I love decorating. Some might even say I’m “addicted” to it. 😀 The reason I love it is because no matter what the process looks like, no matter how awful the middle of the project is, I can look forward to a beautiful (to me) outcome. So when it comes to those projects that I know are necessary and wanted, but won’t end up looking beautiful, it’s very hard for me to motivate myself to start them, keep working on them, and finish them.
And that’s where I find myself right now. I’ve been a bit sidetracked from my studio projects over the past three weeks as I turned my attention to other, more pressing things. But this past weekend, I turned my attention back to the studio, specifically to finishing the storage closet. And I’ll be honest. I’m pretty bored with it, and I feel completely unmotivated. I want to do the fun stuff—the stuff that will make a real difference when people walk into my studio. I want to finish the trim, paint the doors, and reupholster my office chair.
But instead, I’m stuck in a boring storage closet that was ugly before I started, is still ugly after I’m halfway done, and will be ugly when I’m done. It’ll just be an ugly closet where I hope I can store things in an organized way. And there’s nothing about it that motivates me.
The two thoughts that keep me going are (1) it just needs to get done, and not getting it done is not an option, and (2) I can’t move forward in the studio until I’ve finished this closet so I can move things out of my way in the studio and into this closet. So, I keep going, slowly but surely.
But just to show you that I’m making real progress, let me remind you of the beginning of this closet. It was full of boxes, some of which hadn’t been opened in years. Then there was the HVAC unit, which had been a real source of frustration for me since the day it was installed, and when I got home I found that the installer had built a ridiculous wooden base that looked like a third grader had cut and screwed together the first time.
So, to cover up the ugly HVAC unit and the wooden box it sits on, I mounted a long piece of plywood to the side of the box, cut a notch in the top around the ducts, and added a hole for the intake vent at the bottom. At least this way, the HVAC unit and the ugly plywood platform are hidden so they’re not front and center when the cabinet door is open.
I really wanted to paint the cabinet white, but I didn’t have any white paint. I had a whole gallon of the same green paint I used in the back entry, so I used that. I didn’t want to spend the money painting this cabinet if I didn’t have to.
So now I have this little area to the right just inside the door where I can install some shelves. It needs to be high enough to go over the vents, but I think I could fit at least three or four shelves in that area.
It’s still a mess behind the plywood, but there’s nothing I can do about that.
I finally got a light installed here. All I need to do is screw it into the ceiling. I was waiting for the paint to dry.
I still need to trim the door and vent in the wall, paint the floor, install some baseboards, move the shelving units in, and I think I’m done. I probably won’t even be able to paint the back of the door.
One thing I did that I have been wanting to do for a long time was label our breaker box. When I went to turn off the breaker so I could install a light in this closet, I was flipping the breakers around and having a really hard time finding the right one. None of our breakers were ever labeled. So this was a welcome break from the most tedious project ever. It took me about 2 hours to track down all the breakers and label them all. I should have done this years ago!
Interestingly enough, I discovered that we have six circuit breakers that aren’t even being used. I don’t know why they’re there. Actually, there are wires connected to them, but they don’t actually do anything.
Anyway, I really hope I can finish this closet today so I can move on to more interesting things that I actually want to do. It’s hard to force myself to do a project that I don’t care about, don’t want to do, and find incredibly unmotivating and boring. But that’s part of owning a home, right? We can’t always stick to the fun and exciting things we want to do. We have to do the boring stuff too.
I know that once this closet is finished, I will be so grateful that it is done, and I will enjoy having the extra storage space. It has been unusable for a long time, so it will be great to have a large closet available for storage. I just need to stay focused for a little longer.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my home decorating and project journey, renovating and decorating the 1948 home my husband Matt and I purchased in 2013. Matt has MS and can’t do any physical labor, so I do most of the work around the house myself. You can learn more about me here.
