My house is driving me crazy

Since we moved in just over a year ago, we’ve made a TON of progress. It looks bright(er) and happy(er) and more like our home than someone else’s. More importantly, we can actually use the entire house now, which is certainly wasn’t true then.

Popcorn ceilings. Blerg. We started scraping and stopped…and may never start again at the rate we’re going.

But lately? All the things we haven’t done yet are starting to wear on me. The master bathroom doesn’t have a functional shower. We need to replace the ugly stained carpet in the two little bedrooms. I haven’t even finished caulking and painting baseboards in the living room…and I started that right after we moved in! And of course there’s the kitchen, which we still haven’t touched.

Blue carpet in the pink room; green carpet in the white room; none of it pretty. Aaaargh.

The biggest problem right now is that it takes FOOOOORRREEEEEVVVVVEEERRR to make even tiny changes. I keep thinking I’ll paint while the girls nap, and then they decide that napping at the same time–or at all!–is overrated. So then I plan to do stuff after they go to bed, but by then I mostly just want to lay on the couch and read a book without anyone screaming at me or climbing on me or try to tear pages out. Consequently, progress has all but stopped.

Some caulked & painted; some not. Don’t even get me started on the dust & dirt.

The other main problem is that, like I said, we’ve reached a point where our house is liveable. We don’t actually need to do much because almost everything is functional as-is. There’s not a lot of motivation to do more when what’s already been done is good enough, if that makes sense.

Still have these lovely vertical blinds in our bedroom. I hate them but I’m not sure what to replace them with.

Then I make the mistake of reading all these DIY and home improvement and design blogs…for “inspiration” of course. Ha. Even my friends are posting photos of all the cool things they’re making and doing around their houses. Too much time online gets me all kinds of discouraged. Why don’t I have perfectly styled bookshelves? Why can’t I afford to tear out my not-terrible floors to replace them with something I would love? Why don’t my children play happily by themselves while I sew/paint/hammer/etc.? Why doesn’t David quit his job so we can make renovating our full-time occupation? When will this house ever be finished???

David painted and hung the closet doors, but now they won’t close. And yes, that’s just camouflage fabric tacked up instead of a legit curtain. *sigh*

I want to replace brassy door hardware and rip out tile and install new
countertops and instead I’m stuck making infinitesimal progress on
things like those expletive baseboards that should have been done ages ago. So I freak David out by hanging up paint samples in rooms we’ve already painted, and I obsess over light fixtures and sinks for the hall bathroom, and I snap at Mila for wanting to build with blocks when I’d rather be taking a sledgehammer to the fireplace.

I think I’m done with green already. Or maybe the room just isn’t finished and I’m blaming that on the green walls.

I’m hot and sweaty all the time. David has been out of town a lot lately. Margot’s still pretty needy and Mila has been more whiny and clingy than usual. We can’t afford to do everything all at once. And then there’s this:

source

Seriously. Somethings gotta give.

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