Our First Year of Homeownership: Before-and-Afters of Our Favorite Projects

This time last year we were frantically throwing random crap that we don’t need but also for some reason won’t throw out into the final ‘miscellaneous’ box in our rental before we packed up the truck and went a whole three blocks to the house we’d just bought.

It’s wild to think that we’ve been homeowners for a whole year already, but when we think back, we’ve packed a lot of projects into that time.

It’s kind of like when you read those mindblowing Buzzfeed-type lists about historical events that are connected, like the fact Marilyn Monroe and the Queen were born the same year, or that woolly mammoths were alive when the pyramids were built.

Yes, okay obviously to a much lesser extent but just let us have this one.

We wouldn’t have called our house a fixer upper, but we’ve loved the process of making it our own and learning how to use power tools along the way. Pro tip if you’re embarking on a DIY journey – take as many before pics as you can from every angle! We didn’t take nearly enough.

Here’s a room-by-room breakdown of our Year One projects:

On This Page

Living room

The obvious starting point, the living room when we moved in was a bold navy color. We actually quite like that navy color in general but maybe for an accent wall, not the whole room. It made it look darker and smaller than it needed to and a fresh coat of paint dramatically changed things in there.

Year one:

Fresh coat of paint
Fireplace mantel (check out our DIY how-to of that project here)
Fireplace paint
Floating shelves (DIY post on that one coming soon)

Year two goals:

New ceiling fan
Ceiling/trim paint
Paint interior side of the exterior door
Entryway bench

Biggest lessons: Alex isn’t great at painting; it’s hard to get paint splotches off of hardwood floors; a good stud finder is important.

Kitchen

Oh boy, we love this kitchen more than most things. It was in ROUGH shape when we moved in – it had ZERO drawers. Like none. Nowhere to put your cutlery or spatula, your Ziploc bags or the random collection of things that don’t have homes like batteries and skewers.

This room has the most dramatic before and afters by a long shot, but we can’t take much credit because a contractor did much of the work on this one. We budgeted in a kitchen renovation when we bought the house because, aside from the concrete backyard, the kitchen was the least functional part of the whole place.

Year one:

Removed the wall separating kitchen and dining room, new cabinets and countertops, new dishwasher, sink and oven (done by a contractor)
Built a pantry with shelving off the kitchen
Installed a giant DIY chalkboard
Installed open shelving

Year two:

New fridge (if the budget allows!)
Built-in wine rack above the fridge
Nothing else, this room is perfection to us (except the floors but let’s be honest that’s an undertaking we’re not feeling up to)

Biggest lessons: Natural lighting is everything and a cutlery drawer is a must-have.

Dining room

Kind of a non-event of a room in that it’s mostly a pass-through from the living room to the rest of the house but opening up the kitchen wall made SUCH a difference.

Year one:

Fresh coat of paint
New light fixture

Year two:

Build a bar cart

Biggest lessons: Deep purple/brown is not a great color choice for a wall.

Mudroom/sunroom

This is another pretty dramatic makeover. This room originally had just a really deep storage bench (like, 3- or 4-foot deep, not very practical because you literally had to climb inside to get anything from the back) and nothing else.

It’s the most direct entrance from the driveway and goes into the living room, but also had a door going into the master bedroom. We knew we wanted to close that door to the bedroom off because it was pretty unnecessary, and to use that wall as a more traditional mudroom.

It’s made it so much more functional.

Year one:

Painted the whole room
Fresh coat of trim paint
Removed storage bench
Built coat rack and shoe cubby storage unit
Closed off bedroom/mudroom doorway
Built upper cabinets and installed lower storage cabinet
Made newer, smaller storage bench
Made a built-in office desk
New light fixture

Year two:

Figure out flooring plan, maybe tile paint or stencil?
Fix exterior door (it gets kind of ‘stuck’ and maybe isn’t hanging straight)
Ceiling paint/refinish attic entrance

Biggest lessons: SO MANY. Old houses can’t be trusted to be level; sometimes people tile over a floor without removing baseboards because they apparently hate the future owners; measure more times than you think you’ll need; hinges are the devil’s prop.

Master bedroom

This room has the accent wall of our dreams. It was pretty bold to go with a navy/black plank wall in here (especially after we’d spent months shit-talking the navy in the living room) but in a bedroom it made it more cosy and more importantly, gave us one blank solid wall to put our bed up against.

Year one:

Made an opening from the bedroom to the bathroom
Built a barn door and installed it
Spackled three of the four walls to remove paneling look (here’s a how-to on spackling a wall to make it look like drywall)
Installed our plank accent wall (DIY here)
Fresh coat of paint on walls and ceiling

Year two:

Re-do master closet (it’s very small and dark, and we think we could probably take some space from the hall closet on the other side)

Biggest lessons: Good things can come when you just spontaneously remove trim and force yourself into a DIY. Bold can be beautiful.

Master bathroom

This one was kind of a quick-fix right after we moved in, but we’re hoping in year two to tackle it more head-on.

Year one:

Painted the vanity
Framed the builder grade glued-on mirror
Opened walkway between master bedroom and bathroom
New washer/dryer
Fresh coat of paint
New vanity hardware
Spraypainted light fixture black

Year two:

New vanity (or at least replace vanity top)
New mirrors
Painted floor tile (or retiling, unsure how confident in ourselves we are for that mammoth task yet)
Redo the linen closet (open it out, make built-in cabinets)
Make a laundry nook (shelving, some kind of storage)

Biggest lessons: Paint makes a huge difference when you don’t yet have the money for a full renovation.

Guest bathroom

This room will always hold good memories for us. I mean, not good good because it was hard and we hated ourselves about 157 times throughout the process, but I was in the first trimester of pregnancy so we made it over with thoughts of our little one splashing around in there one day. It was also our first room makeover because we did it about two months into living here, so we felt so accomplished when it was done.

Year one:

Fresh coat of paint
Tiled the shower surround
Installed new shower head, tub spout etc
Installed new sink faucet
Spray painted light fixture black
Replaced toilet roll holder
Hung towel hooks
Hung shelves above toilet
Had fixed glass shower panel installed

Year two:

Tile stencil the floor
New vanity

Biggest lessons: You can figure out how to do most things from YouTube, but at the same time, some things are best left to the pros. See our guest room makeover post for the great glass explosion of 2019.

Exterior

By far the biggest change in the exterior this year was the backyard. Having two dogs, we knew we needed that all-concrete backyard gone immediately for pooping purposes. We had a contractor do that concrete removal and lay sod and it brought out such an obsessive part of Alex I didn’t know existed. (I never would’ve imagined there would be so much to hear about lawn aeration and centipede grass).

The backyard is probably our most anticipated project in the next year. We have a vision, trust us.

Year one:

Had concrete removed and sod put down
Built outdoor table (the free plans are linked here)
Removed weeds and overgrowth from garden beds
Removed hedges from front yard and replaced with a new garden bed
Painted mismatched peeling porch
Removed wrought iron railings
Wrapped porch columns

Year two:

Lay a grill pad
Build a dog washing station
Build a slat privacy wall behind the outdoor table
Buy Alex the lemon tree he’s been asking for since we went to Italy on our honeymoon
Refinish the patio furniture
Make a garden hose holder

Biggest lessons: Working outside in the Louisiana heat is no joke; we have no idea how to make a successful garden.

Here are some rooms that, while we haven’t done much with them yet, we have big plans for in year 2.

Hallway

Hallways get so overlooked. We didn’t do a whole lot and don’t have a whole lot to do, but we don’t want it to get a complex so we’ll include it.

Year one:

Installed photo ledges made out of scrapwood (here’s a DIY on it)

Year two:

Replace boob light
Reconfigure hallway closet (currently it’s pantry overflow)

Biggest lessons: Don’t throw away your scrapwood.

Guest bedroom

Originally a very, umm, bold teal color, we painted the guest room a more neutral grey late last year. We wanted to make it a little nicer before our families came a few months later when Eleanor was born but then coronavirus happened. So, yeah, you know how that went.

Year one:

Fresh coat of paint
Painted ceiling, baseboards and trim

Year two:

Build a bench for guests to sit their stuff on
Build corner shelves near the doorway
Convert an unused wall into a mini home gym (once we’re back to working in an office and it isn’t a makeshift pandemic home office)

Biggest lessons: Always let the paint dry before judging the color, AND keep painting a room even if one wall in you’re thinking it looks awful.

Nursery

Ahh, the nursery. Originally when we moved in it was going to be a craft/extra room but when we found out we were having a baby it was quickly pegged as the nursery. It’s got a lot of natural light, was already a neutral white color and was far back from the street so not very noisy.

Year one:

Installed book shelves on wall
Built open shelves above the dresser from scrapwood

Year two:

Reconfigure closet (remove shelving, paint, build new shelving)

Biggest lesson: A room doesn’t always need a full DIY to look cute.

Phew, okay this has been a HUGE post. If you made it this far, thanks for sticking around and we hope you’ll stay for the adventures (and almost certain mishaps) of the next 12 months of figuring out DIY.

Also, check out our highlight with all the before and after pics on our Instagram!

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