In my last post, I teased we have a big project coming up here on Swoon Worthy.  The question is really, what do you choose to do when your to-do list is a mile long and you’ve got a limited budget?

When I walk around my house, I have a list in my head that’s practically endless of all the things I want to do.  Surely I’m not alone in this?  But how do you make a decision on what actually gets done?

When we first moved here in June (over 6 months now, it goes so fast), rather than have every room in the house in a state of disrepair, we decided the first room we would concentrate on would be the living room.  This was so that after a long day at work or a busy weekend of DIY, we’d have a comfortable relaxed place to escape to.

Ignore the crooked candle in the window.. *ahem*

(Cat Haters can skip this next paragraph by the way) As a side note, the kitties seem to appreciate the warm cozy space as much as we do.  We normally keep the door to the living room closed during the day because a velvet sofa is the last place we want the hairy critters to ‘adopt’ as their own but to be honest, even when the door is left open, they never venture in there.  They will actually wait until we retire to what we affectionately refer to as the ‘Chesterfield Room’ (makes it sound grand, doesn’t it?) to join us there in the evenings.  Sometimes, if we are still in the dining room after 9pm, Pablo will roam in and meow at us as though he is saying, ‘Well? When are you getting up and going on that nice soft sofa so I can walk around on top of you guys until I settle myself on your laps?’  He will continue to meow until we actually sit on the sofa.  I swear he thinks he pays the mortgage around here.  Senna normally takes her place on the arm of the chair, usually facing backwards away from the television.  I don’t think she appreciates our taste in television.  Either that, or she really likes the wallpaper.

So anyway, with so many individual projects and purchases for this one room, we only did minimal work in the other rooms to make it feel more like ‘ours’ over the last few months. The living room at the moment is about 85% completed.  We still need to install trim around the skirting board and I need to choose fabric for the curtains and sew them (which will be a major project in itself for a novice seamstress like myself), do something fabulous with that chest of drawers and eventually, much further down the road, I’d like to replace the black leather chair with a couple soft tufted beauties… Mmmm.

These are $5,600 and are in San Francisco.   One can still dream though, can’t one?

As it’s just odds and ends left however, I kind of feel like we’ve lost a bit of focus, doing bits and pieces but not really accomplishing anything substantial.

I suppose the dining room has been the next room to get proper attention but until we can do the flooring (which will entail quite a bit of disruption in the middle of a cold winter) I would never be able to call the room ‘done’.  Plus I still have yet to complete the ‘gallery wall’ and paint the sideboard plus choose a fabric and complete all the sewing on the soft furnishings.  And so work continues on this room…

So this past weekend, W and I were talking about our next big focus. As it’s January, its an opportunity as always to think about the year ahead and what we’d like to do and plan for within our minute budget. What will we be able to afford accomplish this year?

Here was your hint from Sunday…  did you guess what it was?

Well I’m very happy and excited to say it’s going to be the kitchen.  I think part of it is because W gets bored when it’s all zhushing and no building, being that I’m the Master Zhusher (I’m sure that’s a word) and he’s the Master Builder.  And part of it is because it’s starting to REALLY bother us how much it simply doesn’t reflect our taste.  We’ll be completing the project in stages over the next few months as we get funds in place but we will be starting fairly soon.

I’ll get into all the gory details in upcoming posts and share it with you as it unfolds…  How exciting, my white kitchen awaits!

Image credits:  All my own except fabulous slipper chairs from here.