the last week!

I’m planning several posts about this transition, including more about creating a new, more masculine home office for my husband in my former space. He spends his day on conference calls so he needs a quiet space to work, and he’s probably ready to not be taking his calls in a blush pink office! A sidenote–we already had moved the mirror behind him as it was reflecting anyone walking down our hallway in his video calls, and we will be replacing that with artwork. Mirrors behind you on zoom calls=bad.

I hope to share all our progress over the next few weeks as I am sure we aren’t the only ones having to rethink our home spaces more for the long-term. I have already selected the paint and ordered my husband a new desk and desk chair so I will be putting together a post about all that next. Right now we are just waiting for the furniture to be delivered to get the space all finished up for him.

Also, as I mentioned I moved my office into our upstairs loft area, I recently showed this space with the blue and white tree I decorated for Christmas. I also showed this space when it was intended to be more of a teen hang out space, but for the most part our basement fulfills that function so this space wasn’t getting much use.

I am still working on storage solutions since my office held all our family files and all the craft supplies we’ve accumulated over the years, but with this space being more open I need to find ways to keep things looking neat and organized. Fortunately, there is a large closet off the space where I keep out of season decor (like throw pillows) so that will provide some storage, but I need to get more shelving etc. so that is also on my project list.

I also made some changes in my daughter’s room which always seems to be evolving; I posted HERE last fall about some changes we are planning to make in her space. She has already cooled a bit on the palm print wallpaper (good thing I didn’t race to order it!), and for now she is OK with the current gray, blush and gold color scheme. She wound up taking both of the smaller shelves that were in my office (the narrow IKEA shelves that I spray painted gold) for her room and I moved the gold etagere that had been in her room in my loft/office. As I mentioned, she now has the gray settee (which gives her a nice place to sit when she doesn’t have to be at her desk), but that did mean we will have to part with the hanging chair that was in her room. The chair was functioning more as a dumping ground for clothes recently anyway if we are being honest.

Finally, she has been using the desk you see above as a vanity so I wanted to get her a dedicated workspace for online classes. After searching through tons of options, we picked this one below. It should be here soon.

Phew! No wonder I am tired 🙂 We’ll be trying to get all this knocked out as soon as we can so we all have functioning work spaces sooner rather than later, so stay tuned for more in-progress and reveal posts as we get these rooms squared away.

We have some other projects on the horizon as far as house projects for this year. I have wallpaper waiting to go up in our powder room, but it was expensive so I am hesitant to try to install it myself, I am hoping I can find a local installer to handle it early this spring. I also need to finish off our dining room but that is falling lowest on the priority list, though I’d still like to work on it this year. Of course, once Spring arrives we have a ton of work to do as with a newly built home (even two years later) there is still much to be done to finish off the landscaping. While I hope we’re all released from our homebound state this year, at least we have plenty of projects to keep busy.