However, some homeowners may look to 2014 as the year they finally decided to remodel part of their home, specifically the bathroom. If the dawn of the New Year is a time for new beginnings and hitting reset in areas of our lives, then this is also the perfect time to reevaluate what is in our home – and what is missing.

Alongside the kitchen, the bathroom is the most remodeled room in the home. Homeowners often think about remodels when big events occur. For example, when you’re moving, the kids have left the home, or you’ve come into money. But the beginning of the next year is a perfectly natural time to consider actual cosmetic and functional changes in your home. Like phases of the moon, the year moves in the same way. Along with ideas of renewal and rebirth, the coming of January brings with it seeing things – again, physical and metaphorical – in a new way. Is it time to repaint the rooms? Should your upgrade your doors and vanity? Or should you tear everything out this year and finally put in a steam shower?

Plan Ahead

Doing something small, like replacing hinges and adding shelves can be done in a weekend or less, while bigger projects take planning. Having a well-organized plan not only takes away the frustration and stress of taking on too much with too few resources, it also allows you to dream big.  Whether you mark your New Year as a place to begin planning or put your plan in motion, setting goals along the way may be more palatable for some. Others may decide to just get the whole thing done at once.

Replacing appliances, like the toilet and bathtub or shower takes more planning, especially if you are interested in items that are more exotic in style or features. Consider the space in your bathroom, too. While wanting a freestanding clawfoot tub is fine, and definitely something to strive for, is it practical in a smaller bathroom? There are many options that you can choose from that will fit your space, and it is worth the time to look for what you want, even if it delays replacing the same tub that has been in your bathroom since 1985.

A complete overhaul of your bathroom can take several weeks to finish. Whether you want to replace one thing at a time, or have it all done at once is certainly going to depend on your own needs. When choosing premium items, it is best to also discuss what you want with a contractor. Only a contractor, who comes into your home to discuss your New Year bathroom remodel, will be able to tell you how long, and how much, it will take.

However, isn’t the point of thinking about change and transformation at the New Year really setting a goal? Getting to that goal is, some might argue, part of the fun. So, while setting out to lose weight or finally read The Brothers Karamazov might be fun, albeit daunting, planning a bathroom remodel can be seen in the same way. What do you want in your bathroom and what can you see? You don’t even have to be practical in the early planning stages. Look at pictures of bathrooms you’d like and imagine them as yours. Start small, but keep your eyes on the grand vision you have.

Where Will You End Up?

The thing is, when you start planning and thinking of ideas, you will probably end up in a completely different place than you thought you would when began. If you started with the idea of an oversized bathtub taking up one corner of your bathroom, and ended with a decision to completely scrap a tub altogether and go with a walk-in steam shower, plus body spray jets, you’ve come further than you were before. You’ve changed. Maybe not in the sense that most people would say, but if you think again of change as a metaphor, perhaps you can see it as letting go of the past. And this is really what the New Year is all about anyway. Letting go or changing things that were holding you back last year, or for several years in a row is definitely a good thing.

Let this year be the year that you change, both as a person, and as a homeowner. Dream bigger than you have, consider how you’re going to get there with a solid plan, talk to people when you need to (like a contractor), and see your vision become a reality.