Table of Contents
A round up of my biggest and best DIY makeovers of 2021!
I love this time of the year! It’s fun to look back at all that I accomplished in our home and plan for the next year!
I’m pretty sure I did more DIY makeovers this year than I ever have. As our son gets older, I’m able to tackle projects a bit quicker.
That is until marching band season hits in the fall! Ha! (If you know, you know.)
My DIY experience helps too — large builds that used to take me months now only take a few weeks.
It also helps tremendously that I wait until I’m SURE of what I want to do. I find that I need to sit on projects for a bit to ensure I really love the plan.
I’m rounding up my biggest and best DIY makeovers of 2021 here, and then will touch on some I hope to tackle this year!
Remember while looking through these that this is my job and my passion! Don’t compare my progress to that of a normal household! 🙂
Mud room and laundry combo makeover.
It just wasn’t functioning well. And since so many of our guests come into the house this way, I wanted to make it a prettier entry.
The bones in this room were wonderful — the faux marble ceramic tile and our mud room bench are great.
But I knew it could all look and function so much better:
This post may contain affiliate links for your convenience.
I added some function to our utility closet by making it a spot for the cat litter as well.
Our cats LOVE having a private spot and we love that we don’t have to look at it every day. 🙂
My IKEA closet makeover.
Function was really the name of my game this year. We’ve lived in our home for four years, and in that time I’ve figured out what works and what doesn’t.
One space that wasn’t working is my closet. I appreciated all of the space, but it was designed for only hanging clothes.
I needed storage for folded clothes more than anything.
So what sometimes looked like this:
Usually looked like this:
It’s only been a few months since I finished this makeover and I already can barely even remember what a mess it used to be.
This is one of my all time favorite makeovers in terms of functionality for SURE.
If you can tackle ONE space this year, let it be your closet!
I can’t even tell you what a difference this newly organized space makes in my days:
I’ve started the process of prettying it up a bit more over the past couple of months. It’s SO lovely! I’ll be sharing more of that with you soon.
Our garage decrapification and organization reveal.
Yep…making spaces work better for us was definitely a trend last year!
I really wanted certain parts of our house to work better for us. Like I mentioned before, I always recommend living in your space for awhile before starting a makeover.
I find I make the best decisions on both form and function if I wait it out a bit.
I’ve never had a true workshop in either of our garages, and I figured that after 13 years of blogging, and 25+ years of DIY…it was time.
That made a tremendous difference, and this spot still looks just as good now. That’s the sign of successful organization!
But I needed more space to work, and a spot to properly store my tools.
Basement family room built in and makeover.
Second to adding storage, it was the year of the basement in our house! 🙂
Early last year I tackled the biggest DIY project I’ve ever attempted! We have a HUGE wall (18 feet to be exact) in our basement that I had plans for:
I started by painting the walls a dark gray called Westchester Gray.
And now this space is SO cozy but has a sophisticated feel at the same time.
It has been our favorite place to hang out over the past year:
I have another fun project I’ve been working on down here I’ll be sharing with you very soon! It turned out so good!
Heavy duty kitchen shelving.
I didn’t do much in our kitchen this last year, but the one project I did work on made a huge impact.
This one as a long time coming…I wanted to do more with this spot where our kitchen shelves hung:
I planned to turn this spot into a beverage center for all of our wine, hot chocolate and coffee needs.
Even I was surprised at the impact this made in our kitchen! It gives the whole room more of a custom look and we all love it.
When it comes to plans for the upcoming year, I’ve learned that the spaces I think I’ll tackle rarely turn out to be what I focus on. 😉
But there are a few must do’s and couple I’d love to work on in 2022!
1. Finish up the pantry.
Since then the pantry has been almost finished and fully functional, but I still have a list of to do’s and projects I want to share with you!
This one is high on my list to finish up early this year.
2. Backyard additions and more trees!
And now we’re hoping to spread out and focus on the yard a bit more. We have a much bigger yard than our last house, so we’ve been planning out some additional projects and landscaping.
I’ll definitely be adding a raised garden bed area this spring. I’ve been years since I’ve had a full garden and I miss it!
This garden area will be more permanent and I hope to make it as pretty as possible.
3. More closet makeovers!
I plan to tackle our linen closet that no longer looks this good:
With all of the additional storage I’ve created this year, this space has changed quite a bit. It’s time to decide on what will live in here and get it functioning better.
My husband is jealous of my beautiful closet now, so I hope to makeover his smaller closet as well. IKEA inventory was touch and go months ago, so I’m hoping it’s better now.
Now I know more about the process and plan to order as much as I can at the start!
4. The big basement project.
This one has been on my list for years now, and we still haven’t started it. 🙂
Our basement kitchenette will be SO COOL…one day. It won’t be a cheap project, and since I do as much as I can myself, will take months to complete:
I’d love to get it to the point where we have running water…just a sink would be awesome!
In the scheme of things that is an amazing bonus space that we don’t really need to do anything with, so we’ll see.
I go where the winds take me! 😂 Who knows what is in store for this year?
I love taking a break over the holidays, and about this time every year I’m dreaming up new projects. I can’t wait to start and am thankful to have you reading along with me!