A few weeks ago we challenged ourselves (and you) to a “Get Things Done” challenge. It was our way of motivating ourselves to try and finish projects that we’ve started.
Not completely finishing projects in definitely one of our worst habits and with so many building projects going on having a bunch of unfinished ones really doesn’t help when we’re trying to stay on top of things.
These are the 3 projects that we challenged ourselves to finish in the space of just a month.
- Paint picture rail in master bedroom
- Finish stripping bedroom 4 doorframe, sand and paint
- Strip, sand and paint dining room skirting board
Yes, none of them are big jobs, but some of them have been on our finish-off-list for years! They obviously don’t quite come with the excitement and enthusiasm of starting a new project, but finishing a project 100% does come with its own rewards. It’s a great feeling to finish a job and know that it’s completely done and I’m the first to admit that I love being able to tick jobs off my to-do list.
So, I’m sure you’d all like to know how we got on and here are the results:
Paint picture rail in master bedroom – Done!
This was admittedly an easy and fairly quick project to complete. We had already painted the picture rail once when we installed it and really only needed at bit more caulking and another coat of paint so that the coverage was even.
We already installed an architrave around our bedroom window last week, so had to add the little pieces of picture rail between the windows. Then all we had to do was caulk the mitred edges and then give everything a final coat of paint.
Finish stripping bedroom 4 doorframe, sand and paint – Done!
If there’s one home improvement job that I’ve come to hate more than any other it’s stripping paint and every other job to do with it.
It stinks, it wrecks my fingernails (which I’ve learned are almost impossible to keep looking nice when doing home improvement jobs), it’s messy and it seems to take forever.
We had already made a start on the frame a while ago, but finishing it still seemed to take forever – but we did manage to finish off the project.
I’m not in a hurry to do any stripping again any time soon though! From a distance there’s not actually that much difference, but close up you can see that the finish is much better and the detail of the architrave is much more crisp. Putting the door back will have to wait a while though, as I just about managed to finish the painting intime to take the picture!
Strip, sand and paint dining room skirting board – Kind Of.
Yep, more fun stripping and sanding. What was I thinking putting two stripping and sanding projects on my list. This one is more or less finished – but still not quite. I managed to complete half of the room around our new radiator cover and under the shelves.
The other half of the room is still not done.
Overall I’d say that we did fairly well, especially considering that two of the jobs involved my not so favourite pasttime of stripping and sanding. We’ll definitely try to challenge ourselves again in the future
Did you challenge yourself – how did you get on? Do you find finishing projects as hard as we do? What’s your biggest home improvement challenge?
PS. We’re not the only ones that challenged ourselves. Here’s a project that one of our lovely readers Kerrie managed to complete and was kind enough to share with us.
Photos by Kerrie M
And…
The talented Lins over at Boo & Maddie also joined in – you can read about she got on with her challenge here.
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