We’re so excited to be kicking off the new year and today I’m going to be spilling the beans on all of the projects we have planned for 2020!
This year is going to be epic in terms of the changes we’ll be making around here. We have so many projects lined up that my head is already spinning with ideas, excitement and admittedly a tiny bit of anxiety when I think about the amount we have planned.
I have no idea if we’ll complete them all (2019 certainly wasn’t as successful as we would have liked) but as you’ll see in a minute, some of them really aren’t optional and I have a feeling that we’ll be working flat out even if we only manage to achieve half of the things we have planned.
1. Heating
While this isn’t a project that we’ll be tackling ourselves, it is going to be an all-consuming project this summer. The central heating along with all heating pipes as well as the water supply and drainage in our building will completely be replaced this year. Needless to say, this is a project of epic proportions and will inevitably involve a lot of upheavals and an eye-watering amount of money.
Obviously, not all of the work will just be in our apartment but given that every apartment will require every radiator to be reconnected to the new pipework and require all taps, toilets, showers and baths to be reconnected to the water and drainage pipes there is going to be a huge amount of building work in every apartment just to get things working again.
All of this is the reason for the next project on our list…..
2. Bathroom, Bathroom, Bathroom!
2020 is going to be the year of the bathroom!
As we’ll be knocking holes into the walls to be able to reconnect the heating and drainage we’ve decided to make the most of the chaos and give all 3 of our bathrooms a full-on makeover!
Now, if you’re thinking I can’t count and we only have two bathrooms you’d be right but part of our plans includes adding an en-suite to our master bedroom!
We’ll be keeping our current bathroom which we already gave a budget-friendly makeover last year as it is (other than reconnecting everything, of course) and will be installing a complete second en-suite bathroom and will also completely rip out the existing cloakroom and renew everything in there!
If you’re thinking about where, what & how is it even possible to squeeze an en-suite bathroom into our apartment, you’re not alone!
I’ll be sharing the full makeover plans next week and we need your help to decide what’s best to do! It’s a bit of an unusual design, so we’d love your feedback as I’m worried we’re the only people who think it’s a good idea!
3. Cloakroom
As I just mentioned, the cloakroom is going to be completely torn apart and we’ll be installing everything from scratch.
We had some fun last year and gave the room a geometric paint makeover but I’d had always only meant to be a temporary solution. I’d still like to save the original floor tiles if I can (we’ll attempt a clean/makeover/restoration of them soon) but I honestly don’t think that it’s going to be possible to keep anything in here in the long term.
Bathrooms are such big-ticket items and if we’re going to be tackling two bathrooms in a year we will have to make sure that they are right the first time around!
4. Tiling
I’m so excited that we’ll finally be tackling our first tiling projects this year! Given that we’ve been DIYing for over 8 years, I have no idea how we managed to avoid it for so long!
In an ideal world, I would have liked my first tiling attempt to be a small project but with two bathrooms to tile this year I’m just going to have to get stuck in!
After all, how hard can it be?! ;)
5. Walk-In Wardrobe
To go with our (hopefully) fancy new en-suite, we’ll finally be turning our smallest bedroom aka. the junk room into a walk-in wardrobe! At the moment, we’re still in the planning process and I’m trying to work out exactly how it will look and function.
We’re definitely in need of some proper storage solutions as the cheap clothes rails we currently have aren’t exactly ideal and the room always feels messy and cluttered.
The plan is also to make the most of the high ceilings and install full-height cupboards with something like a library ladder to be able to reach the higher cupboards.
As you can probably imagine, I’m already looking forward to having a tonne of storage!
6. Restoring Our Windows
If you follow us on Instagram (you totally should be!) you will probably already have seen that I made a start on restoring some of our windows last year. It’s not exciting, quite frankly it’s super boring, but it is necessary if we want to keep our original windows.
I calculated that it’ll take me about a day a window and with 68 windows it’s fair to say that I’ll have my work cut out!
7. Restoring Our Doors
Restoring our windows and doors in the same year will not be the most fun I’ve ever had. I hate stripping paint but I also hate bad finishes which is why I think it’s work going the extra mile and stripping all of the paint before repainting everything.
We already gave our front door a makeover but all of our internal doors are in need of a lot of TLC.
In the pictures, the doors don’t actually look too bad but in reality, they’ve all been covered in a coat of lumpy emulsion which means that close up they are really textured and, more importantly, impossible to keep clean!
8. Reupholster Sofa
You will probably have caught glimpses of the second sofa in our living room which we bought at a reclamation shop. I’d originally planned using it in our guest bedroom but it doesn’t quite look right so we plonked it in the living room, tossed a blanket over it and it’s been stood there ever since.
I’ve not even started to look for fabrics yet and given that I have no idea about upholstery and can’t really sew this is going to be a challenging project to tackle.
It’s actually weird that I’ve ignored the sofa for so long as I hate the way it looks in our living room! This brings me to our next project…
9. Update Living Room
Most of the rooms in our home aren’t designed and are just a jumble of mismatched furniture that we moved in from our previous home.
We really need to take a step back and completely design the room from scratch including finally sorting the second-hand sofa I just mentioned, a rug, repaint the room (because I hate the colour), some curtains would be nice and better lighting would be good, too.
Having said all of that, this is a project I’m not sure we’ll get around to doing. Given that we’ll be installing two new bathrooms along with paying a lot of money for our new heating, our budget is going to be stretched to the max and I have a feeling that updating our living room won’t be much of a priority once the first bills start rolling in!
As you can see, we have a huge amount planned this year! It’s going to be exciting, expensive and exhausting but I can’t wait to get stuck in and share everything!
Do you have any home improvements planned for this year? What are your goals for 2020? Do you think we’re mad to tackle so many projects in just one year?!
We’d love to hear your thoughts, so leave us a comment below and let us know what you think!
Lynne Marie says
Ohhh! You are quite a brave woman, that list is HUGE! We say back home: “Go big or go home” hahahah.
I also hate doing things by halves, so I hear you on the refinishing the doors etc. At some point it just really needs to get done properly. I am currently stripping the paint on all of our doors as well. (all eleven of them -gulp!) I am not stripping them actually, I am using some rather extreme measures to remove all of the paint at once mechanically with a magical tool I discovered whilst removing thick layers of paint and levelling cement from the original beech stairs in our house. (Maybe you remember me from my comments in your hallway stairs renovation post? Well, I am almost finished and they are gorgeous!) It went so quickly and the doors are going fast too. It’s nothing for the faint hearted though and sometimes I think maybe I should strip them rather. But after removing all the paint and seeing basically pristine wood, (no stains or coloration, just like new) we decided to go “natural” since it’s certainly just as fast, and much less messy . I think if I was sure I was painting them again, I might strip them instead.
And please do a blow by blow on the tiling. I need to learn this skill of I will be forevers stuck with a very ugly bathroom as our budget for the Bathroom is so low, we won’t be doing it, unless I can learn to tile. So I am here for it!
Might I add that your radiators are gorgeous? So glad you are keeping them, what a treasure. We are looking into new cast iron ones designed from the right era and the cheapest options are like 19€ for every single element, so depending on how long the radiators are it would cost us from 200-400€ per radiator, ugh. Ours are ugly things, so seeing your makes my heart cry, lol.
Looking forward to seeing how you both get on,
Cheers!
Christine says
It is rather a lot, isn’t it, Lynne! :) I’m up for the challenge though and can’t wait to get stuck in! We have 13 doors to get done so I totally feel for you but it’s great to hear that you’re making progress and that your stairs are looking great! Yay!
We’ve actually just ordered a fancy paint stripping power tool that I’m excited to try but I’d love to hear about your magic tool! Anything that makes stripping paint easier has got to be a good thing!
We’ll definitely be sharing a tiling guide – I know what I should do but I have a feeling that the reality of tiling in real life might be different! :)
We’re so lucky to still have the original radiators. When our new heating was being planned we were adamant that we wanted to keep them and luckily we are! Having said that, some people in our building want to replace them with new ones! I’d love to remove ours and have them sandblasted but each element weighs about 20kg which makes them rather heavy, to say the least ;)
Thanks for taking the time to comment and good luck with all of your DIYs this year!
Cx
Lynne Marie says
Awesome! Did you order the “Lackfräse” (Metabo paint stripping tool) by any chance? That’s what I used. It does have a bit of a learning curve, I have found. I am so glad I used it on the 4rth step of the stairs starting and again even after getting the hand of it, I had the foresight to use it on the inside of the Pantry door, so if I messed anything up severely it wouldn’t be a tragedy. I have spent an inordinate amount of time using 40 grit and my full arsenal of sanding tools sanding down all the mistakes I made in the beginning so beware if you go for this tool. Now I have the hang of it an it is definitely worth it. Though as I said earlier, if I was just repainting, I think I would strip with the usual VOC stripper and clean it up with spirits, because the weight of the tool and the attention required it quite a lot.
I am so excited to watch everything you guys are planning unfold.
I greet you from our (DIY) trenches to yours, hahaha!
Christine says
Yes, that’s exactly what we’ve ordered! It’s due to be delivered later this week and I can’t wait to get stripping! I’ve watched a couple of videos and all of them say that it needs practice. It seems like the biggest issue is trying to take away too much in one go but it’s great to hear your experience and I’ll definitely try on somewhere less conspicuous first!
I’m excited to get stuck into all of our projects, too and can’t wait to see how much I actually get done! :)
As always, happy DIYing!
Cx