Yesterday, we caught up on life around here lately and today I want to dive into my 2022 home goals and the projects I have planned for this year.

Every year, I like to create a home goals list to prioritize the projects I want to accomplish that year. (You can view last year’s right here.) Just like with any task, if you don’t make a plan, it’s unlikely to get done. Even if you don’t have a blog, I recommend this practice because it gives you clarity on where to focus your attention for the year. Plus, it always excites me and provides lots of motivation to start the year fresh! I enjoy looking at the 12 months ahead and setting my sights on what I really want to accomplish.

Last year, we accomplished a lot around here, but I didn’t quite hit everything on my list. (Here’s a mid-year report on what we got done.) Having another baby slowed things down at the end of the year, so I wasn’t able to cross everything off of my 2021 list. In fact, most of those rolled over to this year’s list…

2022 Home Goals – Master List

• Renovate Kids’ Bathroom
• Renovate Main Bathroom
• Personalize the Backyard
• Organize Garage
• Landscape Front & Side Yard
• Create a Hallway Gallery Wall
• Makeover Basement for Playroom

I feel like these are some pretty big projects. I mean, two bathroom renovations?! We’ll be kicking off both the kids’ bathroom and our bathroom in February – my contractor will tackle both at once – so it will definitely be a busy start to the year.

Renovate Kids’ Bathroom

This is the first big project of the year and I’m very excited about it. If you remember, I did a budget-friendly refresh, back in 2020 of this space, painting the tile floor, the vanity, and even the bathtub and shower. I finished it off with a new mirror and vanity lighting. All of this was great, and cosmetically the room looks nice! However, we want to put in higher quality materials and really give this bathroom the TLC it deserves. Sure, the navy vanity looks nice but the quality of the vanity is crap and the drawers and doors have seen better days.

We are also seeing a bit of peeling on the bathtub from when I painted it. I talked a bit more about this in my painted tile review post, but I don’t think I did my very best prepping the bathtub for paint and I saw some peeling within the first six months. Therefore, I definitely want to replace the bathtub in this room.

I’ll dive into way more detail later this month, but our goals will be to replace the bathtub, wall tile, shower tile, toilet, and vanity. Basically, it will be the same layout, with upgraded items in it. I think we’ll do tile halfway up the walls, all the way around the room, so it will be the perfect bathroom for splashing away. (Rory likes to make lots of “waves” in the tub!)

Renovate Main Bathroom

Next up on my 2022 home goals list is to renovate our main bathroom. Again, I did some cosmetic upgrades in here (painting the vanity and painting the tile floors), but we really want to transform this space with a brand new layout.

We’ll be ditching the bathtub for a really big shower. While I do love a good bath, I’d prefer a larger shower, since we will use that every day. Our current shower is teeny tiny and Finn doesn’t even use it. He prefers the first-floor shower because this one is so terrible. Because we’ll have a new shower where the bath is, we will need a new window that can safely get wet.

Where the shower is, we’ll be DIY’ing a linen cabinet for additional storage. It should be a fun one to design and install and we will plan to do that once the professionals are done with the heavy lifting, i.e. plumbing, electrical, etc.

The vanity and toilet will stay in the same locations, but they’ll be new and much more our style. Plus, we’ll have new tile everywhere. This is going to be a very dramatic makeover and I’m so eager to get it started. Our garage is already piled high with boxes for both bathrooms!

Personalize The Backyard

My last big project before maternity leave was our backyard makeover reveal. The space turned out dreamy and we used it all throughout the fall, until it got too cold.

This spring and summer, we want to put our own stamp on the backyard. We have ideas of building a long planter box to place behind the couch, adding additional greenery along the garage, creating cushion storage, and more. All in all, we want this space to continue to work for our family and make it feel like “us.” I’m not 100% sure what our game plan will be, but I want to devote a good chunk of the summer towards making this space even better.

Garage Organization

As I mentioned a minute ago, our garage is piled high with boxes for our upcoming bathroom renovations. Once those big projects are over, I want to create an organizational plan for our garage to utilize the space out there. It’s a 2.5 car garage, so we have a decent amount of room. However, we haven’t taken the time to make the space work well for us. This is definitely on our to-do list for 2022.

Front & Side Yard Landscaping

We spent a lot of time and money on the backyard last year, while completely neglecting our front yard and the other side of our house. In fact, we didn’t even take the time to mulch last spring and our front bushes have seen much better days. We want to make smart choices when it comes to the bushes and flowers we have in the front. (The ones we had put in haven’t done well with our berry tree in the front yard.) Plus, we want to add mulch and make things look cleaner.

As for the side of the house, here’s what it looks like. In Chicago, homes are literally right next to each other. We’re lucky that on the other side of the house we have an empty half lot on our property, so we have the side yard of grass.

On this side, our brick home snuggles up to our neighbor’s property. In fact, this is his front door! We feel terrible, and ashamed, that our neighbor’s walk to his front door is full of unsightly weeds, broken pavers, and uneven rocks on our property. When we went to his house on Halloween for trick or treating, Rory fell, walking up to the door because of the uneven walkway. That was the motivation we needed to put this on our to-do list!

We plan to keep it simple by digging up the weeds, leveling the area out, and installing new stones and rocks on our property. We want it to be low-maintenance and look a lot nicer. This is a 2022 must!

Create a Hallway Gallery Wall

This project was actually on last year’s list, but I never got around to it. I want to create a floor-to-ceiling gallery wall on the blank wall leading to our bedroom.

This wall is begging for a little attention and I think a gallery wall would help camouflage the thermostat. Not to mention, it would be really nice to have a space for family photos.

Basement Playroom

The time has come to think about a dedicated playroom for the kids. While we like to keep our toys to a minimum, we do have a few larger items for Rory that we don’t want in our living room. We bought her this play kitchen for Christmas and she has been loving it!

We’ve avoided creating a basement playroom because Finn still works from home in the basement, so it has been his office for the last two years.

Around Thanksgiving, we moved his desk to one side of the room and put our office couch downstairs. (We got this futon for the office instead.) There’s now a bit more space for Rory, and eventually Ellis, to play. and Finn still has plenty of room to work.

I think my plan will be to give the entire basement some love, starting in the fall. Paint, new carpet, new doors, new baseboards, and updated electrical will be Stage One of this project. Then, we’ll really dive into making a creative and cute playroom for the kids with a big couch, DIY toy storage, and more. I’m excited to get a little wild down here, but I want to take it one step at a time. This space has so much potential!

Let’s Do This, 2022!

Will I cross everything off of my 2022 home goals list? Probably not. But it’s good to aim high, right? As I do every year, I’ll plan a check-in in July to see how things are progressing. It’s a good way to keep me accountable. Let me know in the comments below what you have planned for your home this year. We can all encourage one another to make it happen!

Casey