Doing it Right the First Time

In my stocking, this year, I got a fridge magnet. It read:

Why is there never time to do it right, 

but there's always time to do it twice?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it a bad thing that my "style" blares from the bold font of a kitchen knicknack?

A couple summers ago, Mat and I bought a cool (cute) old school (looking) scooter from a couple in St. Albert.  Their house was pristine. Their garage- OMG- their garage!! All walls had those metal cabinets that fit snuggly together; there wasn't a rogue screw, tool or pipe to be seen. In fact, I saw not one drop of oil or varnish staining the scrubbed cement. 

Every time we visited (we ended up there three times) the couple invited us in for drinks. On our second visit it came up that we struggled to finish things. Scooter Man tisked and shook his head wildly, "No, no, no! You MUST finish things 100%. It's imperative for your financial and emotional health." 

I'm not sure what he knows about emotional health, but certainly financially they had done very well.

In the couple months that followed we reflected often on his horrified expression and encouraging coaching- is 100% even possible for our two laid-back, attention deficit personalities?

As we stepped back to assess, we saw that we finish most things about 80%. We take out the garbage- but only to the back gate (then it all piles up in a stinking mess until we finally think to take it the last 20% to the alley). We paint the walls, then grow tired before we finish the sanding and painting of the trim. We put new flooring in the upstairs, and leave nailing on trim to 'another day' which never does come. 

Last year we took on the project of our front entrance way and determined to finish it 100%- meaning every hook needed to be screwed in, back stop installed, bench stained, paint complete, pictures hung. And did it! It took us a couple more days than planned- but we did it.

As we've continued to encourage ourselves towards finishing things (and finishing them well!), I think the most significant obstacle to this is the way we budget TIME. We never give ourselves the time to finish. Projects always go longer than expected, the garbage always is taken out as we're late for a meeting. (Some might say we also don't consider 'cleaning things up' to be a huge priority.) 

This last weekend, I had a hankering for a project. I wanted to paint our dining and living rooms plus add a plate rail and built-in book case. As we planned the budget and shopping list-- we looked at each other. Memory of Scooter Man was shouting in my ear and I took a tentative glance at our kitchen.

It's been 80% done for 3 years now. How could we start another project with the kitchen sitting awaiting some lovin'? So we pulled on our Responsible Adult hats, set our faces to 'grim', and started the nasty job of sanding cabinets, re-jigging doors and adding ceiling trim.

Hopefully this post isn't just a form of procrastination (from the cutting in currently needed on the cabinets). Its a public declaration that: I really will try to finish things better.

Mat does the curse-incurring work of ceiling trim.

The cabinets Mat build (saving some of the base cabinets on the right wall), but the paint has begun to peel. Also a number of the bottom doors never have quite fit. There is some problem-solving required!

The backsplash is wallpaper--- and we always meant to spray it a metallic colour. Then we didn't and its gotten gucky, grey and stained, of course.

The inside of the cabinet Mat is painting was never painted (we even painted 80%!). Now, we're painting it all. The blue is actually an undercoat to be covered with 'navajo white'. We think that if we "distress" or "antique" the cabinets- more on that later- we may not have to worry so much about stripping paint in the future. Maybe?!?

Ode to Home in Time for the Season of Nostalgia

As a self-proclaimed Homesteader, I’ve given some thought to the role Home plays in my life. Homesteaders in the traditional sense are concerned about the very basics of survival: food production, food preparation, shelter from the elements, food preservation, and propagating more humans to consume said food resources. 

Surely Home is a lot more than the sum of these skeletal parts. Screws and 2x4s, trusses and shingles, cement and hardwood: a house this makes- but a home?

The word Home has an emotional dimension that, when I imagine it, is the ‘meat’ (err: flesh) on the skeleton. Relationships, memory, expectations, and exasperations stretch over the structure and add warmth like that of new love or old love or bacon wrapped tenderloin.

There are many words that start with ‘home’ which are full of emotional associations. Let’s explore a few.

Consider the word: “Homemade”. Its very mention conjures the image of a crackling hearth and wafting scent of chicken soup and fresh bread.  Strange that this word doesn’t bring to mind those biscuits I cleverly disguised as ‘biscotti’ or the smoke from the hearth pizza that assailed the fire alarm until it shrieked like a cat fight.

Consider the word “Homemaker”. As a generation Y-er, I have a hard time detaching this word from snide ‘bare foot and pregnant in the kitchen’ comments. But the homemakers I’ve met don’t look much like their caricature. Women and men, fathers and grandmothers, they are involved in more than giving a house that homespun feel. Regularly they fuel the fire that is community action.

Say it, “Home.” I hear: Crackling fire (I don’t have a fireplace) and crinkle of Christmas presents (one day a year).

The reality is, at times Home sounds like me screaming at the kids to stop crying while they scream at me to stop screaming. Thankfully these off notes join the tenors of other sounds: the piano thunking, the girls wrestling on squeaky couch springs, the screen slamming with Mat’s entry, the bath tap pouring, the oven door opening, the forks scraping, and boots booming across the living room floor. The music of home, the real soundtrack and not the one created by advertisers and nostalgic storytellers, is dissident and soothing in even measure. It is as complex as a master composition: something to be enjoyed thoughtfully on a cold, snowy December Day.

Yak and Jammin

The ever-violent game of 'spoons'.

Yak and Jammin'

Kitchen Party

 

Murder Mystery Birthday party

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Back Deck Barber Shop