Renovation Resolution

New Year’s Eve always feels a bit bittersweet to me and this year is no exception. Right now, 2021 is shiny, new, and, full of potential. But standing on the precipice of this new year, sometimes I think about how tomorrow the year officially starts; it won’t be brand new any more and each day it will lose a bit of it’s potential. I think this feeling comes from the fear that I often have that I will not accomplish what I set out to do.

2020 was the year that I dove in hard to attempt to finally finish our ensuite bathroom renovation. We accomplished so much and have been using that bathroom daily for the last 6 weeks or so. It’s not 100% complete – still needs window trim and towel hooks and… a door… But, at the beginning of this year it was a construction zone with unfinished plumbing and electrical, no drywall, and no flooring. It’s a massive improvement.

For 2021, my renovation goals are to finish finish the ensuite bathroom and renovate the hall bath as well. There are also some miscellaneous outdoor goals too – like making progress on the walkway and landscaping project we started this summer and have since abandoned.

As far as resolutions go, I have just two. Let’s get the one I probably make every year out of the way – I want to read more. My plan is to try to replace mindless scrolling time with reading a novel. The AT&T outage in Nashville on Christmas Day really helped me go cold turkey on the mindless scrolling as we were without internet or cellular service for a few days. Lets see how many weeks into 2021 I last, shall we?

My renovation resolution is related to that fear I have of not accomplishing what I have set out to do. I’d like to not let that fear of failure get to me as much in 2021. In The Great Tile Saga of 2020, I was so hard on myself for not having a 100% perfect tile installation. I felt like a failure, a hack, an imposter. Well, we’ve been using the bathroom for a few weeks now and, I can say for sure, I do not notice any of those imperfections. They don’t bother me at all. Now, I’m sure you’re thinking to yourself… “I told you it would be fine!” and yes, yes you did.

But the important bit here is that I let that fear derail me for a few days each time. I know that striving for perfection at all times is just part of who I am – especially when it comes to the aesthetic components of a project – and that isn’t a totally bad quality. What I have realized this year is that I was subconsciously relating not achieving perfection with some kind of moral failure (shout out to @domesticblisters on TicTok who taught me that keeping house tasks are morally neutral).

I think as a society we have this idea that if you’re not an expert at something, you shouldn’t do it, or at least you shouldn’t share it with others on the internet. I obviously don’t believe that as I have a blog detailing my amateur renovation and attempt plenty of things I have never done before – but sometimes big societal ideas can creep into our subconscious in ways that are unexpected (see also: racism, sexism, ableism…). So, all of that to say, my resolution is to be aware of when those ideas are creeping in and promptly tell them to go jump in a lake.

I am truly grateful this year for anyone who followed along with this journey and encouraged me along the way. I honestly could not have done it without you. Well, you and calling my dad on FaceTime.

I hope you’ll stick around this next year as we dive into another bathroom renovation. Maybe it will take less than 18 months to complete this one…