Update

So today is the day. My marathon of projects is over. I need to spend the rest of today cleaning the house, sheets on the bed and general pillow fluffing type activities.

If you remember it was a gargantuan list with some difficult projects, especially the outdoor kitchen. Here are the completions from the list. I did get the trap door for the access hole to the crawl space built and installed. I did get the Dining Area countertop built, stained and polyurethaned and installed. I did get a hook board made stained, polyurethaned and installed.

The projects that are started but not finished are the arbor, which just needs the cross members evened up then painted and lights installed. The electric is already there. Reworking the upstairs bed situation didn't get very far. Though the dismantling and clearing the area to work has been accomplished. The footing for the outside fireplace is half dug, and that is the ONLY thing accomplished for the outdoor kitchen.

All in all the list is a failure but I will continue plucking away at it.... because I have to. The list tended to lead me off on tangents as well. I almost have the dirt smoothed out over where I had the footing trenches filling with water, and that was a lot of earthwork. I worked on my upstairs sink project. The hard stuff is pretty much finished on that. I've come to a stand still for want of tiles. I will have those later today. I installed a drain line on the east side of the house and it is almost covered with dirt as well. I did get the corner cabinet up in the kitchen. I have two other small cabinets ready to go up but I need to get a shelf built first. It's easier to install cabinets if you go in progression around the room, so that project also ended up on hold. I almost have two cabinets finished up in the dining area. They are a couple of screws and two coats of polyurethane away from being finished. I also have nine cabinet doors that I have been working on. They are incredible time stealers as you have to deal with both sides equally. They just need the polyurethane and they are done and can be installed. I spent most of one day mowing.

A couple of problems that I had... one was the weather. With the rain and humidity it took forever for the stain and polyurethane to dry. The other problem was the amount of time it took me to think of solutions to my problems or to motivate myself to jump in and try. Once I started to trust myself then things started to pick up speed. I also spent too much time looking for things. Mac will not be allowed to "put away" my tools until we are done with more projects. A considerable amount of time and cussing was spent in search of things I KNEW that I had but could not find. I also spent time looking for old doors. some of my projects will go up much faster if I can use old doors as the starting point. I could have recaptured my time lost if the doors had been acquired. That didn't happen.

So there we stand. I don't quite feel like a failure but I certainly don't feel like the success that I wanted to be. I'm tired but that is mostly just mental/emotional. I'm not giving up. There's a lot to do.

louie