In Progress

Do you ever feel like you're working on a ton of projects all at once? That's how we're feeling. We really need to get more organized, rather than bouncing around from project to project. But when everything needs to be done, it's a little hard not to just work on what you feel like at the moment.

However, that means I don't have any shiny new completed projects to blog about yet. So instead, here's a quick look at what's in the works.

Remember when we tore out the railing and post separating the breakfast nook from the family room, but it left holes where the tile and laminate floors met?

Well this weekend we started working on fixing the transition and patching the holes. Unfortunately, the two little transition strips that we needed to span the 12' 9" space were about $30 each, which was more than we wanted to spend on this fix-to-get-us-through-until-we-put-in-hardwood-floors. But since hardwood floors are a couple of years away, we bought the expensive transition pieces. And some $0.25 flooring samples to use to patch the holes in the floor itself.

We were expecting to just be able to pull up the old transition piece, insert the new pieces, glue them down and be done. But no, like most things, it took longer than we thought. For some reason the gap between the tile and laminate wasn't uniform, or even big enough for the T part of the transition piece to fit in properly. Once we looked at the back side of the old transition, we found they'd cut the T part off in a lot of places....which would explain why it never did a good job of staying in place. My husband did it right though, and used the circular saw to shave off the laminate flooring to give us an appropriate and uniform sized gap across the width of the room.

And now the patches in the floor and the transition pieces are drying, under the weight of half full paint cans and weights. It will be so nice to not have to trip over a loose transition anymore, or have my high heels slip into the holes left by the old railing and post.

This weekend we also replaced the old mailbox. This wouldn't have been high on our priority list for a while longer, except for the fact that the old mailbox door was warped, and only closed if you wedged it shut. Which our mail carrier never did, so everyday we'd find our mailbox wide open for letters to blow away. Not pleasant when it rained either, because everything just got soaked.

This was an easy fix though, and with a quick trip to Lowes and some screws, we were in business. I'm still deeming this "in progress" though, because we still need to do something about the weeds growing around the base of the mailbox. But the sleek black box that actually stays closed is a good start!

In other projects, we're in planning mode for our fire pit! We staked off where the 12 foot circular paver patio is going to go in our yard with rope this weekend, to help us visualize the transformation. We now know we're going to have to cut down two small trees that are right at the edge of our staked off circle.

We're also leaning toward doing what I'm calling a "fire pit pavilion" and doing just a 12 foot patio out of paver stones, with a retaining wall and built in bench, and not building in a fire pit in the center. Instead, we'll get a more portable fire pit to place in the center, but also have the option to move the fire closer or further from where we're sitting, given our heat needs (so a fire on a warm summer night could be more for ambiance and not for heat), and we'd also have the ability to move the fire pit completely off the pavilion, so we could do other things with the space, like set up a card table for a picnic under the trees. The view of the little run off creek and woods is so pretty from the pavilion location we've picked, so it will be nice to use the space with a little more flexibility.

(Also, notice the flat area running through the above photo? It's an old access road to an old pump house from before our neighborhood was on city water. On Saturday night, as we were finishing up dinner on the deck, a family of 6 deer walked down the road! No pictures, but you know it made me super happy to see them!)

And the pavilion location is also a good distance from our house. Not too far away that it will be a pain to carry drinks and s'mores supplies out (especially once we better establish the pathway), but not so close that we have to be concerned about smoke or other fire dangers from it being too close to the house.

Back inside our house, I'm working on turning a floating shelf and some little lights into vanity lighting for me to install above my dresser in my office/closet bedroom. I learned at our last house that I prefer to do my hair and makeup in my closet bedroom, so I don't have to worry about leaving everything spread out on the bathroom counter. In my bedroom the mess doesn't matter so much, since I'm really bad about leaving makeup spread everywhere.

I also managed to hang this fun wavy mirror on the closet side of the bedroom, and am slowly getting my clothes hung up on their garment racks. Eventually I want to build some cabinets that will replace the garment racks, to hold all of my clothes, and also work as a room divider.

We also had some fun this weekend moving our old family room furniture around in different configurations, to try to get a feel for the size of the new furniture we're looking at. This below is a look at what a sectional would feel like, but we're also considering a long couch with a chair at either end. We need to live with the mocked up arrangements for a while though, before we make a decision.

Also, yes, in case you were wondering, that is a large container of garlic powder on the coffee table. We don't have a dining room table yet, so our coffee table serves that purpose at the moment. Some people keep out salt and pepper shakers, well I keep out garlic! :)

We've also set up our TV up on a table in front of our fireplace. This is to get a feel for how high the TV will be once we hang it above the fireplace, although it will be a bit higher than on this table. We'll have a chunky mantle above the fireplace, and the TV above that, with built ins over the right half, as I mocked up in photoshop here. So far, we're liking having the TV higher; it makes it almost feel like a movie theater.

(the built ins will also hide our crazy mess of cords and wires, hooray!)

So that's what we've been up to and are currently working on. Hopefully I'll have time to actually finish a project or two this week so I can share more!

Do you ever feel like you're working on too many projects at once? How do you prioritize what you want to work on, if nothing is really a necessity, just needs to all be done eventually?