Jennifer Hatch, July, home improvement

My 50-year-old home is a work in progress. It needed a lot of love and attention when we moved in nine years ago. We've done many updates in that time, but have never caught up, nor have we stayed ahead of our own wear and tear. These days my husband and I have lost our mojo.

Worst of all, we tend to move from one project to the next without finishing the details.

What we've done since we moved in (mostly in the first few years): removed carpet and staples from hardwood floors, new carpet in basement and stairs, replaced window treatments, painted ceilings and rooms upstairs, crown molding, replaced (some) interior doors, remodeled master bath, new tile floor in two baths, tile floors in basement entries, new front door, new stair railing, new kitchen, landscaping.

Examples of the neglected details:

• We painted our master bedroom intending to install crown molding, so we weren't too fussy about masking the ceiling. That was seven years ago. No crown molding.

• Our front yard used to be juniper bushes. We pulled them out, built a retaining wall, re-landscaped and put in new sprinklers -- that we still operate manually because we haven't done the electric connections.

• We redid our kitchen and removed a wall between it and the dining room. We did the demo and floor. Unforeseen electric issues required us to pull the ceiling and reroute wires. We couldn't easily patch around the soffits we removed, so we had to demo walls, which meant extra steps of insulation, sheetrock and mudding. Still we got it done before the scheduled cabinet installation. Nearly three years later, one -- ONE! -- drawer needs its handle installed to say we're finished. (Oh, we also need to reinstall a floor transition strip, and paint a spot behind the fridge we thought would be covered by a cabinet. Details!)

But ...

• During the kitchen remodel, we inadvertently flooded the food storage room below the kitchen when we took out the dishwasher. (Mostly because we hand washed oodles of dishes not realizing we hadn't closed the dishwasher pipe.) That room needs a new ceiling.

• So does the garage. My son left the water on in the upstairs bathroom oh, six years ago, and it flooded the garage below.

psst ... I also lost my wedding ring during the kitchen demolition.

• Our basement bathroom has been out of commission for probably five years -- I don't remember.  When we discovered that the shower was framed without a water barrier, we stripped the room to the studs to start over. It sat while my husband mulled what to do with the thick concrete shower pad. Then we decided to address the kitchen first. Last year my friend and I used a sledge hammer to bust up the concrete. This spring we got a plumber to install a shower enclosure. Nothing new since.

See where I'm going with this? We're awful. No mojo at all!

My July project was to schedule how to address all these unfinished details, and map out the coordination of time, energy and funds that future projects require. What did I do instead?

I started a NEW home improvement project, of course. The Saturday before my girls left for camp I got the insane great idea of changing their room while they were gone. My boys helped with the task. I found new bedding, and Jeff installed a new light fixture. I also wanted to make new padded headboards and a window treatment, possibly event repaint the dresser, get new shelves, put curtains over their closet opening ...

Yada yada yada. Somebody help me. Only the paint job got done.

Realistically I could have installed that last kitchen drawer pull in the time I took to write this, but I'm in my Sunday dress right now, and well, the garage is kind of dirty and scary for finding the tools (gaping ceiling and all). So much for July's project! At least we called the drywall guy to give us a bid on the bathroom. We'll have to call him back.

Tomorrow, of course.



August's project: Involve my children in serving a neighbor daily. I want to serve my husband, too.