How to Maintain Momentum with Home Improvements

In 2014 we bought out first ever home. A Victorian fixer-upper flat. When we moved in, our flat had seen very little love in the 10 (or 30) years prior. Over the last 6 years we’ve been chipping away at the DIY, saving up and updating things and making it feel like home.

After 6 years, I sometimes suffer from renovation fatigue. We’re saving up for some bigger jobs (I’m looking at you bathroom) and progress sometimes feels stagnant with a long and niggly to do list. Early last year I felt like I wasn’t making any progress at all in the house. So I implemented a new process to keep things moving forward.

Our Renovation Process

• Every six months or so; Ash and I do a walk through of the house and make a long list of jobs we want to get done in each room. Even though we only live in a two bedroom flat, there seems to always be jobs to do.
• We put a rough cost estimate / budget against each item.
• We put a priority against each item (1/2/3) 1 = top priority, needs doing in the immediate future. 2 = medium priority, good to get to soon. No major urgency. 3 = we’d like to do it, but we’ll get to it when we get to it.
• We give a time estimate for how long the job will take.
• Each month we pick 2/3 things to pick off the list. These might be as small as ‘touch up paint’ or ‘hang mirror’ but this way we ensure we’re chipping away at our list, all the time without spending entire weekends doing DIY.

Keeping Up Momentum

I keep the list in our family folder, (more on that to come) and at the end of each month, we each commit to 2 or 3 jobs we’re going to tackle the following month. This month I finally got some wedding photos printed, 18 months on and Ash touched up all the paint in our hallway. We probably spent less than 2 hours each, but it feels great to get some things off our list.