A DIY Diva’s Work Is Never Done….

Emily and I were talking the other day…..about how we always get started on projects with great gusto and somewhere along the way life gets in the way or our empty wallets or something like that and the project gets derailed and never finished. We have DIY ADHD! lol

I am great at finishing projects for a client from start to finish but that’s different. They have to pay for the materials! For me most often the project gets derailed when I have to wait to save up more money for something. I can never remain patient long enough to have everything I will need before I dive in so every project is done in phases. Unfortunately the last finishing phase is often neglected…..

If you’ve followed Emily and I for long you will know that several times in the past few years we have created a list of 5 unfinished projects and then crossed them off one at a time. Something about having to answer to each other and all of you makes us finish things we might not otherwise finish.

At least not in a timely manner!

So we decided it’s time for another list because we have several rather large projects we want to start and we promised each other we won’t start those until we finish a few other things first.

Yikes! This is gonna be hard. I’m itching to dig into something new……

So without further ado here is my list!

Tara’s 5 Unfinished Projects

In no particular order….

1. Finish painting my main floor walls

So quite a few years ago I painted all my main floor walls (with the exception of my powder room) in Sherwin Williams “Sea Salt”. I have loved this color for many years. I get bored easily but because this color changes depending on the light it helps so much. It’s always changing. It also goes with so many colors because of it’s tone variation in different light. That’s probably the reason I’ve kept it the same color for so long…..that and the fact that with an open concept floor plan and rounded corners you pretty much have the paint the entire main floor the same color and that’s a big undertaking!

So one day a couple months ago I suddenly decided I needed a new wall color. Partly because a lot has changed over the years since I first painted these walls including different furniture and I wasn’t in love with the wall color as much now and partly because……did I mention I get bored easily?

So one day after a lot of thinking and looking at colors and talking colors with Emily, I went out and bought 1 gallon of a new color……and I started painting. One wall at a time. Cutting it in, rolling it and putting the decor and furniture back in place before starting the next wall. I was going along like a house on fire.

And then the gallon was gone.

And my progress came to a screeching halt because I needed to wait for a few days to buy more paint (payday and all, you know). Well since I had carefully been putting everything back in place after completing each wall, the house wasn’t turned upside down so it really wasn’t glaring in my face forcing me to finish.

Know what happened?

Look more closely at the above pic.

Do you see the old color on the left of the fireplace and the new color on the right? You wouldn’t believe how many people haven’t even noticed that when I’ve posted pics! lol

The issue is I have gotten away with it so I haven’t finished the project. Like I literally have a line where one color ends and the other starts right at the corner of my patio door transom!

I need to resolve this situation.

2. Finish installing wood flooring in kids rooms.

A couple years ago I tore out the old nasty carpet in the entire upstairs (hallway and bedrooms) and started installing laminate flooring. I got the hallway finished and one at a time I did the kids rooms.

Now beware this is a pic that I took to prove a point and talk over something with Emily NOT an Instagram worthy pic……but it shows you my little secret……

I finished the flooring in the main rooms but never did the closets. Why? Well because I ran out of flooring until I could save up for more AND you can’t see it when the room is all set up and the full length curtains (not the ones pictured) are closed over the closet opening.

Yup!

I need to finish the flooring in the closets just because (I mean I have the boxes of flooring sitting in my hallway and they’ve been there for an embarrassingly long time!) and also I have an idea of something cool I want to do in my son’s closet so…..yeah…..another project!

3. Finish thresholds upstairs.

When I installed said flooring upstairs I never put the thresholds in place where the flooring changes. Like between the wood in the hallway and the sheet vinyl in the kids bathroom.

Or at the top of the stairs where the wood flooring meets the carpeted stairs.

Know what’s worse? Not only would it be like a 5 minute project per threshold…..I HAVE the material and have had since I installed the flooring.

I know, right?

4. Front door

If you ever asked me how many times I have changed the color on my front door I wouldn’t know what to tell you.

I have never counted but it’s been a LOT!

It was originally a dark wood stain color and I left it like that until we got the house painted in 2015. That’s when I started my revolving door of color!

Once the house and trim were all painted I initially did the door in a pale blue color called “Rain”. It stayed the way until one fall when I hung my lovely fall wreath on the door and thought “yuck”!

So I painted it to look good with my fall wreath! I’m not kidding.

That year when I hung my Christmas wreath I hated it but it was too cold to paint the door at that time of year so I made a new wreath instead. lol

Fast forward a couple years and several colors I don’t think I documented and….

I was asked to test a new door paint from a specific company and they only had a small selection of colors to choose from so….voila!

By last month I was very bored of this door color so I decided it was high time to change it. After a lengthy discussion with Emily (who also was wanting to change the color of her front door since she wasn’t happy with her current color experiment) I chose a new color and just finished painting the door about a week and a half ago but I haven’t even scraped the paint off the windows yet and still need to style the porch with the new door color.

Maybe I was waiting to be able to style it for fall?

Or maybe I was just being me!

5. Finish my son’s nightstands.

Something you don’t know…..yet….is that quite some time ago I took an old vintage desk, took it apart and made 2 nightstands out of it for my son’s room. He needed a smaller nightstand than your average size to fit between the 2 antique bed frames in his room so of course I decided to make them!

Here she is when I bought her off Facebook Marketplace. Isn’t she beautiful? This is also proof that SOMETIMES my garage is clean including the floor. It doesn’t always look like a woodworking shop on it’s worst day!

So I won’t remove all the surprise by showing you everything since I plan to dedicate a blog post to these beautiful nightstands once they are totally finished BUT I will say I got them all done except the very top pieces. You see the top of this desk had laminate on it covering the solid piece of wood and it was heavily damaged so I had to remove the laminate. When I did so I uncovered some very ratty old wood that comprised the top which isn’t uncommon when a piece is laminated anyways. You can use cheaper wood since it will all be covered. It had a lot of worm holes and weird spots on the tops of them and I could have used it by filling all that if I was going to paint the tops but I wanted the tops to be beautiful wood grain.

That said I need to get a new piece of wood to cut the tops from, put a routed edge on them and they will be done but for whatever reason I haven’t done that yet. They have been in place in my son’s room for well over a year now with temporary tops just sitting on them.

Why, you ask? After I did all that work to make them why would I not finish them since the tops would be so simple to do?

I don’t have an answer for you.

I promise to change that though.

So there are the 5 things on my list……I promise to work on them and update you as to my progress.

Did I mention I have a couple really big projects I’m dying to start as soon as I finish my list?

Now let’s see what Emily has on her list….

Until next time,

Emily’s 5 Unfinished Projects

To see what Emily has on her list, just click on the photo below.