The cozy cottage underwent a lot of changes in 2018, home projects big and small. First, we renovated part of the first floor for the new beautility room. Then we created a nursery. And then came smaller home projects to accommodate our new needs, which I am sharing with you now as well as ideas/hopes/dreams for 2019 home projects.

The thought process started during the beautility room renovation: why don’t we get rid of our dining room? I know this can be a bit controversial for people with houses since there is usually a clear dining area, especially in houses with small kitchens like ours. But we never use it! The dining room was the middle room of the first floor and the most squared off room with the best hangout space for when we have company (our living room, on the other hand, has a nonworking fireplace on an angle that really cuts off the usable square footage in that room). We originally designed it to be both a dining room and a sitting area but we really only used it when we had guests. This is how it looked before:

What’s the point in having an entire room in our house that we don’t use, especially considering just how small our house is? That was my thinking, along with the desire to have more comfortable spaces to lounge around during my maternity leave and more soft surfaces for a baby to lay on or crawl around on.

So, once the beautility room renovation was over, we officially got rid of our dining room. We got rid of the table that was in the kitchen that had come with the house and moved our basic, you’ve-seen-it-in-every-20-year-old’s-apartment IKEA dining table into the kitchen. This move freed up space for a couch.

We moved the couch that was in the office (also Ikea) and brought it down to the new living room. We swapped out one bookshelf that was in the office for one that was in the dining room, got a new rug, made some changes to the décor and styling, and hired an electrician to swap out the atrocious ceiling fan that had been there for something new, modern and sleek. I also added white Roman shades but photographed this room before installing those shades.

Here is the room now:

Of course, this room is nowhere near done, but we have used it SO MUCH MORE than we ever did before. It’s great having two living rooms on the first floor now because someone could be comfortable watching TV in one room and someone else could be comfortable relaxing or reading in the other room. And both rooms are great for tummy time and hanging out with a baby.

Things I would like to do to this room: swap out the Ikea shelving for something else that can hold our record player and records as well as other décor and baby needs, and maybe reupholster that Ikea couch since it’s so comfortable, I don’t want to get rid of it, but I don’t want a dark brown couch. Also, I no longer want an accent wall of dark gray paint. I want the entire living room to be that dark gray color (Distant Thunder by Behr).

Because we got rid of the flex studio and guest bedroom to create the nursery, we needed to recreate our guest bedroom elsewhere. The only natural fit for this was the office as it’s a private bedroom. We moved the sleeper couch from the guest bedroom into the office, made possible by moving the office couch down to the second living room. And, because we had swapped out one bookshelf in the office with one that had been in the dining room, we could create more of a wall of books in the office. Confused yet? Basically, we did a whole bunch of switcheroos.

Per the usual, the office is not done. In fact, I have talked several times about really wanting to turn this into a custom library (catch up on that here). Even though this is now a combo office/library/guest bedroom, I still want to do that. Other changes to make here: swap out the rug for one that we both like and one that is comfier underfoot than this one, redo the curtains with the same print but in a different fabric and size them appropriately, and move around some artwork.

So, 2018 was kinda busy at the cozy cottage for home projects and now that the secret is out, you’re all caught up. What will 2019 hold for us? Well, really not sure, to be honest! For one, we have no budget for a renovation or major home projects this year since we’re still paying off the beautility room AND we will very soon have childcare costs. But, as you can sense from this post, there are things I want to do. Here are the biggest home projects that have been on my mind for a while:

• Master bedroom: Will we or won’t we get a closet door situation?
• Office: Will we or won’t we finally create a custom library?
• Garage: Will we or won’t we work on that project that I have been talking about where we really separate Boss Bar from the rest of the garage and make it a better hangout space?
• Backyard: Will we or won’t we make updates back there? Every year, we’ve tweaked it a bit. Last summer, we stained the wood “decking,” got a new table and second umbrella, and amped up the curtains, which I barely shared on the blog. This year, I’d like to replace the chairs and string lights going across the yard, rather than just along the garage door.

I would love to undertake these this year if we can scrounge up the funds and get them done. And, of course, little changes here and there.

What do you think of these home projects? What do you think of us getting rid of our dining room? Leave thoughts and questions in the comments section below.