Your Tuesday Sad Before Picture

Now this is just shameful. This poor front door does not deserve this type of treatment.

This picture is for those of you who think my house always looks like a magazine is coming. I've left the door this way for months. MONTHS. My mother is horrified, and tells me so at least twice a week.

I finally found a color I like, though, so Sad Door is taking leave of us soon. And then: Christmas decorations!

Tell me about the projects you keep putting off, so I won't feel so bad about myself. PLEEEEEZE?

Comments

[Sally]

We painted our downstairs hallway and the first four feet or so of our stairwell, and then the top two feet of the stairwell and the upstairs hallway, but have not gotten it together to paint the actual stairwell. It looks awful and has been that way for 6 months.

[lindsay]

We bought our house last year and labelled it a 5 yr. project. I feel like I need to post a written notice stating so on our front door. While we accomplished a lot this year, we still live amongst mid-renovation eye sores, such as...exposed subfloor in 3 rooms, cracking drywall, a patchwork of paint samples in the entryway, an abundance of 80's brass fixtures, honey oak cabinets, and rustic tile countertops. Your front door doesn't even make me flinch.

[Jamie]

Oh AB, my parents have been remodeling their home for 10 YEARS. And not the choosing the type of marble for the countertops kind of remodeling. I'm talking walls gutted down to the studs, no interior insulation, no curtains on most of the windows kind of remodeling.

You door makes me feel right at home. I'm not sure if I like what that says about me.

[meg]

I have, unfortunately, more than one unfinished project to tell you about, both from when we moved into our house 1.5 years ago:

1. Unfinished paint, in more than one room. I finished the walls in the living room, but never got to the picture rails or baseboards. The old paint was christmas-tree green, and it still comes through the primer. I also left a big chunk of the bathroom unpainted. To be fair, that's my man's fault - I'm too short to reach it, and he just won't finish. I repeat: it has been 1.5 years.

2. I've had a halfway refinished chair sitting in the garage since we moved in. I sewed the covers, but need to fix one. And that is all. It remains unfixed.

There will be more unfinished projects in the future, I'm sure. You are not alone!

[Carrie]

My front door, well, it doesn't look exactly like that. But it does have some big ol' splotches of white showing from underneath the black paint on top. I tried to use a magnetic wreath hanger last year. It worked very well on my metal door. But then when I went to take it off, the vinyl covering the magnet took some of the paint off with it! So now I'm trying to gerry-rig a wreath to cover it up until I can paint it when the weather gets warmer. Sigh... I've also got to paint the master bath, find something to replace those god-awful vertical blinds that have been covering my sliding glass door since we moved in three years ago.

On the plus side, I got a new mattress and finally found a headboard for the master bedroom! Now I have to add some other projects to that room...

[Marnie]

We, too, have many 'o unfinished projects around the house. But, the one that is bugging me the most is the chunk of missing tile on our master bath tub surround. A couple years ago (!) the tub plumbing had a leak through to our kitchen ceiling. The kiddos loved being able to look down from our bath into the kitchen. Good times!! This past spring/summer, we finally had the leak fixed, kitchen ceiling patched and repainted, but sadly have yet to have the bathtub tile fixed. At least we finally found a piece of macthing tile in the basement and brought it upstairs. That's a start, right???

BTW, your mother sounds a lot like my mother!

[AB]

Y'all are making me feel WAY better.

[Cynthia Wig]

Yep, my delayed projects almost always involve paint...or upholstery. I nominate our master bathroom door as the most delayed project here. It sported a whacked out sanded, wood filled, and Bondo-ed look for way too many years. Seven?! It has recently been painted though. Two coats even! Yay for progress.

[Melanie]

I've had an IKEA daybed in boxes for 3+ years now, because my Gay Boyfriend has not set a date to come help me build it. And now I have an IKEA dresser that needs assembling as well. He *says* Christmas vacation. I'm not holding my breath.
Window shade for our foyer needs to be mounted. Same with a hanging corner shelf/coat rack. Foyer and stairwell need painting.
Bedroom curtains have been sitting around for 2+ years (haven't chosen hardware...yet).
My bathtub needs to be recaulked. My husband needs a toilet paper holder remounted in his.
Carpets need a cleaning, due to the Ghosts of Cat Stains Past.
Hanging cabinet needs to be mounted in the music room, along with holders to display guitars on the walls.
Front door needs repainting, and we also need a storm door. The $500 deposit to our HOA is what's holding up that one.

And that is one depressing list. *sigh*

[Stephanie]

We recently moved into a new condo and have been super slow on setting it up. There's a while long list of things that still need to get done, but the most glaring are our walls, which are only partially painted.

Our guest bathroom has one, very poorly done, coat of bright red paint on it that we hide from our guests.

In our living room, we have one wall painted the cream color we chose, but none of the other walls are painted. We did the one wall so we could mount our television.

My boyfriend and I have joked that we will finish setting up the apartment right when we're ready to move again.

[melanie]

I consider our entire front yard a constant unfinished project. I mean, I like to SAY we're going to straighten it up and buy a real patio set and make the girls clean up their outside toys every day, but really, I have no actual plans. The bright side to having negative curb appeal, though, is that your house looks trashy and therefore nobody wants to rob you. AMIRIGHT? I'm so right. Also, we live on a busy street in Los Angeles just three doors from a liquor store, and drunks like to pass out on our sidewalk. And since my mother was Southern, I would hate for anyone not to feel at home while they're visiting. Also, if I was perfect, I'd have no New Year's resolutions to share in just four short weeks, and then everybody would hate me.

You are so glad you asked, now, aren't you??

[Kristen]

That air conditioner that was in my window in my DC Camp pictures? Yeah...it's still there. WHAT? It's been unseasonably warm!

(I'll get it out this weekend. I can't put up my tree if a window AC is going to be next to it!)

[Kristan]

I bought my house 3 years ago. We immediately took a sledge hammer to the badly cracked sunroom floor. It remains a sea of rubble as other repairs took priority. Which also means the furniture for the sunroom sits piled in the dining room waiting. I avoid that part of the house. I painted the stairwell and hall over a year ago and couldn't reach the top edge. Still not done.

[Ben]

I have spackle on the wall in something like 4 rooms. I got really motivated to finally cover up some of the damage our kids have done to our less than 2 year old house but haven't found the time to actually sand it and repaint. The boys room particularly looks like it has broken out in some sort of pox and been smattered with some sort of salve. It is not pretty.

[Ben]

Not to mention our untrimmed window at the kitchen sink that is STILL waiting for the soapstone window sill so that I can trim it out. At least that one is not waiting on me entirely though.

[Jenn]

Last year we tried the felt Christmas tree on the wall for the kids to decorate and redecorate. I couldn't get the stupid thing to stay up so I finally hot-glued it to the wall. Of course a ton of paint peeled off when I took it down. A year later? Still have the horrible paint job. No use touching it up when eventually we are going to repaint the room another color, right?

[Amy]

I took the legs off a stool, sanded it, and then... left it in a pile. Never even bought paint. That was this summer.

[Amy]

Oh, and also all of the gorgeous felt hats I made during a hat workshop. (I love hats). None of them are finished. I even bought trim for most of them - mostly simple bands. They're all sitting in a box, waiting. That was... well, a while ago.

[eva]

I have been upholstering a sofa (so it can be moved to a new room) for about a year... now I'm worried that if I run out of fabric I won't be able to get the same stuff anymore!!

[Erica Lucci]

We've been remodeling our backyard for the past couple years. We planned to have a fire pit, but put off building it. So for two years, I've had a gas ring sitting on top of cinder blocks where there should be a fire pit. Needless to say it was ugly, ugly! Just a few weeks ago, we finally finished the fire pit and I'm so happy! http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericalucci/8226667071/ Now we just have the outdoor kitchen and water feature to finish...will the backyard ever be complete?

[AB]

@Erica, that looks SO GOOD. Invite me over right now.

[cyrie]

we purchased doors for the front and back of our house and they sat in our garage for 5 months before we had them installed! they look fantastic, but we haven't installed trim around them or painted them and they have been on the house 2 months now. so you are doin just fine girl.

[Erica Lucci]

@AB, you're invited over right now! Though it's like 77 degrees outside which is a little too warm for a fire. But tonight when it's like 50 degrees, it would be perfect. Come to Phoenix!

[Vanessa]

I had enormous bed pillows on my couch for over a year before I got around to finding couch-sized pillow covers that I like.

[Anna Kay Jay]

Just moved into a new apartment the weekend after Thanksgiving, with no furniture besides a desk and bed, and I've not...unpacked or decorated. I have some big ideas, but I don't know what to...do, first. Like, do I get a bookshelf for the living room? Do I do a kooky thing and put the bookshelf in the kitchen with a breakfast table so I can more easily read while I eat? How many lamps do I need? What do I put on the walls.