Small Projects

Our home renovation slowed down even more when we brought Henry home. Thankfully we finished the vast majority of our reno before March 31, Henry’s birthday, so all that we have left are a million little projects. We still need to landscape both the front yard and back yard, put art on walls, choose colors and paint a room or two; little things that all add up to an overwhelming amount of work. 

Every few weeks, James and I get a burst of energy that we can aim toward crossing something off of our list. A small project feels small again, and we remember that we have time to do a part of the project even if we don't have time for the full scope. Finishing one small part of an already small project gets us one day closer to our goal.

We had not yet opened up our side porch because we needed to clean it out and patch up the ceiling before exposing it to the elements. About a month ago, we spent a day clearing our porch of the things that we let pile up in the last year. We donated some furniture, and found places in the shed or house for anything that we decided to keep. The next weekend, James made measurements and began cutting beadboard to patch an odd hole in our ceiling (the previous owner cut the ceiling to pieces to fit a fan with a long rod, rather than buy a flush mount fan.) It took us a few days, but with teamwork and patience we were able to patch it all up. We could then knock out the walls in time for heavy trash to take everything away.

We have a really cool loft space in our master bedroom, but had no way to get up there. We spent a few hours one day getting rungs for a wall-mounted ladder welded, a few more hours another week getting the rungs powder coated and then James spent an afternoon measuring and marking the wall and drilling 64 little holes where we would need to ratchet the newly welded and powder-coated rungs with lag screws to the wall. I spent a few hours the next day while he was at work installing some of the rungs, and a some hours the another day installing a few more. By breaking up our projects into manageable pieces we have been able to make bits of progress in our almost-finished house. 

Neither of these two projects is done yet. We still need to sand-blast the old paint off of the brick on the porch and peel up the laminate flooring that is in a corner out there. In our loft we still need to organize what we have thrown up there for storage and turn it into a living space. Still, these projects have been started. Neither of them seems so daunting any more, and we have moved both of these projects from our “to-do” list on to our “in-progress” list.