when we moved in to our house almost 1.5 years ago, i thought that it would take 6 months, tops, to completely de-wallpaper, re-paint all walls and ceilings, and refinish the (promised by both realtors and previous owner) beautiful hardwood floors under all of the gross carpet. then we could take a few years to work on smaller renovation projects while saving our money for a big kitchen and bathroom remodel. we quickly learned that it can take over 3 months to remove wallpaper from just one room... and that painting takes much more time when you have to repair the walls first... and that we only had half of the beautiful floors that were promised to us. so that is why we still have the damaged hardwood floors downstairs, a completely untouched by us stairway, and one entire room that still needs a lot of work. and that's to just get it to the point where i thought we'd be a year ago. which is why we are still working on starting, and finishing, rooms.

we worked on some good rooms in 2009 - we have our downstairs bathroom, that was a lovely shade of school bus yellow before:then there was the time that we decided to ignore all of the rooms that we hadn't even started to paint our bedroom for the second time:(by the way, i realized i haven't taken a single picture of our room since this one. i will have to work on that...)

we also had the room that gets the award for "most changed" - our office, aka the "old spice room"this room also gets the award for "most frustrating". please see: katie vs crown molding: round 1, katie vs crown molding: round 2, and finally, katie vs crown molding: round 3
(and yes, i realize that i haven't posted any recent pictures of this room either... the thing is, we actually never finished working on the baseboards, and it has become our second box room/storage room - so it pretty much still looks like the picture above, only with more stuff. and there is no katie vs crown molding: final round. the crown molding and i have declare a truce - it will look decent as long as no one looks at it too closely. or steps into the room and turns around and inspects the corner above the door. that is it's bad side and i've accepted it).

but the room that i'm giving the best of 2009 room award to is our guest room.because once we removed the lovely green (broken) ceiling fan with matching green curtains...
and the "build-in" shelves that came with the house...
and painted, painted and painted...

** please note that none of these rooms are what i'd consider to be complete. we still have lots of boxes to unpack, pictures to hang, and things to do to decorate and continue to make this house our home. at this point i consider a room complete once it has fresh paint on the walls and i can start to move furniture in. or more boxes full of random stuff, we have lots of those :-)

we have done a lot of little projects throughout the year - you know the kind, the project that you randomly think of on a friday afternoon while at work and decide that you will complete over the weekend. the projects that you think will take a few hours and won't cost much at all... and then end up taking you the entire weekend, some of the next week, and sometimes even the next weekend... or the next... and always always always cost a lot more than you first thought. but once you've started, you have to just keep going until they are done. because even though i'm labeling these things "small projects", in reality, i have learned that there is no such thing when dealing with home renovation.

looking through the archives i had a lot of projects to choose from - we replaced the dated light fixtures in both the downstairs and upstairs hallway. we worked on our curb appeal by updating the light fixture, installing a new mailbox, and planting a tree. i even decided, in a moment of craziness, that i wanted to wallpaper the inside of the china hutch (note to self, never wallpaper again). but i think my favorite "small project" of 2009 has been replacing our bathroom door.
our louvered bathroom door did not match any of the other doors in the house, it was the wrong style, wrong color, and well, was louvered. it was a big door fail.
we found an old door and door knob at a local architectural salvage store. it took us a while, but we were able to cut it to size and stain to match the surrounding woodwork perfectly. we then frosted both sides of the glass for extra privacy.

it lets so much more light into our hallway and into the bathroom. i also think it helps make the spaces seem larger (well, that and the light paint color instead of pink wallpaper).

we still need to install the strike plate on the door frame so that it will actually latch when closed, but i'm considering it a completed project. and it passed the big test - we have had several guests over since installing the door and no one has questioned the frosted glass / their privacy :-)

i hope that everyone had a great christmas! we drove to columbus last saturday and stayed a week. it was a very busy week but it was so nice to see everyone and we had a great time. i have some pictures of the family and fun, i will post those after i unpack my camera cord. based on how little i unpacked last night, it could be a while... the cats are enjoying playing in the pile of boxes and bags that are in our entryway though.

as for our other big project - it didn't turn out as well. this was our yard before:

and the during / after. i'm very happy with how the flower beds turned out, but i think we may have made some bad choices in the plants that we picked. luckily the worst seemed to be the marigolds, so i think i'll just try to pick something smaller and more low to the ground next year and see if that helps. the scrubs we planted didn't hardly grow at all because the marigolds basically took over the entire bed. also, the 2 weigela that we planted on either side of the stairs grew a lot taller, but did not fill in and seemed to be half dead at the bottom. i'll see what they look like next year, but we might need to replace those too. and the grass? yeah... we had some grass for a little while, but it started to die again in the same area later in the summer. overall the grass looks better than when we first moved in, but it still needs a lot of work. luckily mike seems to have taken an interested in the landscaping and doesn't seem to mind researching these things. i really just like to plant flowers and i'm good about watering them... but that's about it.

we're supposed to get some snow tonight... and i have nothing else to post about today, so i thought i'd share one of my favorite pictures of winter.i took this photo when i was in finland a few years ago. i actually have a lot of photos from that trip, i should do a post on it someday.

have a great weekend everyone! i'm going to be busy the next week or so with christmas plans, but i'll try to get in a post or two. :-)

so, do you remember this room? our fourth bedroom... it has been a box/extra furniture/storage room since we moved in almost 1.5 years ago.
we moved everything out when we had the floors refinished, but then just moved all the boxes back in. it is the next/last room that we need to work on. i'm hoping to start it soon after the new year. based on the small piece of wallpaper that we started to take down, i am cautiously optimistic about how quickly we will be able to remove the wallpaper. the ceiling has already been painted, as well as the closet, so the walls are really the last big thing that needs to be done before we can make it a functioning room. well, that and finally unpacking all of those boxes. you should see how many we crammed into the closet... yikes. the purpose of this room will be some kind of second office, tv room, and studio. we've been calling it the den. i've been calling it "my room". i like studio though, so maybe we'll stick with that for now. i think i've been out of school long enough that the word "studio" no longer brings horrible thoughts to mind (kidding! kind of...) it's a good size - almost as large as our bedroom and has an exposed brick wall. it also gets a lot of light, it is the only bedroom with windows on 2 sides of the house.