March 28th marked one year of home ownership for Jerry and I! It has seriously flown by. It really doesn’t feel like it was over a year ago now that we were sitting down and signing the (hundreds) of papers.
We really enjoy being homeowners and have found a lot of pros and cons. The biggest pro for us is the sense of pride we get in owning a home and the ability to do whatever we’d like to do, in terms of remodeling and updating. Any cons would definitely have to be related to money and expenses. We’ve had to replace some broken appliances unexpectedly, which is never cheap. We’d also like to do a lot more work to the house, but simply don’t have the money to do it all at the moment. Even though owning a home can be very costly, we’re ultimately really happy and fortunate to be homeowners.
I realized I’ve never really done much of a home tour on here, so I wanted to share a few photos of our home. Most of these were taken in the fall, before Caleb was born. New pictures would include the abundance of baby items we have hanging around. 
This is our front foyer. When you enter, you can either go upstairs or downstairs since we live in a split level. I won’t be sharing any photos of the downstairs since it’s kind of a work in progress, but downstairs is our second living room AKA the man cave, a full bathroom, my library/office, our laundry room, and our garage. Upstairs is where we primarily spend most of our time as it includes our main living room, kitchen, dining room, another full bath, and three bedrooms.
This is what you see when you first walk up the stairs. That red cabinet is my favorite! To the left is the kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms. To the right is the living room and dining room.
This is the living room. My favorite part about is probably the two bookshelves that are on either side of the TV, since these are the shelves that hold my favorite books. We spend the majority of our time in the living room so I’ve spent a lot of time decorating it.
This is the dining room, where we basically only eat when we have company. It opens up to the living room, and is on the other side of the kitchen.
This is the upstairs bathroom, where we’ve done a little bit of work. My grandma quilted the shower curtain for me to go along with my primitive decor! We’d ultimately like to do more though and basically want to gut both bathrooms.
I don’t have any shots of the (ugly) kitchen or the bedrooms, but if you’re interested in Caleb’s nursery, I did an entire tour of that here. I’ll definitely have to do a more thorough tour with the bedrooms, downstairs, and library when I can get the house cleaned up better and get some more photos taken!
Anyway… I’m really proud of all that we’ve been able to accomplish in this first year of homeownership. So far, we’ve been able to:
- Get a new refrigerator, dishwasher, washing machine, and toilet
- Install two new ceiling fan lights (living room and Caleb’s nursery)
- Replace three light fixtures with more modern, mason jar style ones (kitchen, dining room, foyer)
- Tear down wallpaper in two rooms
- Paint five rooms
- Install carpet in Caleb’s room
- Do a bit of plumbing work in the bathroom including new handles and spout in the tub.
- Do a small bathroom makeover (new toilet, removed wallpaper, painted, added wainscoting and crown molding)
When I write it all down, I realize just how much we’ve been able to do so far. We’ve really been able to improve our home A LOT, even though we still have a lot of work left to do and feel like we’ll never be able to afford it or find the time. Things we’d still like to do include:
- An entire kitchen remodel to include new cabinets, new countertops, new flooring, new sink, and ripping down the wallpaper to paint. We’d also like to knock down the wall between the kitchen and dining room to expand it, then add an island. The kitchen remodel is our biggest house goal, but also the most expensive and not likely to happen for many years!
- Replace or fix the wood floors that are in our entire upstairs
- Do full bathroom remodels in both bathrooms (new tubs, flooring, sinks, vanities, etc.)
- Eventually (maybe) remodel the downstairs into a master suite
- Replace the garage door
- Replace a few other doors
- Replace the windows
- Install ceiling fan lights in the remaining two bedrooms
- Tear up the old carpeting downstairs and replace with new carpet, wood, or tiles
- Do some landscaping outside by putting down mulch and planting some flowers
None of these things are financially feasible for us right now, but definite goals we have for the future… ya know, for when we win the lottery. 
That was our first year in a nutshell! Lots accomplished but lots left to do, we’re just unsure of when.
What home improvement projects have you done? What projects would you like to do? Is your home wishlist a mile long like ours?
