My husband and I spent a couple of hours outside today getting the final yard work for the year finished.

We cut down plants that had died off and sawed down the sunflower stalks – yes, the stalks were extremely thick so pruners wouldn’t do the job – we had to use a small hand saw on them to take them down! We also put leaves on the garden beds to protect them through the winter, and put away our many planter containers, teak table and other odds and ends.

It’s good to be ready for winter! Of course that doesn’t mean that I’m anywhere near ready for it to snow. The snow can hold off for months as far as I’m concerned!

Now I’m tired. I shouldn’t be, but I’ve been much more tired than usual over the last two months or so, and to top it off I haven’t been able to get to sleep easily this past week, so that’s just compounding the tiredness.

So now I’m just relaxing on the couch, watching HGTV shows like Disaster DIY – which is making me think of all the renovations we’ve started in our home and haven’t completed (yes I believe we’re prime candidates for the Disaster DIY show) and preparing to get our christmas cards done.

I’ve found that I’ve been watching reno shows on HGTV more often in the last few weeks and it’s making me think about our renovations.

We’ve done a lot of work on our house since we moved in such as redoing all of the hardwood floors, painted all of the walls, did venetian plaster in the master bedroom and the living room dining room, tore down walls in the living room, dining room and entrance way (prior to painting etc), put a skylight in the roof of the enclosed porch as well as putting in a hardwood ceiling and refinishing the whole enclosed porch, totally refinished the hardwood stairs, put in a new sink and cabinet in the upstairs bath and a bunch of other things. I can’t even remember everything we’ve done, but I guess I could also include landscaping our front and backyards and putting in a fabulous garden.

Now, other than our plans to renovate the kitchen, two bathrooms and finish the basement, we still have to finish some renovations that are about 80% complete. The main ones I’m thinking of are the living room dining room. As I said we tore down walls, refinished the hardwood floors and did venetian plaster on the walls … but the ceiling still needs to be done. We bought tin ceiling panels … oh 6 or 7 years ago, and we still need to put them up. We also need to put crown molding, base molding and quarter round in the living room dining room. Then it will be done.

We’d better finish it soon because I’m already tired of the venetian plaster. LOL … and I’d like to see the rooms complete before I decide to sand and paint over the lovely plaster.

Since I’m really getting in the mood to finish our work, I’m hoping that maybe in January Chris and I can start finishing what we started so long ago. Believe me, I’m tired of look at the unfinished ceiling!

As I’ve said repeatedly over the last several months we have absolutely no extra money. However I don’t think that will slow our finishing of the renovations if we can make ourselves get started again … Why? Well, we already have all the supplies we need or pretty much everything we need. We have the tin ceiling panels (already painted – but I’m hoping we have enough of them to cover the ceiling!) and the molding stored in the basement. At the most I think we still have to buy the quarter round that we need and then some paint to finish off the molding.

Just the thought of starting up our renovations again is making me tired, but I’m just sick and a little bit embarrassed by the look of our unfinished home. Hopefully that will help spur me on to finally get started again. I’m also worried about what to do with our dog when we start finishing our renovations again … she wasn’t around when we started this big project. Hopefully she’ll listen to us and lie down in a corner when we’re working, otherwise she’s going to be a dusty and possibly paint covered dog.

So how many of you have homes that could be on a show like Disaster DIY? Have you started reno projects and found you didn’t have time (or the knowledge) to finish them? If so, are you going to get around to finishing your reno sometime in the near future?