Work in Progress

I have a tendency to rush through projects. I strive to get things checked off my “To Do” list as quickly as possible. Normally, that’s not such a bad thing. Getting things done is a good. However, there are certain projects that take time; whether waiting for others to complete their part of the project before I can complete mine, saving up money to afford exactly what is needed for completion, or just taking time to do it right. When those projects arise I try to apply my “get it done, get it done now” mentality only to end up frustrated and sometimes resentful of my task.

Such was the case of getting our custom cabinets built for our new home office. We started planning for the shelves in August.   In fact, remodeling my office space was Ramses birthday gift to me. We sketched, re-sketched, and submitted the plans over a month ago. The shelves were built rather quickly but finding the perfect shade of stain took some time. Each week Ramses would bring home a sample and each time it wasn’t right. So, I kept sending him back to the cabinetmaker to ask him to fix it. It was getting to the point that every time the shelves were mentioned I would get irritated and we would argue.

Ramses, of course, was being patient and seeing things from the cabinetmakers point of view whereas I was bordering on unreasonable and caught myself rudely saying things like, “We are paying for this, it needs to be right!” and “Why is this taking so long!?” and “What the heck or we paying this guy for!?” The thing is, the cabinetmaker was doing us a favor. He’s worked for Ramses for almost 4 years now and only charging us for the material. I was just being impatient and obsessed with getting things done.

On Saturday, the cabinets were installed and I was absolutely stunned by how beautiful they were. Well worth the wait. The quality far exceeded my expectations and the final stain choice was spot on, it matches our new furniture perfectly. He also threw together some DVD shelving and installed them in our Harry Potteresque closet under the stairs. They too were a perfect fit and exactly what we needed for the space.

I took some quick snapshots this morning before rushing out the door for work:

Here are the DVD shelves. As you can see we have a ton more space to keep adding to our collection.

Ramses added for scale… also, I couldn’t get the entire shelf in the picture there is another row on the left.

Here’s the other new furniture; storage bench, filing cabinet, and desk.

As you can tell, the space isn’t quite complete; we still need to load up the new desk and file cabinet with the computer and paperwork, organize the books in an easy-to-reference format, and add the final touches like accessories, throw pillows for the new bench, and some wicker baskets for storage. But despite the project being unfinished I love it already. I have learned that sometimes the work in progress can be just as beautiful (or more) than the final result. It’s about enjoying the journey.