Update on DIY House Work: Still Not Ready to Paint, Second Guessing My Work, & Why

It has been a few weeks (Probably more) since I wrote an update post about the work I’ve been doing on my house. To recap, I am currently working on the bathroom of the house. I originally planned on painting the shelves in the bathroom first, but after trying to sand them, I decided to focus on the actual bathroom area first.

While the shelves need paint badly, so does the rest of the bathroom. The paint in the main part of the bathroom is so bad that if I need to wipe the walls with a wet rag, (Wet with water) the paint will come off the walls along with the dirt! Originally, I didn’t think it would be so bad to live with the bathroom as is while I work on the shelves. Now, I’m so fed up with the walls and their condition that I decided to focus on working on the walls and save the shelves for later.

After a few weeks of work, as of this post, I can honestly say I am still not ready to paint the walls. Even more frustrating, I am doubting my own work and ability to work on the bathroom.

So, before I go into why I’m doubting my work to fix the bathroom, (Spoiler alert: I’m having a problem with imposter syndrome) I wanted to talk about all the work I’ve done in the bathroom so far.

Like I mentioned, I’m not ready to paint the walls yet. I’m pretty upset about it. I thought I would be able to finish painting the bathroom walls in a week or less. Sadly, there was more work to be done than I originally thought there would be.

The major problem I have struggled with is the need to patch corners of the walls and holes in the walls. I’m not exactly sure where these problems originate from, but overall, I think it is because of some building errors. They can be easily fixed, but waiting for stuff to dry has been a struggle.

I have been working my day job while working on the bathroom, which has been interesting. Unlike anyone who works in an office, I work from home. Because of this, I have tried to take any down time I have to work on the walls. I would patch them, sand them, then patch them again if they need it. Dry time between works and layers has extended the time to work on the bathroom. Also, I discovered I am sometimes sensitive to the odors from the products I use in the bathroom. This means I need to leave the window open. Sadly, temperatures haven’t been ideal. So, opening the window to aerate the bathroom has been difficult.

Despite all these setbacks, and the fact I am doing all this work myself, I was able to make enough progress to finally start to apply wall texture spray over the patches. After I spray the walls and the texture spray dried, I started to look at the walls more closely and from a distance. They looked really good! The walls need another layer of texture spray, but other than that, they look really good! The spray doesn’t look out of place agains the original texture spray. The only reason the walls need more texture spray is because I wanted to go light on the spray. I didn’t believe I knew what I was doing, so I didn’t want to spray the walls too much and make a mistake.

After examining the walls, I realized something: I’m struggling with imposter syndrome.

This isn’t the first time I tried to pursue something major and felt the effects of imposter syndrome. If you never heard about it, it is when someone feels self doubt about their own skills, abilities, and knowledge. I struggled with it on and off most of my life. Working on a project like this really did bring it up again.

I know I can do the work, but I seriously doubted my abilities to work on the house. There are very obvious things about the house I cannot work on myself. That doesn’t mean there parts I can work on. I feel overwhelmed by the way the house is aging and why I couldn’t work on it for so long. Today, I feel a serious amount of self doubt about my ability and knowledge to work on the bathroom and other parts of the house. That doesn’t mean I can’t work on it. It just means I need to stop thinking I am incapable of working on the bathroom and actually do it.

Even though I know I know how to fix the bathroom walls, what products to use, and how to use them, my health problems have caused me to doubt myself. For an example, for the past week I’ve been struggling with pain and fatigue in my left shoulder. If I used my left arm a lot, this is normal. Since I’ve been working so much with both my right and left arms, the pain and fatigue has been a persistent problem. Mandatory breaks are a part of the repairs. This also slows down the amount of work I can do in a day, causing me to doubt my own ability to fix and then finish the bathroom repairs.

If I could, I would probably hire someone to fix the bathroom for me. I don’t want to waste my money on a job that I can do myself. Yet, my left arm problems have been such a problem that I don’t feel comfortable doing all the work myself. This leaves me confused about what I can and cannot do, as well as where my true limitations lie. The more I move my arm, the better my shoulder feels. This is good, yet I sometimes do too much thinking my shoulder can handle the work and movement. This causes my shoulder and left arm to feel a lot of pain. The only answer is to keep moving the arm and resting it on a regular basis. Even if this means it will take me until November next year to finish painting the walls of the bathroom!

Well, that’s all for now! Thank you for reading!