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Last year I posted all about the renovations we accomplished in the first year a few months we lived in our house. With 2021 behind us and 2022 already here (how in the world is that even possible?!), these are all of the home renovation projects we tackled this year!

We got our puppy December 26, 2020 so we were pretty occupied with Dennis the Menace for most of the year. It is not nearly as much as what we did the prior year or two and we still have a lot to tackle next year, but I wanted to round up the updates even if some of them were small!

Floating Shelves

We actually tackled this inexpensive DIY the morning of Super Bowl Sunday! I have been wanting to make floating shelves for this area but I wasn’t sure how I wanted to do it. I didn’t want those overly boxy type of shelves and I also didn’t want to spend an arm and a leg for a kit for each shelf. I decided to buy thick wood and drill pocket holes in them them just drill directly to the wall and they came out great! Head to my how-to diy floating shelves post to get all the details!

Black & White Canvas Gallery Wall

Something that was in the works for more than a year was our canvas gallery wall for our entryway. It took a long time solely because I was being picky about the size of the canvases, the quality of the canvas, and of course the cost. Some places charge an insane amount for one canvas and I was not about to spend $100 or more for each canvas. I found a place and ordered a couple to see how I liked the quality. I went back to order the next batch and they didn’t have the sizes I needed anymore (when the originally did). So I was back to square one trying to find places online to print our images. I finally found it months later and that’s when I was able to start the actual DIY! I framed the canvases with another inexpensive DIY and you can read the whole gallery wall how-to and canvas sources on my post.

I chose photos that we’ve taken on our travels and also of places that are meaningful and special to us. That included swimming off of our private sailboat in Santorini, Greece, our over the water bungalow on our Honeymoon in Taha’a, French Polynesia, 17 Mile Drive, CA, Deep Creek Lake, MD, and Manasquan, NJ.

New Roof

An expensive item that we knew was coming in the pipeline to update was our roof. It was about 25 years old and still in good condition but with the wind and all 4 seasons (we live at the beach), we wanted to get it done before a possible problem could occur. We didn’t renovate the roof line or anything to that extend but we just got a new roof which was a time to be able to switch up the color/look of the shingles. I really wanted the look of cedar shake shingles but the cost of real or imitation didn’t justify the want. I still opted for a natural looked that is called weathered wood which gives the vibe of driftwood coloring- perfect for the beach. I have a blog post to read all about our roof materials and options we explored.

New Furnace

Our furnace actually broke on New Years day in 2021. We woke up and quickly realized the heat wasn’t actually turning on and it was a particularly frigid day out. We were luckily able to get someone out to look at it right away and made the decision to completely replace it with a new system since it was over 20 years old anyway and the part to fix it was pretty expensive. We got it upgraded to the Nest system and we absolutely love it! It was another one of those expensive but necessary home updates…we are extremely fortunate we were able to replace it without any financial issues and could pay it off throughout the year. A bit more information can be found on my blog post about necessary but expensive home updates!

Kitchen Backsplash

I have a big vision for our kitchen. But the big vision will likely come with a big price tag. We aren’t quite ready to do an overall kitchen renovation yet and probably won’t be until 10 years or so if we are still living in the house. That was the reasoning we were trying to do small updates to the kitchen that helped improve the overall look but were not expensive. We decided that we will definitely move forward with doing our own backsplash in December with the help of Steve’s brother who recently did his. I went for a ceramic tile that had some dimension to it both with color and texture and white grout. We love how it improves the overall look and is a seamless addition to the kitchen!

That wraps up the our 2021 renovations! There are a lot of other things we did like got a pull out couch for our spare room, got some garage organization equipment, small home decor, and some entertaining items. But again, we really made sure to spend time with our puppy and he really did take up a lot of our time. Weekends this year were crazy busy and I think I had one free weekend in August all summer long. When life gets hectic and work is basically all you do, it is difficult to start or even complete DIY projects. So even if you did one small update to your house this year, congratulations! There is no rule that says how much work you need to do to your house. Budget and time are always the number one issues that get in the way and it is a completely realistic and common issue. Here’s to more fun projects in 2022 and not expensive, boring, necessary ones!