Happy New Year! Before I get into today’s post, I want to take a moment to thank everyone for the overwhelmingly positive feedback on the Laundry Room Makeover project we did as a gift for my parents. Thanks also to everyone who took the time to enter the giveaway. Of course, there can only be one winner & congratulations to Angela M for winning the gallon of PARA paint as well as the PaintStick EZ-Twist Roller & QuickPainter Pad Edge Painter courtesy of HomeRight. Good luck with your bathroom reno Angela & be sure to send us pics!

Now that all that is out of the way, let’s talk 2014…

This is our first post of 2014 and it’s gearing up to be a big year for us. I want to start by setting the disclaimer that I’m not a New Year’s Resolution kinda girl. I’m not one of those people who gets all gung-ho about a list of personal goals and then runs out to hit the gym. That’ll never be me. As we enter the ‘home stretch’ (no pun intended) of our Dreamhouse construction, we thought making a list of a few of the things we plan to accomplish and putting them in black in white would be helpful. So here they are…

DIY Goals for 2014

• Run Home Automation wire – This is one that we (I’m looking at you Kes) were supposed to have tackled in 2013, but unfortunately never got around to. We’ll be running all of the wire & conduit for our Cat6, HDMI & audio cabling to support our Control4 automation.
• Install pex for radiant heating – Another of the 2013 goals we’re dragging with us into the new year. We’re looking to install radiant as a secondary heat source for the Dreamhouse – mostly because of the sheer number of large windows we have. I don’t care what anyone says, even with high-quality windows & proper insulation, you’re still bound to experience some heat loss when you’re dealing with a full wall of glass & a 20 ft. ceiling across the back of the house.
• Prime & paint – If you remember our PARA Blog Crew submission video, you know that we have A LOT of painting ahead of us. Once we finally get some drywall up in this place, we’ll be tackling all of the priming and painting of the various rooms one by one. I suspect this is one goal we won’t completely get checked off the list this year, but with PARA’s help I’m sure we’ll get most of the way there.
• Organized entry way – The entry is one area of the house that has changed significantly since we revealed the floorplans last year. We’ve updated the ground floor plan to make things more open & include lots of storage. We’ll definitely be including something creative with paint, a bit of IKEA installation, and we might even take on building a bench!
• Kitchen assembly (& possibly install) – We’ve got a pretty big kitchen, with a ton of pieces to be assembled – base cabinets, upper cabinets, full height pantry storage, drawer inserts, etc.. Over the years I’ve become a bit of an expert at assembling IKEA furniture, though with this many pieces I think we’re going to need to take our time and tackle a few pieces at a time over several weeks before the kitchen is actually ready for cabinetry. When it comes to the install, we’re still debating whether this is something that we’ll be tackling ourselves or if we’ll bring in professional installers to do. I guess we’ll see how the budget is looking when we get there, lol!
• Kids’ bathroom – this will probably be one that we tackle closer to the end of the year once the house is complete & we’re all moved in & settled. The third bathroom upstairs between Kash’s bedroom and the room that will hopefully one day belong to baby #2 was something of an afterthought – as in we knew we wanted to have an additional bathroom on the second floor, but our original Dreamhouse budget didn’t factor that in. So our plan was to have it roughed in for us to finish ourselves.

So what do you think? Can we accomplish all these this year or are we kidding ourselves? What are your goals for 2014?