What is it with finishing things off? I was going to bemoan the fact that my lovely husband, despite being very handy and generally a DIY superstar, never ever finishes off a project. But now I’ve got to thinking about it, I think it’s actually me who’s got a nasty case of ‘What’s Next? Syndrome’. What’s Next? Syndrome sufferers see a project coming to a close – the hard work has been done, the messy bit’s out of the way, and the room is largely complete and more than liveable. And then, because they have a whole houseful of other projects that they really want to tick off their seemingly never-ending list, their impatience takes over and they swiftly get down to planning the next big thing, instead of focusing on all those annoying bits of snagging.
I can honestly say that we don’t have a single finished room in our house. Granted, we’ve made some pretty major improvements, but every room is missing its finishing details. The kitchen needs its final coat of paint, we were still missing skirting board throughout the entire ground floor until last week and most of the woodwork upstairs and downstairs is still a grubby shade of off-white. And absolutely everywhere needs finishing off in terms of styling – I’m not sure there’s even a corner of a room that I’m 100% happy with.
I’m sure it’s a common problem in busy households, and the problem factor in this equation is time, or more accurately a lack of time. Battling to stay on top of the day-to-day household chores – tidying, cleaning, cooking, washing clothes – takes up all our time and energy, leaving little left over. Come 7pm each evening, when the kids have conked out in bed and I finally have the place to myself, there’s not a lot of creative oomph left for working out the perfect arrangement of photographs on the living room wall.
So for now I shall make do with popping onto Pinterest on my phone for five minutes of inspiration here and there, reading my favourite homes magazines just before I fall asleep at night and day-dreaming about a weekend’s shopping around an antiques fair in France with a full wallet.
The house will have to wait.
I have about a gazillion projects I want to do on pieces of furniture in our house – and absolutely no time to do them. With Christmas looming I’m even more time poor than usual! No idea what we’ll do when we eventually buy and I have decorating projects to add to the list…