Finishing projects

The husband and I tend to be terrific project starters and project workers but not project finishers. Oh well. The challenge is that we often enjoy the bigger parts of projects but dislike the parts like sanding and painting.

I finally took the initiative to finish the kitchen console (part 1, part 2) this past weekend. You might recall that this project started many moons ago. I think we'll just leave it at that.

As a refresher, we started with plans from AnaWhite.com.

Photo from AnaWhite.com

The husband worked on the building part.

Then the summer heat and all kinds of other things took over and the console sat lonely in the back room (i.e. projects-in-progress-room). That was until a few months ago when I painted and stained it and then the husband attached the back - without telling me that I needed to paint it. So it sat semi-finished in the kitchen for a few more months until this past weekend. Yay! Here it is, finally!

The details:

• I decided to paint it plain old white because I think this is a little more versatile in the event that we want to move it somewhere else in the house
• The stain is Minwax Ebony - two coats plus two coats of polyurethane
• I don't love the feet and will likely change them out but it was the best we could find at Home Depot and Lowes
• The pulls are from Home Depot and I chose them because they are the same style as the kitchen cabinets and were cheap - easy enough to change out when needed

I love the finished product and look forward to really using it. Despite having sat in the kitchen for all this time, we haven't done much more than pile things on it. So the next project is to get that thing organized and clean up some of the other clutter in the kitchen!

Update

The console for the kitchen is ready for the sanding-priming-painting phase. But I'm struggling with what to do to it. I've considered painting it a light gray (with brown undertones), and I've also considered staining it a grayish color. I'll try out the stain on the wood filler sometime this week hopefully and then if it seems to take ok, I might move forward in that direction. But who knows! :)

Organizing

It's one of those things that has to be done. And it usually takes time, creativity, and money. All of which I don't have or want to devote to organizing. But after awhile the clutter and chaos eat away at the very strings that hold my sanity together and I hit a wall. I did just that with the kitchen a few weeks ago. I will not name names or point fingers or note how many times 'solutions' have been ignored but suffice it to say it's been enough times that I can no longer handle the situation.

The problem: the entrance which we use almost 100% of the time leads directly into the kitchen. The result is that EVERYTHING ends up a) on the kitchen table, b) on the kitchen floor by the door, or c) on the kitchen counters. NONE of which work for me.

The solution (in the works):

This soon to be lovely piece of furniture will sit below the chalkboard and will become the mail, key, junk, shoe, and whatever-else-lands-in-the-kitchen station.

The plan is modified from Ana White's salsa console.  The spaces in the bottom will be open and the husband has made it so I can have adjustable shelving in those three sections. I'll likely stain the top surface and paint the rest but we'll see.

Picture from Ana-White.com