Thursday, September 10, 2015

Labors of Love

My fancy red garage door.
Helllloooooo! Everyone back in the swing of things after the long weekend? Yeah, me neither. It was nice to have an extra day off, but long weekends always make me feel like I have to cram five days worth of work into four days. It just makes the week a little more hectic than usual and it's always a little bit hectic around here. But that is another story.

I spent my Labor Day painting my garage door in 100 degree weather and believe it or not, it was awesome. For almost six hours, I had uninterrupted, coherent thoughts. While Mr. Sir wrangled the children all day I worked on a project and completed it. (Ok, almost completed it. I primed it and painted it, but it still needs a second coat.) Regardless, it was so satisfying to accomplish something from start to finish and then stand back and enjoy the fruits of my labor. In motherhood, my job is never done. There's always another dish in the sink, a dirty sock that escaped the washer, another meal to make. Acceptance is the name of the game, and almost clean has to be good enough for this phase of life, because I would go absolutely insane trying to do it all. In fact, after five years of motherhood, I think that I may have forgotten what completing something feels like because finishing this project felt so good. It's almost addicting. And now I've got the project completion bug and let me tell you, there is absolutely no shortage of ongoing projects in this house. 

You see, we have this ridiculous fixer upper house. We knew when we bought it that it needed a lot of love, but we had no idea it was going to be the house from the Money Pit. We also didn't know that (surprise!) we were expecting our son Knox, until the week we closed on the house. All our plans of staying up late after Dash went to bed to power through projects went right out the window.

Over the last four years we have ever so slowly done a project here and another there, trying to balance our growing family with our insane desire to have nice things. The progress has been painstakingly slow, trying to save money by doing all the work ourselves, but right now, maybe even by the end of the month we are about to hit TWO major milestones.

The first, is painting the entire exterior of our house which will be complete when I slap the last coat of paint on our garage door. (For the record, all credit goes to Mr. Sir on that one. He painted every surface of our home except the garage door on weekends and evenings for the better part of the last year. I was busy incubating a different labor of love named Buttercup.) Second, we are getting very close to completing our impromptu kitchen remodel. I'll save the story of the accidental kitchen remodel for another post, but I will tell you that it has been under construction for the better part of two years and that there was CARPET in the kitchen when we bought it four years ago.

Oh, how far we've come! In the meantime, what do you think of my garage door labor of love?


2 comments:

  1. Your garage door is really good looking! The color choice is great, and, I like the fact that "Mr. Sir" was able to take the kids from you so you could have time to paint it. Six hours worth of interrupted work? That's a really cooperative and loving household. Good luck with the rest of the "fixer-upper" house!

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  2. Thanks Giovanni! Mr. Sir and I have always made a good team. :) I still love the color of our garage door. I was worried that the neighbors might think it was a little too bright but a few months ago my neighbor from across the street (who has a view of our house from her kitchen window) came over to tell me that she absolutely loves it! Yay!

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