New Year, New List

I love lists.  It's a serious problem.  But I've been thinking about what I want to accomplish around our house this year.  Realistically we may not get everything done on the year list, but it's nice to have goals.  So, here we go.

Replace kitchen floors.  That, that is for sure happening.  And soon.  Or as soon as I actually pick out what I want.  Have I mentioned I am so cheap?  I picked out floors.  Beautiful floors.   They are, however, going to cost in the neighborhood of $700.  Ug.  Our kitchen is under 200 square feet.  I know, maybe $700 isn't really that bad.  But remember, I'm cheap.  And I have a $500 gift card from the nice people at Young House Love and Homes.com and I'd really rather not spend more than that on my floor.  Is that so unreasonable?  I don't think it should be.  Especially since my labor is free.

Finish painting the outside of the house.  We started last summer/fall and only got two sides completely painted.  I know, this is totally trashy and weird.  It got cold.  My sister was sick.  Our house is awkward and hard to paint.  My dad promises to come as soon as it's warm out and help us finish.

Replace the front sidewalk.  Man oh man, this thing has been embarrassing long before we bought the house.  It's really just broken concrete that happens to vaguely form a path.  It's terrible.  We bought pavers last summer to replace it.  They've been stacked in our driveway for at least 7 months.  We may have actually originally purchased them in the spring.  We've really got to get that done.

Make up my mind about painting the hallway.  I'm so undecided about this.  I thought I was going to paint it over Christmas break.  Our hallway has two sections.  The first part of the hallway, when you walk into the house is all paneling, both walls, floor to ceiling.  Super attractive.  Then you turn and walk back toward the bedrooms and the walls change, the bottom half is paneling, there's a chair rail, and the top half is just normal wall. 

It looks vaguely more attractive than this in real life, but not much.  I thought (wrongly) that it would be clever to leave the seams in the paneling their original color so it would look striped.  Well, it looks like crap.  So that's where the debate comes in.  Paint all of the bottom a dark turquoise and leave the top tan.  Or paint the seams tan and leave the bottom tan, painting the top half a light turquoise.  Like one of these.

So yes, I've had paint samples taped to my wall since before Christmas.  Charming.  So what do you think?  I don't want to be the crazy turquoise lady.  Our living room has tons of turquoise accents and I don't want to go completely overboard.  The hallway is kind of dark (thanks 1970s!)

I'm also going to finish that bathroom mirror project.  Fingers crossed!

What kind of home improvement projects do you have planned for this year?