2021 wasn’t the most productive year for us with renovating. In January we welcomed baby Dylan into the world and spent months thereafter focussing most of our time and attention on him. It was definitely more of a “chilled” year than we’re used to and actually, it was really nice to have some time out from properly renovating!
2021 was also a terrible year for price rises on materials. Wood went up nearly 100% – DOUBLE what it cost in 2020! And that now makes renovating quite unaffordable for us. We’ve tried to be savvy collecting secondhand wood for example, but that in itself takes time, more research and unfortunately usually means traveling more of a distance. Ultimately, it’s something that really affected our plans in 2021 – and probably will continue to affect our plans for 2022 too.
That said, the year wasn’t a complete renovation-FAIL and we did get some small and also some big stuff ticked off the list. So here’s what we got up to in 2021:
Creating Storage in the Basement
After years of keeping our DIY tools on the floor, in a giant mess, in the corner of our attic – we now have a properly dedicated and ORGANISED space for everything! And I can’t tell you how AMAZING it is!
This little ‘alley’ in our basement was the perfect place to make some DIY scaffold shelves for storing all our tools and materials and it was also the perfect project to tackle with a young sleepy baby. I don’t think we’d have anywhere near enough time for moving all those tools down 3 flights of stairs now Dylan’s older and sleeps less – so I’m really glad we tackled this project first in 2021.
Installing a New Unvented Cylinder
This has been a job that’s needed doing since we bought the house 7 years ago! However, it was also a very expensive job, hence why we’ve put it off for so long. Now we have a baby though, our hot water situation needed a complete overhaul. You can read more about the reasons for installing a new unvented cylinder here along with the costs of having this job done and how we’re finding the new cylinder several months on!
This was a big job for us, but one I’m glad we’ve got ticked off this year!
Making and Installing a New Gate for Our Shared Alley
Remember our alleyway revamp back in 2018, there was one thing missing – a new gate! This year we finally had enough pallet wood to tackle this job and now our alley looks a whole lot smarter with more privacy and it’s more secure too!
I haven’t shared a blog post about this gate, but you can read an old blog post about how to build a DIY pallet gate here.
Building a New Compost Bin at the Allotment
Last year we took ownership of an allotment plot that needed A LOT of work. We’re talking de-weeding and multiple trips to the tip removing plastic/carpet/rotten wood, you name it. The compost bin was not in the best shape at all but for the last 12 months, we’ve managed to make do. However, in Autumn we decided it was time to rebuild!
We managed to reuse *most* of the timbers from the old compost bin and simply cut them down, painted them up, and rebuilt. The new compost bin is hopefully now stronger, it’s also a bit smaller in size (which we think is a good thing!) and is now in a new location on the plot too.
We weren’t able to salvage enough wood to make a divider in the middle of our new bin, so I’ve saved sharing this tutorial for when the job is fully done.
Decorating the Nursery (Mostly)
And finally, our last achievement of 2021 – Dylan’s nursery! We actually moved Dylan into this room when he turned 6 months and before we’d even decorated it, so that made working in here a little trickier. Not impossible of course – we simply moved Dylan into our room to nap in a travel cot, but I didn’t like to disrupt his routine/comfort too much, so tried to limit this to just one day a week which made progress in here quite slow.
We’re still not 100% complete with the room, but it’s at least 95% there and it’s looking GOOD – and I’ll share more soon when it’s done!
So that was our renovations in 2021 and what we achieved in the last 12 months. Here’s to a new year and a new set of renovation goals coming soon!
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