I always take the last week between Christmas and the New Year off from the blog, but this year, I’ve decided to take these next two weeks off. Things are just moving so slowly on the bedroom suite. I had expected the contractor’s part to be finished two weeks ago, and here we are two weeks later and barely anything has been done. And as for the projects I wanted to concentrate on while they’re working on the bedroom suite, well, the weather and my Amazon shipments have been uncooperative.
So rather than stress about the lack of progress, I’m just going to take the next two weeks to destress, spend time with Matt, watch a few cheesy Christmas movies, and get ready for the new year. Hopefully by then, I can hit the ground running on the bedroom suite projects and get those knocked out as quickly as possible.
This year has been…different. It hasn’t been different in a bad way. It’s been different in a good way. But it’s definitely been different.
Just like I do every year, I started off 2024 with a Master List of Home Goals. You can see my whole 2024 list here: 2024 Master List of Home Goals. And the year started off with me tackling the studio. Here’s how it looked at the beginning of the year…
And here’s how it looks now…
But from there, all of my other plans for the year kind of went off the rails. I had plans to finish the studio half bath…
And I had plans to do a few minor projects in the guest bedroom…
And I had plans to do a makeover in the hallway bathroom…
But the main thing on my 2024 list was the start the addition. And one year ago, this is what I envisioned the addition looking like…
But then things went completely off the rails when we started having some serious problems problems with our home gym floor. I had only finished the home gym 17 months earlier, and we were getting a ton of use out of the room. So it was incredibly discouraging to find that the floor in that room was ruined to the point that it was buckling so badly that I’d trip over it.
The idea of having to replace flooring (and subfloor) in a room that was fairly recently finished sent me into a tailspin. I called off the addition that we had planned for the last eight years, and I went back to the drawing board. After all, replacing the floor and subfloor in a pier and beam house is not a small thing. So if we were going to have to do that anyway, then this was the time to reevaluate our plans and make any needed changes.
And that’s what we did. After getting tons of input from readers on a whole range of ideas, and after testing about probably 50 different floor plan ideas, we’ve finally settled on this floor plan for our house…
It was a very long and circuitous route to get to that final floor plan. And in the end, did we really accomplish anything? I mean, we’re still going to build an addition, although the new addition isn’t nearly as big as the original addition, so we’ll save money.
But I am actually very happy with this new direction. After spending months wrestling with these decisions, and getting input from so many readers, I was able to “see” our home and our floor plan with new eyes, so to speak. I was offered ideas that I never would have thought of in a million years (like turning the studio bathroom into a walk-through pantry for easy access from the back door into the kitchen). I was able to rethink ideas that I had previously written off because I thought they were almost impossible (like moving our kitchen to the breakfast room and pantry area).
And every single day, I get more and more excited about our new bedroom suite where we’re turning the home gym into our bedroom,
…and turning the guest bedroom into our walk-in closet and laundry room.
So while that ruined home gym floor seemed like a tragic thing at the moment, I think things have turned out just fine. I love this new plan for our house even better than all of our original plans for that huge addition. Sometimes things just have a way of working themselves out.
So next year looks to be a pretty exciting year. My main initial focus will be our bedroom suite — bedroom, closet, and hallway. After that, I’ll turn my attention to our new kitchen, and then once the new kitchen is finished, I’ll tear out the old kitchen and turn it into a dining room. So that’s a preview of what I think 2025 holds. But for now, I’m going to take it easy for a few days and watch a Christmas movie or two. I’ll meet y’all back here in the New Year!
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
