Projecty

I came to the distinct realization this week that one of the ways I seek to exert control in my life in response to the complete lack of control in our baby situation is by making up projects. I look at a room, a perfectly lovely and complete room, and in my head think "Now what can I possibly do to cause a huge mess, inconvenience my husband and make it possible for me to make roughly 217 trips to Lowes all in the same day?"  Ok, I don't REALLY think that. But I might as well because from the first moment I get that little "projecty" glimmer, life becomes chaos.

Now, you might think this post is an attempt to psychoanalyze my obsession with having some semblance of control in my life but I'm pretty sure I already know about those issues and have tackled them before. Clearly, I have not tackled them well enough, but let's leave that for another post. No, today, all I am going to do is join the bandwagon of the DIY blogs and satisfy my need to feel like I finished one of these crazy ideas.

Guest bath when we bought the house.

Cue sister-in-law. She was nice enough to come down for a visit last week, fully knowing that she'd be put to work. When we moved into our home there were a few rooms that made me want to cry. Our guest bath was one of them. Brown walls, brown ceiling, brown linoleum, no windows. Really? In which decade was having a cave for a bathroom considered restful?  A few years ago I broke down and painted the ceiling in one frenzied afternoon of NEEDING that room to not feel like it was full of dementors upon entering. 

Well, hello wallpaper and horrid lights.

Then, last week, we tackled the walls. And, in an effort to change the lighting, we switched a fixture from our tiny downstairs bathroom in for a lovely 80's track lighting system that needed to find a new home in my garage. Permanently.  Then, as if that wasn't enough, I just HAD to do something about the mirror. You know those old mirrors? The kind that take up the whole wall, have no molding or edges and basically scream "Hey, I have no style! Aren't you glad I take up the whole room?!"  So, I scoured the DIY sites and found a way to switch out our mirror downstairs, provide a little molding and spruce up the scene. We encountered the deep joy of removing the mirror only to find a wall of wallpaper but it was strangely satisfying to complete the extra task of ripping that flowered yuckiness off the walls.  And I daresay my husband enjoyed the chance to use his huge saw to cut the moldings for me!

The finished product.

Now,  the brown linoleum is still there, hopefully to be switched out soon. But, I'm feeling distinctly satisfied with my little frenzy of control and have now spent whole minutes just standing in there, gazing around, breathing in the calm.  It's amazing what a coat of paint, lots of glue, a little molding and a little imagination and switching around can do!  Now, if only I could fix my need to have these little frenzied fits of "projecty", all would really be well.