Review: The Plan for Unemployment

Now that Unemployment (WINNING!) is over, I thought I should revisit and see how we did.  Here we go:

Project 1: Repainting the master suite.  As of my last writing, the only thing left was the water closet.  The only thing remaining is STILL the water closet.  (Something tells me we may have a mustard yellow water closet for a loooooong time....)

Project 2: Build a square foot garden.  2 boxes are built with soil in place.  2 more have boards cut and just need to be built.  Raking was accomplished and did serve as the bottom layer of the two existing boxes.  I am very pleased with this, honestly, given how crappy the weather has been.

Project 3: Painting kitchen cabinets.  I had estimated a week for this.  I am an IDIOT.  Woooooow.  I think when all is said and done, it ended up being more like 4 weeks of 4-6 hour days.  I used Americana Décor Chalky Finish Paint, and I ran into every issue in the book.  First, I discovered that it took me about 2 hours to paint out an entire 8 oz container, so I tended to work in 2 hour increments.  Second, one container will cover about 7 cabinet doors.  Third, it takes THREE coats to really get a nice finish.  Fourth, no one vendor has enough of this paint to accomplish an entire kitchen, so I went all over the freaking place buying all that everybody had.  I used Home Depot, Amazon, Michaels, and Hobby Lobby.  I found that when the paint was old, it really freaking sucked, and there was no way to tell from the container if you were getting nice fresh paint, or old crappy paint, so that was massively disappointing.  The older stuff is way gloopy and no amount of stirring, shaking, etc, was able to fix it, so some of my cabinets have a new and unexpected texture.  I'm trying to just get over it.  It is part of the charm, right?  RIGHT!!???  With the bitching out of the way, I'm really thrilled with the final look of my cabinets, and cannot recommend it highly enough if you have time and want a new look for any set of cabinets.  I think I did the whole kitchen for $500 - about $200 of that in paint, and $300 in new hardware.  Great way to redo a kitchen on the cheap!  (Now I just need new countertops and backsplash....)
Minor Project 1: Hanging work quilts. Done.

Minor Project 2: Setting up fish tank.  Got stymied by ordering new plastic thingies for the glass top.  Ordered wrong size, right size is backordered, yadda yadda yadda.  Will make an attempt to pick this back up shortly.
Minor Project 3: Getting stuff off floor in office.  Made serious progress.  Not entirely done but it is waaaaaay better.  This involved closet re-org and a better use of that space.

Minor Project 4: Distributing contents of boxes.  That really should have been a major one.  I did a little of this, but yeah... lots to go.

Minor Project 5: General clean and de-clutter.  Did manage the kitchen before starting to paint the cabinets.  Really need to find a way to KEEP it that way, which is the true struggle in life.

Minor Project 6: Box for AD light.  Fail, but have the wood cut.
All in all, I'm very pleased with how I spent my time off!  I was able to stay busy but I did also take a vacation and a few days here and there to be lazy.  Nice balance of productive and rest, and most importantly, for me, the mindless manual labor of painting was soothing to my rather battered (from the last job) soul.