As you’ve likely noticed by now, the renovation bug has bitten us again. I’ve been writing more about those projects and there are a lot of posts to follow about our future plans. But at this point in time, we’re also really focusing on appreciating what we have and loving the position we’re in — where we can enjoy our family, our times together, being closer to grandparents for a change (and hopefully even more family soon) and not needing to worry about running around like crazy people all the time, trying to get 1,001 things done every second.

Thankfully our new renovation project is a bit different than our last “project”, which you may recall involved updating a fabulous 1830’s farmhouse in Germany to be not only more up to date in the bathrooms, but also more practical with its large live-in kitchen and mudroom. And let’s not forget the horse stables turned guest house project which we did almost entirely ourselves, where we added skills like framing and hanging drywall, plumbing, laying tile and in-home automation setup to our renovations “know-how” list.

There were many great moments during that process and we certainly learned a lot about ourselves and our capabilities. But when we moved to Berlin, we also learned to greatly appreciate not being required to spend every weekend playing catch up on our to-do list…that never seemed to get shorter or draw closer to an end.

Our Small Condo Design Plans for the Future

So what do we have in store for the future? Many things really.

One is to better utilize the space we have in our nearly 1,800 sq. ft condo. We have learned over time that we don’t really need more space than that at this point. And we love the area that we live in because it’s centrally located, we have great neighbors, and our cost of living can’t be beat.

The last thing we need is more to maintain, clean and organize. We’ve had a house that had more storage than one family should ever have, which turned into us hardly throwing anything away. And although we have learned a lot lately about living with less, we still have trouble with making space for lots of things already. We all seem to value intentional living and the ideas of living with less so much more on a regular basis. Why have a ton of stuff that you need to clean repeatedly but never use? Makes little sense if you ask me.

So one of the projects we did recently was flipping our living room space with the dining room. When we bought our condo, it was furnished. So we left most of the furniture the way it was and have been using the rooms as they were set up. But as time passed, we realized that it might work if we changed things a bit. And it turns out that we absolutely love it that way. And actually find that the air conditioner somehow seems to work better too – assumedly because of the airflow in the condo. Double score.

We’ve also given our office an overhaul, from adding a second full-size desk where Stefan makes his magic happen (versus the tiny one he had in Berlin – which I’ll be sharing more details about very soon) and rearranging the furniture, to taking down some strange wall art and making the rest of us more useful for us. We work from home and we’ve given a lot of thought to getting a dedicated office space. But at the same time, by staying in our home office, we save a few thousand dollars a month…and we can keep our costs lower for our Naples internet marketing clients. And since we love using virtual assistants around the globe, we just don’t need a big opulent office.

We also have big plans for our kitchen, beyond the flood light to LED switch out that we did this past weekend. It’s going to be a rather involved project because we plan to paint/resurface the cabinets, add new appliances, get granite countertops, add some additional storage and trim, and basically just turn this kitchen on its head. So that is going to be super exciting.

We’ll be doing some similar work in our bathrooms, from refinishing the cabinets to adding new counters, perhaps adding a shower enclosure, adding some décor elements in there and likely also upgrading the tile in our master bathroom which is just icky.

And then there’s the rest of this to do list as we delve into small condo design elements and renovation…

• Ripping out carpet to replace it with hardwood floors in the master and Mack’s room (although we’ve played with the idea of doing the whole condo in wood because we love it so much)
• Adding useful closets into our master bedroom and Mackenzie’s bedroom (versus the wire racks that everyone seems to love here)
• Repainting the entire condo
• New window treatments for the entire condo
• Creating a plan for our lanai that makes its functional, fun and doesn’t mind getting rained on in the rainy season
• Adding more storage in our laundry room and garage
• Getting new appliances in the laundry room
• New furniture for the dining room & living room
• Developing a plan for the “breakfast nook” by our kitchen which is a somewhat wasted space

I guess you can basically say that we’re redoing the entire condominium without ripping out walls or any other construction…although there has been some talk about a partial wall for our office/den with a cool sliding glass or other divider across the top half…but that’s still in the conceptual phase.

Taking Baby Steps

Sounds like a pretty major set of tasks, right??

It really is when I write it all out. But we plan to do a lot of things ourselves. And thankfully we have a bunch of experience and, meanwhile, a good idea for design and our own style. Plus we’ve already located a few fantastic sponsors to get us going.

It’s going to be a process to say the least. And because we don’t want to turn out lives upside down all at once because we’ll be living there while we do all this work, it could get interesting. But we’re not going anywhere for a while.

And some of the items will be a chain of events. For example, we can’t do the closets until we get new floors since the carpet extends in there…and we are so sick of carpet. So the floors are one of the first tasks we will tackle.

It’s going to be an awesome adventure and we’re looking forward to taking you along for the ride.

What do you love about your living space? How much space do you have? What’s the one upgrade you’ve done in your home that you love the most?