DIY on da Brain

With being thrown into forced reno and position of being at the mercy of others, my brain is ready to work but the workers are not.  When the proposition of a project is in front of me, I tend to start binging on DIY Network and HGTV for ideas.  I feverishly blow through DIY posts on blogs and décor magazines which then give me other ideas.  In the past week, this is what the Mr has had thrown at him straight from my brain to his ears…

1.  Molding on top of the front doors.
2.  New windows.
3.  Moving to a fixer upper that would allow us to stay here while we renovate this severely dilapidated house with no serious contracting skills of our own.
4. Moving to an old gothic revival house in our budget, out of state with 140 ft of lake access and 2 acres.
5. Putting up shelves and tin backing behind the washer and dryer.
6. Painting the walls and floors in the basement.
7. Drywalling the basement ourselves.
8. Laying vinyl floor planks in the basement.
9. Making a shutter side table.
10. Getting a 10-year-old 3 legged dog from a rescue so she can sit in my kayak while I paddle.

So yeah.  Basically, I want to fix ALL THE THINGS.

This was only amped up to 11 by setting the depth on our new Ryobi Brad Nailer  (affiliate link) which does not require an air compressor and now makes us both think we could probably build a whole house from scratch with the brad nailer and new drill  (affiliate link) the Mr bought and YouTube.  Hey if this chick did it, why not us?  

But I had more pressing issues to deal with.  Since I couldn't move forward with anything on the forced reno's yet, I knew I could work on the basement a little since I could feel everything closing in on me every night when we worked out.  That's the thing when you live in a shoebox, you're forced every now and then to take stock in what you own and donate or give away to family/friends what no longer fits in its previous space.  The problem is, I'm allergic to dust so I can only be down there so long when I start kicking it up...45 minutes is usually my max.  I knew the area I wanted to work on, the out of control pantry shelves, but I wanted to move some of the items I use more often now to this other shelving unit...that's already full.  I started pulling off piles of heaped up Total Gym extensions covered in dust bunny farms and vacuuming them to see if they'll be donated or not.  I found old pictures and negatives.  See kids, negatives are what pictures were on before you had them printed. You didn't know if your picture you took at a concert or out with your friends was blurry until you paid to have it printed and find out.  So getting them back was a true roll of the dice.  We couldn't afford to take 127 selfies at 36 angles for one "good" picture.  What you got was what you got and I'm glad for it.  *stepping down from old lady soap box*  

I found the Allen wrenches  (affiliate link) the Mr has been looking for probably two years.  I put the old Gilad VHS' I could bear to let go of 5 years ago in the donate pile cuz mama ain't got no room for those!  I found one rogue Madonna style lace glove that will go in the childhood bin in the closet until I can find the other one because I'm never getting rid of those.   Those two shelves were the hardest and just need to be cleaned off before moving to the bottom two shelves which house old Etsy boxes full of stuff I couldn't sell so it'll likely be donated.  Time and money down the drain but oh well...I need the shelves more.  So the shelves are cleared off and I looked at the back of it and because it's one of those MDF jobbies that's like 20 years old, there's some slight warping on the back.  Well, that ain't gonna cut it anymore so I'll likely be giving it a chalk paint makeover and stain some plywood for some contrast on the backboard.  Then I'll brad nail that mofo.  *Beats chest gorilla style*

So I'm firmly in the "it gets worse before it gets better" phase of the basement and clearing it out for a workout space was less than fun since last night was cardio night.  Oy.

When you start a project do you binge on DIY videos/information?  Does it spark you to want to do multiple projects at once?

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