Yesterday, I had one of my infamous house-related freakouts. The holidays make me miss my RV’ing parents something wicked, and that unhappiness is multiplied by the stress of shopping, decorating, cooking, and cleaning for three weeks straight. Then, suddenly the big day is over and there’s nothing fun to look forward. Top that all off with a heavy dose of rain(!), then sit me in the middle of a gutted bathroom with a drill and a short fuse. 3…2…1…. meltdown.

Teague and I both had the day off, so in my mind we were going to use this lovely chunk of free time to make some major progress on the bathroom. But we slept in late, dawdled over coffee, and had to run some errands. Noon came and went, and we still hadn’t touched anything. I started to ask what the “next steps” were, and what I could tackle right away. The underlying message was: “Right now, this very minute, we must start doing something productive. Hurry, before I snap!”

When we were still futzing a few hours later, I started to babble about making “forward movement” and “noticeable progress” – two terms I abuse when we’re being sluggish and I want us to work faster. It’s not very motivational, but it’s all I ever seem to muster. I was close to tears over a drywall screw that punched through the paper. I ranted to poor Teague about how we needed the bathroom finished so we could take a break from living in utter filth for a few weeks. All I really wanted to do was call it quits, find a nice clean bedroom in someone else’s house, and take a nap.
The problem was, neither of us had much energy to devote to the house. We weren’t in the zone. And on days like that, no matter how badly I wish for a big surge of motivation, it never seems to come. So we worked, but slowly and without enjoyment. A few pieces of drywall went up, and some shop-vac’ing occured. Little else came of it, and I wasted the entire day being pissed off and frustrated when I should have just let it go and watched some HGTV in my pajamas.

Ah well…….

Now that I’m feeling less like the Grinch and more like myself, I’m back in the game. I just spent a good chunk of time surfing over at Architectural Depot’s website, daydreaming about how cool the bathroom would look with some wainscoting, decorative moulding, and a tin tile ceiling. I’m thoroughly impressed with this site – they have some really unique products I haven’t seen elsewhere to “do it up right” – like these pretty stair brackets, and all sorts of fancy onlays and appliques. You could go nuts with this stuff!

Check it out for yourself:

http://www.architecturaldepot.com/