“I don’t think you missed any spots,” I told Sera after she asked me to inspect the kitchen wall she just painted. We’re several paint cans in on our home interior project and the fumes may be getting to us. After weeks of casual painting, Sera and I are reaching our limit.

We started off strong. The day before we moved into our new home, Sera’s gumption pushed us to painting our bedroom. People have said it’s easier to paint before you move furniture into a room, and I’d have to agree. Knowing our new sectional would be arriving prompted us to paint the entryway and living room next. As frustration and exhaustion kicked in while painting the high ceilings, we began to dread the next project: recoloring the kitchen.

It was a project we began last week, knowing extended family would be visiting this weekend. Painting has never seemed like a big deal before doing so much of it in the past month or so. Ceilings are high, trim is low and sometimes it seems like there is so much in between. Weird angles and odd lighting have made us question our choices on more than one occasion, but we’re determined to keep moving forward.

Being foolish first-time homeowners, we set the goal of having the house in tip-top shape for this last weekend in June so it could be in full presentation mode when aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and more are in town. I’m now a firm believer that if we delayed their visit to our home a year, we’d still have a list of uncompleted tasks. This isn’t a reflection on our housing choice, as the place we call home is quite far from a dud. I just didn’t anticipate the never-ending list of desires we’d choose to pursue.

I suppose this is not uncommon. People who have lived in their homes for 30 years are still changing things around. There’s always something to be done in the yard, something broken that needs fixing or buying something new to freshen up the house. For some reason the never-ending list didn’t cross my mind too much when we were renting. That’s all changed now.

My dad came over last Saturday to do what he does best: give advice. We walked around the house and he shared what he’d recommend doing now, what could wait awhile and how to move forward on a few projects I had in mind. He also helped get a few started. It did not escape my mind how fatherly he was being just a day before Father’s Day. Thankfully, I have a great resource as Sera and I continue to check items off of our list.

So as we’re painting, we’re also weeding the yard, brainstorming what to do underneath the deck, filling the gap between the driveway and garage, and contemplating the bricks surrounding the trees out front. Reality began to set in that some, perhaps all, of these might not be accomplished as family arrives. Both Sera and I have found ourselves wrapped up in longer hours at work this week and have come home exhausted as the sun sets on more than one occasion. Our kitchen, almost completely a beautiful shade of blue, is still not quite finished. The weeds the previous homeowner seemed to be raising purposefully are still standing strong, and the lawn continues to grow, just waiting to be mowed. But that’s OK.

As days, weeks (and likely months, years) go by, I’ve come to accept that everything is always a work in progress. One can never find solace in the completion of a home, because one’s home is never complete. At least not mine, and I’d much rather people see something as a work-in-progress than not see it at all.

When family visits this weekend, they’ll see the beautifully painted kitchen wall my wife finished without any missed spots, but they’ll also see the opposite wall is still green, perhaps envious of the beautiful blue staring back at it. One day, hopefully soon, our kitchen will be one color. It will take pulling out the refrigerator, climbing a ladder and taping more trim to get us there, but we will get there. Until that time, we’ll have to remember to embrace the incomplete.

 

Rochester resident Matt Knutson is the communications and events director for United Way of Olmsted County.