Back at the beginning of the year, I made a list of house related goals for 2015. I haven’t really thought a whole lot about the list since then, so I was pleasantly surprised when I took a look at it earlier to find that we’re staying on track pretty well.

This is probably because it’s a pretty short list.

But still.

I feel like this year has been the year of house things going very slowly, so it’s always nice to take a step back and look at things in a longer term sort of way and see that progress is happening.

So I thought today I’d review the list and see where we are with it and also talk about what we’re hoping for the rest of the year: both list things and new ideas.

1. Finish the Master Bathroom: done! Probably you know that already, since I’ve done nothing but talk about it for a month or so now. I’d still like to get a new shower head. But that doesn’t show in pictures, so we didn’t need to do that to call it finished ;).

2. Finish the Basement: done! This seems like it was forever ago, but it was just back in March. So, yeah, basement is still finished. Except the map tapestry keeps falling down, so we need to find another way to hang it up.

3. Big Garage Clean-out/Organization: oh. Yeah, no.

4. Open shelving in Kitchen: Oh good! It’s another thing that we’ve finished.

5. Expand/Fence in Garden Area: Yes! Our final project is not as fancy as we were originally intending, but it’s working well. Now to get out there and plant the late summer/fall garden. It’s really hot! Gardening is more fun in April.

6. Work on the Den: Well, we got our Karlstad, and we’re still loving it, but nothing else so far.

Hey! There are only TWO things left on the list! But they’re pretty big things, potentially.

The garage might need to be our big fall project. It probably should be. I need to sit down and look at Pinterest and come up with lots of fun storage/workshop ideas for in there so that it will sound more fun to me than “clean out the garage” does. Which is not at all. Ugh. But I might have some interesting news to report in the next few weeks that will make a garage clean-out a more urgent matter. Teaser!

The den. I was feeling sort of sad and hopeless about the den a few weeks ago, because our plans for it are so big (new fireplace! wallpaper! I’ve also been thinking about built in shelves) that I knew there was probably no way we could get it done–moneywise or timewise–this year.

But then I had an epiphany and realized it’s really okay to do an interim makeover to make it more functional and more us and put off the big projects until ???? Until Dave finishes his masters, probably (Dave finishing his masters=more time AND more money!) So more on that later, but I’m working on some ideas, and I’m getting almost as excited as I was a few months ago about tearing my awful mantel down.

And as for things not on the list?

I think redoing Abe’s room is getting bumped up in the schedule. In fact, I know it is, because I just ordered a bed for him the other day. When we went to California, he slept in a twin trundle bed in the rental house, and he really loved it. Enough that I’m hoping to translate this excitement about getting a big kid bed into better sleep patterns. I can dream, right? (or, well, I could if Abe would just stay asleep). So more on that soon, too, but things will be happening!

We’re also planning to do some work on the unused half of our master bedroom (it used to be Abe’s nursery; now it’s a repository for unfolded laundry and stuff we’ve been meaning to take to the thrift store). Dave’s been using it as his office for school stuff, but it’s not a very pleasant space at the moment. He has to step over laundry baskets to get to his desk, and he had to steal the lamp from his bedside table to use there. It’d be nice to do something to make working on a masters a little more pleasant for him.

I’d love to get around to expanding our kitchen island, too, but that’s another one that will require some combination of time and money that we might not be able to come up with in the short term. So we’ll see.

And that’s it for big things, I think. Pretty soon Halloween and Christmas are going to come along and suck up all my time, so we should probably get moving before October hits!