Renovations to New Home - On going projects

At our house right now we have a couple on going projects that are at started but not completed. This drives me a little crazy and this was what I was concerned about with buying a fixer-upper. But ultimately, I love that we will end up with exactly what we want. But choosing exactly what we want can be tricky. We want to do it right and only do it one time and not have to go back and re-do things because we took a shortcut or were too cheap. But we also are cash flowing every project and don't want to overextend ourselves. And these mentalities explain why our floors are not done yet! (And because we haven't agreed!)

So as I mentioned the flooring is an on going project. And no real progress has been made!

The problem we are also running into is that there are projects we want to do that can affect the floor, so demolition needs to be done before we do the flooring or we could run into major issues. For instance, we want to rip out these built-ins and put in something entirely different and more modern. But it needs to come out before we do the flooring, because we aren't ready to pay for the new built-ins we want, we need the flooring to go all the way to the back wall. For now the spot to fit those old projector TVs is where we park Christina's wheelchair. Brian and I are itching to take a slug hammer to this! (The built-ins, not her wheelchair, that would be mean.)

Another project that is currently mid-way and needed to be demoed now for the flooring is our pantry. We took two small closets away and are going to make them into one big pantry. The goal is something like this:

Brian made me break through the wall, like we were on Property Brothers, and then he and James finished the demo up. I'll admit, it was a little fun. And we knew there was a mold problem between the two closets from the previous owners' broken hot water heater. So this was a good way to get behind the drywall and get rid of the issue entirely. And James got to help pull up nails and do some "man work" as he calls it. (We have a few sexist phrases/ideas we are working on reshaping with him!)

And our last current mid-way project on the interior of the house is our laundry room. The laundry room was the room that housed the previous owners' various cats and small rodents. I cleaned and cleaned that room and no amount of bleach could get out the horrific smell of cat urine. The wood in the cabinets, the linoleum and all the base boards were soaked in it. So after my failed attempts at cleaning it, we just took it all out. For budgets reasons, we were planning to tackle the laundry in a couple years (like all the bathrooms as well) but due to the smell it needed to be expedited. We had tile left over from our old house installed and it looks great. But the room still has no baseboards and no cabinetry and sink. But it also has no bad smells! So this project is on hold for now and we aren't in a big rush to finish it since it's functional and clean. Our plan is to do cabinets, counter and a sink (and finish the baseboards and painting of course). The goal is something similar to this:

And now it's the landing place for all the things that were in the two demoed closets. But the tile looks nice!

And if anyone has good tips on surviving ongoing remodeling projects I am happy to hear them! And how did you prioritize which projects happened first and which ones were sent to the back-burner?