I’m the self-proclaimed walking definition of a girl who starts too many projects and takes forever to finish the ones that bore her. I’ve been working on improving my follow-through on projects that could have been done months ago (or, in the case of the kitchen island, a year ago), though none really demand a full self-fulfilling bloggy post.
What have I checked off my list (and not told you about?)
1. I finished the second driftwood lamp and coordinating paper lampshade. After I built and wrote about the first, I had to get in the right mindset to do the second lamp. Fortunately, I crossed it off my list at the beginning of the month using the other half of the driftwood block and a selection of darker stock from the same Anthropologie coloring book that I hacked apart for the first paper lampshade experiment.
Balanced on a makeshift-and-temporary end table (really, it’s one of those shoe storage units sold for $14.99 at Target on it’s end), it balances out the living room lighting situation.
(Sidenote: That photo looks stretched vertically, right? Weird. Camera-slash-eye tricks.)
Illuminating the living room nicely, they’re a pleasant alternative to the overhead chandelier when we’re watching TV at night.
2. Speaking of the chandelier, I replaced its (dumb) dimmer switch. It somehow combusted after less than a year of use, failing to dim, but was still functioning the lights on and off… meaning, it wasn’t urgent on my to-do list. I have no explanation for its failure, but it meant getting around to buying a new $10 switch and wiring it into place. For someone who’s at Home Depot every week, it shouldn’t have taken 3 months to get around to perusing the electrical aisle. And FYI – once upon a time (last fall) I showed you how I swapped out the switch in the dining room, if you want to refer to this post for a how-to.
3. I finally painted the kitchen island. Last fall when we reconstructed the kitchen island, I was eager and excited and all over sanding and priming the base of the table before the snow started to fall. That’s as far as I made it though, and it’s sat primed and unpainted in the kitchen since November. Despite having gotten around refinishing the tabletop (that we made out of clearance-priced tongue-in-groove floorboards), I only dragged the base onto the porch this week to give it the finishing touches it demanded.
Color (or paint) me embarrassed. At least began to clean up easily.
I used exterior paint, actually. I’m not sure that’s kosher for a home decorating situation, but I’m trying it anyways in hopes that maybe it will wear better than any interior paint I had on hand. The Silver Lining paint by Behr was leftover from when I painted the garage trim and door earlier in the summer.
After drying on the porch for an afternoon, I moved it back in. Nothing new functionally, just cleaner, and looking like it’s not a work-in-progress. Yes, I keep planters on the kitchen island. Now that it’s clean, I can probably upgrade to something classier. And kitchen-y.
4. And speaking of the paint I used on the garage… I finally finished painting the cinderblock. Getting the job done required buying an extra quart of Behr’s Porpoise, which was the color that best matched the Mastic victorian gray house siding (I segue, but you can read about that painting project with the extra poofy roller right here). For a few weeks after I finished painting the garage door, it looked like this. Not terribly obvious, but the right side of the door is definitely incomplete.
The fresh coat of gray leading up the right side of the garage helped to clean up (and disguise) the embedded ivy vines that had made the garage their home.
5. I sloppily half-assembled a gallery of frames behind my entryway door. Earlier in the summer, I painted that wall blue and immediately wanted to extend the now-gone stairwell gallery into the entryway for that cohesive look. So up went a game plan (right on down to the same newspaper templates that I used when I worked on the first gallery), and there it stayed.
Really, it’s gotta come down. Not today. Maybe tomorrow. Or next month.
Are any of my fellow blogger friends holding out on lazy behaviors and finishing projects months (and months) behind schedule?
Come on. Spill the beans.
14 Comments
Ha! I do this all.the.time. It can take me a long time to do the easiest thing and then I get a burst of energy and try to do a bunch of stuff at once. I think everything you did looks really great. I can’t imagine why exterior paint would be a problem either. Seems like it would be more durable, right?
I’m still working on replacing the floors in our house, but that didn’t stop me from starting a new project last weekend that sucked up WAY more time than I thought it would. Hopefully I’ll get some serious work done on the floors this weekend and the second project is finally done too. Hurray!
Haha, we’re all the same Kate. Flooring is totally easy to ignore… I mean… if there aren’t holes to fall through, what’s the big deal? Probably explains why it took my folks 2 years to get carpet in my new-addition-bedroom back in 1997. No big deal, you learn to love walking on plywood. GOOD LUCK getting stuff done over the long weekend!
Oh boy. We are so behind on everything. We need to go to Ikea (2 hours away) for stuff for the closet office, paint the exterior, work on the back porch, build stairs for the shed, rewire the doorbell, build a console table… my half-assed gallery wall in the dining room needs to be finished, and we have new interior doors hanging out in the shed. And don’t even get me started on the guest bathroom!
Hooray for tying up loose ends! And I’m curious to see if the exterior paint is more durable.
Why. Is. IKEA. Always. So. Far. Away. The good thing about every IKEA trip I’ve ever been on is that I use it as permission to buy EVERYTHING that I might possibly need for 6-months worth of projects, both big and small… so my to-do list kind of ends up like a project-grab-bag. And I like that.
That’s totally how it is for us, too! The only problem is that the nearest Ikea is right next to the nearest Crate & Barrel and Z Gallerie. So it’s sort of a big “buy everything you’ve been coveting” weekend, haha. Fortunately we always hit Ikea first, which prevents me from overspending in the other places.
Are you talkin’ about the Millenium Mall in Orlando, girl? This sounds vaguely familiar to a killer shopping spree I put my ex-co-workers through once on business travel. If yes, god help you.
YES! It’s terrible! My bank account pretty much cries every time we go (which is why we’ve been putting it off, but we need a desk!) And I failed to mention the giant West Elm and Pottery Barn that have better sale stuff than the ones near us.
Congrats on all the do-ings! Go girl go!
And this is definitely the nature of DIY! Although my one true weakness is getting around to touching up paint. Blech!
Ooh. Paint. #6: Patched and painted that extra drill hole above the wall-mounted TV. I finally got around to patching it up three months ago, but it took me until 2-weeks ago to sand the patching down and reapply paint. Oh, how hard it is to walk down to the basement and grab the can of paint and the paint brush.
Nice work Emily, way to finish strong! Motivation for me to work on (finish?) my many projects over this long weekend!
Good luck, Marty! I love crossing things off a list. Start with the easy and at least you’ll be able to finish up a few things :) The whole bunnies (easy) and bears (hard) strategy.
Um, I wanted to paint a decorative storage box to look like the ? box in the Mario Bros game & make an NES controller blanket for my son’s nursery before he was born. The box is made, but only painted white & the blanket is about 90% done…and my son is 14 months old now. Heh. Whoops.
Maybe reschedule it for his 2-year? On a positive note, he’s probably more likely to know about the game by that age. Do you guys ever watch the Mario show?