STOP the home improvement!! Clean it up, leave it as it is now and take the summer off. What makes you think you have to finish it in one continuous push? You'll be surprised how much better your mood and your ideas are when you haven't picked up any tools except a cork puller and shrimp deveiner for a couple of months.

Molly~

And then next fall, make a detailed list of what you think really needs to be done. Set priorities for each job, including finishing individual projects as a top priority. Don't start new thing until you finish what you have started.
Then enjoy the feeling of crossing things off as done. Without the crossed out list, all you see is what hasn't been done.

Youve done ALL THAT in a year? I'm impressed! Seriously! Do hope you can appreciate the fact that you have not been sitting on your tail all this time. Do you have some "before" pictures you can look at?

My problem with crossing things off is I keep reaching these "stuck"points and so rather than just waiting for things to get unstuck, I'll start new projects. I've had a non functional kitchen for many years now-- and had intended to take 2 wks off this spring to finish it (need to build laminate counter, paint, do something w/floor, get sink installed, finish trim on cabinets.) But... my old fish pond sprung a leak last yr. and so NOW... I'm going to be building a new pond instead of finishing kitchen. Why? Because my fishies need a home! They've been in a little tank in the basement all this time.

So how to keep FOCUS w/o charging off in a million different directions... that is my problem... Also its hard when what youre doing (plumbing, electrical, insulation, plaster repair) isn't the kind of stuff that is SEEN.

See I'm afraid if we stop now we'll never start again and end up one of those folks with a house full of unfinished projects. And I almost prefer working in the summer due to all the natural light.

We keep saying we'll take a vacation and reward ourselves, but that gets pushed out too. The plan was to finish the main floor and then take a few months off before tackling the basement.

Oh, and I look at the before pictures and sometimes have trouble believing it's the same house. It's the same frame and layout, but taking out the dropped ceilings and getting that shag out and refinishing the wood floors made such a dramatic difference alone. It's a house with wood floors and 9' ceilings rather than old disgusting shag carpet and 7' acoustical tile ceilings.

Lisa, I am "those people with a house full of unfinished projects"! I am also burnt out and don't even want to think about the list of renos done to our old place this past 3 years because it will tire me just to produce it. As a burnt out, project uncompleter, my advice would be to continue your work!!! Sometimes I show our place to someone new and their reaction is that there's still alot to do (thanks..). They see the unpainted plastered wall and the unprimed wood trim and don't see the gaping, unfinished hole in the brick wall that I beautifully repaired!

I find summer to be very productive with the longer days. I think you need to find time for fun, but not without your nose to the grindstone! I would agree to hang up the tool belts for some pre-set weeks or weekends. Set those aside right now and plan your time off - go away, go to the sea, the beach, whatever - but don't just sit around your house looking at your burdenous, uncompleted projects.

You have to get used to this lifestyle and find peace with it. I seem to always have new emergency projects (like a field of dandelions or a collapsed retaining wall) that take my focus away from the reno projects, and I think this is true for alot of us old home caretakers.

i got a two year interest only loan. after one year my camaro got wiped out and i spent the year working on it. that was a big mistake. i wasted time i should have spent on the house. now i had to refi again. this time for five years. i have a list about 7 pages long after one year and then i decided to quit writing them down. i will say i have this philosophy to share with you and anyone else fixing up an old ass house like this (100yrs this year). If it aint broke dont fix it. at least first. dont remodel anything until you fix the broken things. these houses have so much woodwork and alot of it is scratched. matching stain i wasted alot of time because i discovered virtually every room was a different color due to people just putting whatever they thought the color stain was over it. and it looked good enough not to notice for a year or two i was here. i have found a source for my 5 panel doors and have made one. i have two more to do. the local lumber yard orders them out of a catolog and they are easy to find. i found a place that hand makes original windows and have replaced two of them. they are a big head ache for me this summer to remove, clean, paint or stain, rehang the wieghts (they are all double hung) the wieghts are getting to be impossible to find. they have quit makinig long lead castings for bullet makers and the fishing weights are now just balls that dont fit. my plumbing has taken a crap. pardon the pun, had to rip out the floor after i already re did it, to fix it and put new joists, wall studs, drain pipe etc etc the list never ends. take a break like housekeeping said but don't waste time if you have an interest only loan or balloon payment in the future. time goes by so fast. it takes forever and you do get burnt out. it takes me a week to do a door and i have been putting it off. at least Lowes has brand new old time door latches and knobs to restore the house with. i have only had to carpet two rooms so far. the floors were an absolute wreck. i am a pro plasterer now to, relying heavily on red taping compound and a plastic dustpan foxtail broom. of course i am a profession electrician, so needless to say my house is up to the current nec. i am doing a 30 year old house right now, i cant figure a bid so i am just charging by the hour-$65. it's slow going. doing stuff like that for other people definitely makes you not want to do your own stuff. but i guess nothing beat putting insulation in the floor of this place. what fun is that!! i still have alittle left to do to. don't hold your breath! do take a little vacation tho. for sure do that! and don't forget to bbq!

I also have burnout. We have been bringing our 50's split level back from a groovey seventies remodel. We have ripped up carpeting, refinished floors, scraped tons of wallpaper, primed, sanded and painting 7 rooms and painted cabinets and relandscaped. I'm beat. I'm forcing myself to finish the basement in the next 2 weeks. We hired a handyman to rip out the ceiling and rewire the whole room. We put in a new ceiling and 12 recessed lights. I have to sand, prime and paint the whole thing now. Then we are putting in new carpet. After this I'm taking the summer off. I still need to put new floor tile in the bathrooms. Are we ever finished? Here's a link to the way it looked before. Feel bad for me.

Here is a link that might be useful: before photos

Oh, my Ellen! They certainly had personality, didn't they? What's really interesting is that all the wallpaper seems to have matching drapes!

I get burnout, too, but mainly I get tired of describing what our house will be and why it still isn't finished. Then our friends in new houses start a simple remodel and still aren't done 6 months later (and with contractors!). That's when I get the self satisfied grin on my face.

Imagine if they had the whole inside and outside to do!

Holy crap!

Did the Partridge Family live there?

What a hoot!

Ellen, psychadelic is a good word for their "decorating". And I thought our PO were bad. They painted over the top layer of most of the wallpaper so you can't tell how bad is it was.

Here is a link that might be useful: before pics

Holy crap! is about right... I don't think I've ever seen such wallpaper, and we lived in a house that had purple medallion 70's wallpaper. Thankfully, it was just on one wall.

As for removing painted over paper, try removing three layers of paper -- some of them painted over -- with the addition of multiple layers of plaster repairs. Mind you, the room is 275 years old, but still... No one could strip wallpaper? The layers of paint on the walls (under the wallpaper) and baseboards are fascinating. I feel like we should have one of those historic/forensic paint people taking samples... One layer is an obscenely bright cobalt blue. The basebords started out dark brown, went to olive, then to mustard, and finally to white. It's like a compendium of those Colonial color chips.

Although their wasn't any paint on top of that scary wallpaper, underneath it was painted many times. The bathroom in the hallway that had awful tan and red striped wallpaper, had green and blue vinyl wallpaper, sunflower yellow wallpaper and olive stripes underneath. Under that it was fire engine red paint. All this with blue fixtures (which we still have and are living with for now). That was a hard room to scrape. I have painted it apple green. It also has lovely brown industrial carpet glued to the floor, very hygenic for a family with boys. This summer I'll be ripping it up and trying to remove the glue left behind. It has pretty nice ceramic tile underneath that I hope to save. Right now I'm turning the stunning basement with the ameba (or as someone said "looks like a big bandana" wallpaper into my husband's Notre Dame football room.

Yech... Glued down carpet in a bathroom? What were they thinking?... We have loop carpet over some scary linoleum that undoubtedly has asbestos in it. No clue what's under the lino. One thing at a time, and all that jazz:-) I keep picking at the edges of wallpaper and carpet and other ugly surfaces, and my partner keeps yelling at me to stop. I just can't help myself though; no matter how scary, I *need* to know what's underneath. I'm worse than my cats, LOL.

Our bathroom carpet (the shag was in every room except the kitchen where they went with the thinner industrial carpet) was stapled directly to the hardwood. Don't know if that is better or worse than gluing it. At least we didn't have tack strip to pull up.

We are sort of slowing down the pace. Spent the weekend prepping the walls in the hallway to paint. The wallpaper was structural so our walls needed alot of patching and sanding. Hopefully we'll do the trim one night, prime the rest the next and then paint the next.

I figure once the hallway is painted, then I want to finish the main bath which means prime and paint, install wainscot, install sinks and toilet, install lighting. The tile work is all done already. New floor and tub surround.

We found carpet strips and a gazillion tacks holding the carpet/underlay to the old, random width pine floors. It looks like they expected a hurricane to blow the carpet off the floors. It's really annoying, since one of the two floors in question had been sanded and finished, but now it's got a million tiny holes in it. The other floor has multiple coats of dried up grey paint on it.

Good luck with the painting and bathroom. I really feel your pain. We just moved in a month ago, and we're still working on the first room. There's just so much that needs to be done, it's mind boggling. The plaster in the room we chose to start with is in really sad shape. It's so old it's not even over lath; it's directly on the timber and rock wall construction. It's been patched multiple times, and the wallpaper was holding it together in some spots.

Sometimes I think you need to sit back and enjoy your home. Our last house was a total mess when we moved in and the first 5 years was constant repair work and most was DIY. We had gorgeous gardens and patio area and 1 day I sat down on the patio and I realized that I had not sat and relaxed on our patio for 8 yrs. I had tried to, but every time I sat down, I would see something that needed attention. I look back at that house that I worked so hard at bringing back to life and all I think about is the sweat and money and how little time I took to enjoy it.

I agree with the "sit back and enjoy your home" thing, but that funk-a-delic wallpaper would make me VERY VERY anxious!!

I TOO am overextended with DIY, fixing up one house (to move into) AND another one we currently live in and are getting ready to sell! I have multiple projects going on at EACH house. So I feel your pain! We had to name the houses so we would know exactly which house we were talking about at all times.

Moved into our house 10 years ago and have been working on it ever since. Much more energy and activity in the beginning, but it has slowed to accommodate budget restrictions, burnout, and other life crises. Some work has been done by us, and some by contractors. I think it's tiring either way - just living in a house in-progress with the dust, furniture on end and stuff hard to find can be stressful.

I do believe it's helpful to take a break and enjoy the work you've accomplished. It can be monotonous and grueling to cross projects off a never-ending list and move onto the next task without appreciating your hard labor. (After 10 years my own list is still very long; new projects keep getting added. I've discovered there is no such thing as "done".)

I think the delays in work - whether from financial restrictions or need for a break - often help provide moments of the greatest insight. Limited funds prevented me from making some "mistakes" and less than ideal choices. Time gave me greater clarity about design that was good for the house.

However, I do understand the worry about stopping and never being able to get started again!

Tina

I occasionally take long breaks from a project. Only to go back to start up, and stuff that I swear I left at the worksite - and no-one outside the house has had access to any of it - has gone missing. So it becomes a major project in itself to round everything back up and go out and purchase replacements for the tools, hardware and sometimes even building material that has disappeared over the months of inactivity. I think we have a little black hole floating around inside this place that sucks things up, never to be seen again.

The summer is when we should relax...but I'm off in the summer (work at a college) and thats when I try to do bigger projects, like getting all the glue off that bathroom floor. I know it will take a couple weeks so I need to have lots of time and during the school year, stuff like that just doesn't happen. So far this summer (a big 2 weeks), my husband and I have finished up the basement project, pressure washed the deck (staining today barring rain..again), installed a new garage door opener with outdoor keypad, hung new towel bars, touched up paint, and planted new landscaping. Hopefully, when the deck is done we can finally get some outdoor furniture and sit back and relax (or look up at the house and notice all the places that need painting...).