Over the years we have done some updates to the house. Some out of necessity, but most out of desire to make changes. We were lucky that the house itself had been renovated and was very modern looking inside, so there was no pressing updates that we needed to work on. That let us focus on the yard instead. That being said, we also don’t want to finish the yard and find that we need to start major renovations to the house. Instead we are working to make changes and upgrades as we go. Here is a quick timeline of some of the random projects we have done around the house.

2013 – As with most people, before we moved in, we did a little painting of a few rooms. Overall the colour scheme in the house was good, but a few of the rooms needed some changes. We painted the upstairs bedrooms a light matte beige as the dark gloss brown wasn’t something we liked.

2014 – We re-painted both my office and Kurt’s hobby rooms. Kurt went with white, I went a little more funky, deciding to do a large design on one of the walls. A co-worker was also re-doing their rec-room and gave me some laminate flooring, which I was able to use to replace the ugly grey carpet that was originally in my office.

2015 – The roof had to be replaced. We knew it was coming, but it became necessary when we had a small leak in our dining room. We also added my first built addition to the house, a simple couch table. The living room is long and rectangular, so our couches do not go against the far wall. The couch table adds some shelving and a place for our plants. We also began the decor theme in the basement, which we decided would house all of our art from our travels. Our first piece was not from a trip, but from a close family friend who had provided many nights of cross-country skiing, sailing trips, bike trips, and so many other amazing memories. He unfortunately passed away, but his walrus (pottery not real) found a new home in our house.

2016 – My grandmother was moving and gave me an essentially brand new bed for our upstairs guest room. I decided to re-paint the room, including another feature wall with design. I went with a herringbone design. Unfortunately, the grey carpet stayed in that room as we didn’t believe we had enough leftover laminate flooring to change it.

2017 – Our upstairs hall closet doors are metal doors that were looking pretty dated. I didn’t want to replace the doors altogether as they were still in excellent shape, so I decided to do a bit of work on them. I removed the wood trim, and painted the full doors white. I also repainted the bronze finish handles with a matte grey, modernizing the look. As an avid reader, I decided to add some wall to wall, floor to ceiling bookshelves with storage space behind it. The rec-room is a long rectangular room with lots of wasted space, so building some extra storage space using some beautiful bookshelves seemed like a no-brainer. You can read about the bookshelf build in the post “Brain Food” and the storage shelf addition in the post “Secret Storage“.

2018 – We changed out the toilets in our bathrooms to better efficiency (no I didn’t bother with photos of this…don’t be cheeky). Basil was added to our family, so I built another dog chair so that each dog had their own place to hang out. You can find the full build plans in the blog “Ellie’s Throne Plans“.

2019 – Some minor additions to the house. I started getting into more woodworking and built both dogs a feeder stand to help keep the bowls off the floor. Our kitchen is small, so the stands help keep things tidy. I now also sell these on our Etsy store, or you can find the plans to build your own in my post “Dog Bowl Stands“. I also made a dog-themed shelf for our entryway, which is also small. It has dog-bum hooks and keeps everything for the dogs organized and easy to find. You can read more about this shelf in the post “Wagging Tails“. I made a shelving unit for our hall closet to provide more storage space for household cleaners, plastic bags, dog food, empty jars, etc. Finally, I made some proper side tables for the spare room in the basement. You can read about how I made those in the post “On The Side“.

2020 – As noted in our Upper Yard update, we re-did the deck, which I also consider a house upgrade. We also upgraded all of our external door handles and locks. We went with some digital locks that we can open, close and monitor through and app on their phone. It will also alert us if someone is trying to break in. We added the same handle and lock to the shop.

2021 – We upgraded to a new furnace and AC system in the house, out of necessity since out old furnace kicked the bucket. Due to the install and unfortunate flooding of our boot room, we also got new flooring in our boot room. We renovated our master bedroom, removing the carpet and adding in vinyl plank flooring and painting the room. We also changed the shower head in the main bathroom which has made it feel like a whole new bathroom! Who knew a shower head could make such a difference.

We have more plans as we come into 2022 to make some updates to the house. New windows for all the old-style double pane ones, some electrical upgrades, renovations to the basement guest room to improve the insulation and heat retention, and possibly some new paint in the living room.