Ok, so now you can all see first hand how I am really good at starting new projects. Finishing them? Well…. uhm…. I could work on that a bit. However, one thing I have learned lately about achieving happiness, is things feel a lot better if I do what I feel in the moment. If all I feel like doing is washing one dish, well then I wash one dish. Maybe after one, I will want to do another. When I don’t want to do that anymore, I stop. And so it goes with the renovations. This has been quite helpful in getting off of the couch and out of the dark places of my mind. It was in a cognitive behavioral therapy group that I learned that perfectionists often won’t do a project if they think that cannot do it perfectly. This definitely makes sense on why some things take me so long. Especially in academia – I often cannot complete a paper because there are still a few things I need to take care of before it is done. It can take an awfully long time to get something exactly perfect. Completing the last 10% of a project is the hardest part for me. Allowing my self to just do a little bit until I don’t want to anymore releases some of the pressure of perfection. I can achieve a lot more with this mindset. Anyways, back to the point. I am still working on the entryway! haha! In my defense, fixing this wall has been a bit crazy. I have roll-skimmed it, sealed it, mudded it, sanded it and it is still not done. The problem is that bubbles keep appearing. I cut out the large bubbles at each stage and mud and sand again. I tried sealing it with Gardz. I mudded and sanded again. I still have a few bubbles, but they flattened when they dried and I sanded them out. That is where I have left off. Now we are looking at the ceilings in the stairwell thinking that we should remove the rest of popcorn finish before painting because it makes a lot more sense to paint the entire stairwell at the same time. This small project is really a big project in disguise.
Here is the wall at step one with the primer applied 
Here is the wall as it stands now. It is looking a lot better.
At the same time this was all being done, we were also working on our crawlspace and dining room cabinet. In our small townhouse, storage space is limited. Finding a hidden space where you can fit a closet is like striking gold. Especially when all of the bedrooms are occupied by offspring. They do not seem to want to store camping gear and orchids in their space. I don’t know why…. Seeing what our neighbors have done in their places is always exciting. Especially when that includes finding unused spaces behind closed walls. One of our neighbors showed us their crawlspace and how they had accessed it. This was an area we had always wondered about – how much space was back there. As soon as I got home, I excitedly cut a hole in our wall and we happily gazed on a nice long space under our entryway perfect for storing things like skis and Christmas decorations. After a long time of planning, we decided to have a cabinet made to match our kitchen cabinets. A two door cabinet with one side for storing stationary and office supplies and the other side hiding an access door to the crawl space. In preparation, I roll skimmed the wall, painted, and made a little access door for the crawl space. I really like the finish on the roll skimmed wall. It is nice and smooth and more consistent between the repaired and mudded areas and the non-repaired areas. The cabinet is now completed and installed. The only thing left is the baseboards and eventually the half wall cap above… which is another project still in the planning stages. We have to finish the entry way and stairwell first!
