Renovations and What They Do to Me

We've been redoing the living room in our house for the past couple weeks and we're in the home stretch now. I'll be glad when the room is completely finished (hopefully before the cookout we're having for our families on the 4th) because I don't think I could handle the stress of this torn apart room hanging over us anymore. Let me explain. I come from a place of skepticism and mistrust when it comes to any kind of renovation. Add in a large dash of stress to that pot too. You see, I love my parents, they are awesome at raising kids and on the whole I had a fantastic childhood. What they are not good at (neither of them) is completing a home improvement (or just a home keep running) project once it's started. I don't really blame them for this. Neither of them is what you would call "handy", plus they are 60's hippies so material goods mean very little to them in general. Add in the fact that money was always tight, my dad worked a ton (one income in a very high cost of living state so we could have our stay at home mom) so we usually rented the cheapest apartments we could find and there is this perfect formula for disaster. If something broke in one of the apartments, we called the landlord. If they didn't fix it, we moved. That's harder to do in a house when you own the home. YOU have to fix it or live with it or hire a guy to fix it. It's YOUR problem. That was a tough reality for my parents once they finally bought their own home when I was in high school as a result we did a lot of just living with things that, while they worked, didn't really work as well or the way they were supposed to. Every once in a while they would get all fired up and start a project and my sisters and I would get all excited and we'd jump in to help but something would almost always come up...And a year a so later it would still be sitting there half done. This isn't to say that NO projects were ever finished, but a good number of them weren't especially if it wasn't done within a week or so. You can imagine that there was quite a bit of fighting among all of us but especially my parents when projects failed or were left sitting until goodness knows when. For me it wasn't worth the fight. There is always more than one way to skin a cat, I can work around most anything.I'm also not really someone that cares much about how things look either so outdated, dusty, stained, whatever I really couldn't care less. When you live with something you kinda become blind to it anyway. Unless it's a project that you started that was never finished and then it bugs the crap out of you for years and you wish you never started in the first place. So when P & H started talking about wanting to redo the living room (you know the MAIN ROOM) in the house, I got a little nervous. When it was clear that this redo was happening and they wanted my input I gave it and then I flung myself head first into making it happen. Up all night removing bricks from the brickwall we all hated, Saturday and Sundays spent at Lowes and Home Depot for supplies and then hanging sheetrock. Moving the new furniture from one room to another like madmen into other rooms so we could work in the living room. Tearing up carpet (oh god it was so nasty under there) and laying down some (really beautiful) laminate and repainting the whole room, ceiling included. It was So.Much.Work. And I spent the entire time waiting for someone to say "forget this, lets put everything back the way it was and make do." Remember that's the place that I came from. So I would push for more to get done faster. Logically, I know this is silly. P & H are nothing like my parents, when they start something they finish it. Maybe not at lightening speed but all projects are completed. I need to remember that. Especially since the trim in the room isn't done. Neither are the steps. We're having a bunch of people over in 24 hours. None of the food has been planned or started, the living room isn't done, we have furniture scattered all over the house and I DO NOT have the day off tomorrow. Infact after an 8 hour bank work day I'm going to go spend a few hours being a doula. I'll be leaving the house at 7:15AM tomorrow and I won't be home until after 9pm. P says buy the time I get home tomorrow night everything will be done and I won't recognize the place. He's probably right. P&H are not my parents, they start something and it does get finished. I just need to breathe and let them go. I also need to sleep, because I have exactly 7 hours to do that before my alarm goes off. Shoot me.