I don’t know if all home owners go through this (this being our first house and all) but I am a bit burned out. The projects keep piling up and there seems to be no end in sight. We have no money, little tools, and we lack basic knowledge to solve major issues with electricity, plumbing, wood working, ect.

Everyday I come home and see this patio and just want to cry.

There are at least 5 major problems that need to be solved in this small back patio that serves as the main entrance and exit from the house.

1. Water heater of doom (in the crappiest box in the world shoved into the worst corner between the 2 doors.

2. The door to nowhere (the unpainted door is nailed shut and serves only as the exhaust for the dryer)(on another note – why are there 3 doors in a 10 foot span?)

3. 220 electrical for the dryer (its literally runs through the frame of the door to nowhere)

4. The kitchen door (its installed backwards and I guess the glass pane used to slide open at some point, but theres no hope for that anymore)

5. The random gas line (it runs across the patio from the water heater to where? Oh, nowhere of course.)

I’m just so overwhelmed with all of it all of a sudden and this is just one area of the house. Most every part of the house has at least this many issues or more.

It just seems to take a lot of energy to do the research and try and solve problems creatively. We also have to figure out how to pay for stuff and make the whole house look cohesive as opposed to a hodgepodge of cheap ghetto fixes. I wish I had access to a designer or architect or contractor that could tell me what to do. Its like I have it in my head EXACTLY what I want – but no money to make it happen.

I’m about to go on a little vaca from work since the summer session doesn’t start till the end of June. I want to do projects around the house but feel pretty crappy and beat down.

So how do you battle rehab burn out?