2016 Home Improvement Plans*

The start of the year is definitely a time to make some plans for the next year. I’ve already set my blogging goals and my life goals, so I thought I’d do a post about my home improvement goals over the year. Last year I managed to decorate my hall and that was about it, despite saying I was going to tackle my kitchen and my bathroom. However this year I’m going to make sure I actually do some home improvement, especially since I have a cupboard full of cans of paint.. it’s just such hard work on my own. Oh well.

So anyway, here’s what I am planning on tackling over the next 12 months;

Kitchen
My kitchen walls are really starting to look grotty now. In July it’ll be four years since I moved in and as I had a week to turn the place from a smokers paradise (yep, the walls were yellow) I picked out LM’s room, my room and the lounge, everything else could survive with a scrub down.. but after all this time the walls really are looking worse for wear. I probably won’t change the colour of the walls, I like cream everywhere. My house is quite small and the cream gives the illusion of space, however I may change the colour scheme. At the moment everything is turquoise but since I’m pretty sure my kettle and toaster won’t see the end of the year and I just don’t have that kinda crazy money to blow on replacing them (it was about £60 for the two but I was gifted money when I was moving in, which of course I don’t get when redecorating). I’m unsure what I’m going to go for, possibly just silver with red accents to match my table cloth (which actually a recycled curtain from my mum’s old kitchen haha.) You can get fairly cheap red toasters and kettles on Amazon. I also think red utensils will be quite easy to pick up from places like Poundland, Home Bargains and B&M.

Bathroom
The other room we didn’t decorate when I moved in was the bathroom, because it was the only room that wasn’t yellow (the previous owners obviously didn’t think it was appropriate to smoke in the bath). I think this will be easy to tackle as it’s pretty small. However I’ll have to buy special bathroom paint as I only have matte emulsion. Dulux offers a special paint that is moisture and steam resistant which would prevent my walls from looking like they’re bleeding water every time I take a bath or shower. In a way that’s what is putting me off doing this soon as it’s more expensive. That and I just know Little Miss will stick her hand on the wet walls because the bathroom isn’t exactly somewhere I can keep her out of. The grouting and sealing also needs work as the previous owners didn’t look after it very well and now there are large gaps which are a nightmare to clean. Over all I think I’ll stick with the grey, white and pink as it looks good and I love my polka dot towels however I may treat myself to a new chrome shower head as it’ll match with the other metal accessories in my bathroom.

Back Garden
Not really a room, but somewhere on my property that desperately needs improved, my garden. I actually have a rather decent sized garden but I’m the worst at looking after it since I’m not even remotely green fingered. Luckily my mum is so in the summer my garden doesn’t look like a wild mess but it’s still not very me. My biggest thing is that I really need to look at sheds because Little Miss’ toys are just getting ruined in the winter months as I have no where to store them inside. Not only that but I have all my gardening tools taking up room in the cupboard under the stairs that I feel could be put to better use if it wasn’t for my lawn mower & strimmer taking up space. I also want to give my fence a lick of paint and make it look more colourful, but again, fence paint is more expensive than standard emulsion but you can get it in a lot of pretty colours. Little Miss also needs some new garden toys, but hopefully we can use her birthday money for that.

I’m hoping I can manage all this over the course of 2016, I feel once I’m done I will finally feel happy with my home, aside from the fact I live on a hill and keep getting battered by these winter storms.. anyone have any tips on dealing with that? A massive wind break perhaps!