The Next 6 Weeks

So, the holidays are over and decorations are put away, I'm mostly over the flu, and we're going to be having our first house guests in our new house at the end of February. What does this all mean?

To do list time!

We have got a whole heck of a lot that we want to get done in the next six weeks, especially after slacking off a bit on the home renovations the last few months of 2012. And because we had to go down the rabbit's hole with our never ending downstairs bathroom renovation, we're a lot further behind than we wanted to be in other areas of our house. So here's what we're hoping to tackle in the very near future, by room.

Guest bedroom:

• move unpacked boxes lining the wall to storage
• finish priming and painting closet and room doors white
• fix headboard and mount it to the wall (the headboard I made in the above picture is just propped against the wall, and the weight of it has made some of my wood puttied joints crack. I'm going to need to do some repair work on it and mount it properly so it doesn't happen again)
• hang curtains
• order supplies, make wall art and hang it
• paint three bookshelves and bedside apothecary table white
• assemble floor lamp
• get chair covers, arrange furniture
• wash bedding, make bed

Guest bathroom:

(It's crazy that I took this above photo almost exactly a year ago when we were looking at our house for the first time! And this bathroom is still just as ugly today, but oh well, it's pretty low on our renovations priority list)
 

• relocate cat litter boxes and train cats to use new location
• hang shower curtain and liner
• find guest towels, or possibly get new towels
• get new bath mat
• fill soap dispenser
• general cleaning

Downstairs bathroom:

(Shower surround all taped for caulking)
 

• touch up crown moulding paint and caulk
• touch up shower caulk
• touch up vanity top caulk
• get custom mirror for mirror frame we built
• figure out what we're doing for window treatments (we've been having trouble finding plantation shutters that will fit the narrow depth of our house's original windows, so for now I might just make curtains or shades, and we'll upgrade in a few years to shutters once we get around to replacing the windows in the house)
• prime and paint the door, door trim and window trim
• install towel bars and toilet paper holder
• install new toilet handle and toilet seat
• order all bathroom accessories (shower curtain and rod, towels, wall art, vanity top accessories, rustic stool for corner, etc) and set up accessories

Formal Living and Dining rooms:

(Yep, haven't done a damn thing in these rooms since we first saw the house, other than take down the ugly gold curtains and shampoo the carpets! These are also pretty low priority rooms, since we rarely go in them)

• stop using the rooms as storage! clear out boxes and put stuff away in the attic
• organize what little furniture is in the rooms

Family room:

(Our crazy-huge fireplace, taken shortly after we finished scraping the popcorn ceilings, but before we painted the walls and trim)

(This is the room we spend most evenings in, but since we've moved in we've only really done some painting and recently got a new couch)
 

• build a facade over our 127 inch wide, floor to ceiling red brick fireplace, mount TV above fireplace. I am seriously, so, so excited for this project. We spent about 10 hours on Sunday designing our plans, researching codes, and doing mockups, and I can't wait to get started!
• get new couch
• make or buy couch pillows (I have them picked out, just need to pull the trigger)
• order area rug
• build new coffee table
• make or buy new curtains (this might not happen given the time crunch)

Breakfast nook:

(An old photo from before we moved in and weren't done painting yet. We'd just removed the wood railing that divided the nook from the family room, along where the floor transition is) 
 

• get new table and chairs that will go with future plans to paint kitchen cabinets white (will be getting new cabinet doors at that time, hopefully we'll start the kitchen overhaul in late spring or early summer)
• get new stools for adjacent kitchen peninsula

Garage:

(You can see in the background of this photo from November just how messy our garage had gotten!)
  

• take a trip to the dump and clean out the entire garage (enough to be able to build a workbench and tool storage system later this spring)
• buy a table saw or router for fireplace facade project

I think that is about as much as we can possibly hope to accomplish in the next six weeks (although if the past is any indication, we won't have time to check everything off our list!). It's definitely a lot, but I'm excited to dive right in, which we've already done a little this past weekend, as you can see by the items that are already crossed off. Having house guests is always good motivation to get things done!

Have you been making any 2013 to do lists recently?