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Let me just start by saying that I am an overachiever. Thats right, a self proclaimed overachiever, perfectionist, and darn right annoying about it. I have never in my life (and my mother can attest to this) received an incomplete on an assignment or an unsatisfactory. Nope, never. I’m that girl that everyone hates. Now before you quickly start googling for something that doesn’t make you sick to your stomach, hear me out. I am officially announcing that this statement is no longer true. These days I can’t seem to complete anything.

The Gillen household has become the place where projects go to die. I am surrounded by a half dozen projects that are 3/4 complete. I’m starting to just get used to it. I mean they aren’t hurting anyone (accept my perfectionism) really. With so few hours in the day and so many things on the to-do list we just can’t seem to complete them all. So what does one do when they have an open weekend and 6 unfinished projects…they start a new one!

Ok, this project wasn’t really high up on the to-do list but after a nice letter from our home owners insurance letting us know that it’s priority needed to change, we gladly bumped it up. See we have about 4 steps up to the front of our house and ever since day 1 we haven’t had a railing there. Pretty unsafe I know but it never really occurred to us to add one.

Here’s a quick before without a railing…

Not terrible right. You don’t really even notice that someone could fall right off the side and injure themselves. Now that our insurance company so kindly pointed it out we figured we better get crackin’. So that we did. On a beautiful weekend a few weeks ago we made our traditional trip to Home Depot on Saturday and started putting the pieces together, literally. Wes and I had never tackled a project like this. Luckily Wes can cut wood like a pro and i seem to make decisions on the fly pretty well when there is a miter saw in my face so we Wes was able to build and attach the railing for the stairs and porch all in a weekend. It was speed building and it was a success!

I probably shouldn’t be sharing pictures like this with the blog world because its dirty, tools are lying around, and wait for it…incomplete but I’m super proud of the new railing. My job this weekend is to sand and paint it a crisp white to match our trim and columns.

Psst…you may also notice some lovely curved flower beds on each side of the house. Another incomplete project but I love the way its coming together. More on that one soon!