Behind every small home-improvement project...

Is a HUGE project waiting to pounce on you and turn your soul over to the devil. You think I'm exaggerating? I'm not. I have personal experience with this. Both the project part and asking for my soul back from Satan after cursing inanimate objects like a hammer till I'm blue in the face.

You do-it-yourselfers with your wizzy calculators and spreadsheets need to include a fudge factor called "This just ain't gonna work like I think it will". Make it, oh, 70%. If you've read my blog on plumbing than you already know what I'm talking about here. If not, a fudge factor is when you take your estimate for <choose time, resources, money, etc.> and you multiply it by some random number between 1 and infinity, and that's how much <choose time, resources, money, etc.> that it will REALLY take.

Let me give you a recent example. My thru-the-wall air conditioner decided to move on to its next level of conciousness and leave me and my house in the dust. I was okay with that, able to suffer through the few hot days we have here in Oregon because I'm rarely home. But my sister Ginger lives with me now, and 3 weeks ago during that heat wave we experienced, she complained of headaches due to the heat. So I sized up the air conditioner and declared, "I shall swap this out in 3 days!"



HAHAHAHahahahaha!!!




3 weeks later I'm still working on it, and 2.5 weeks ago I surpassed the reasonable level of cursing for an adult my age and maturity level (no heckling, please). Here's why:

First, the air conditioner weighed only slightly less than the rest of my house. How was I to know? It looked so light perched up there on those thin supports. I think it was built back when man was just getting excited about using steel to build stuff. So getting it out was way harder than I expected.

Second, on the inside of the house where the air conditioner sat, the wall was covered with this very thin, very ugly, very fragile cedar veneer. Did I mention very fragile? Yes it was, indeed. So as I was hoisting the world's bulkiest heaviest air conditioner EVER out of the wall, I ripped the crap out of this veneer. I was going to replace it, just didn't expect it would be this week! So that forced me to remove all the vaneer on the entire wall, replace it with new sheet rock, remove the floor boards, mud the new sheet rock, texture it, sand it, primer it, paint it, and dust the whole house. I never even considered all that when I made my declaration.

Third, the new air conditioner wasn't the same outlet configuration as the old one. Imagine the curse words floating up my throat and into my mouth cavity as I tried, unsuccessfully, to plug in my new air conditioner. I had to buy a new plug and rewire the fitting

Fourth, and this is the one that people generally omit from their calculator/spreadsheet: I HAVE A LIFE. So I have to fit all of this in and around my normal life activities. The air conditioner that should have been done in just a few days is just now on the verge of working. 3 weeks later!!

I have another great story about a $2 painting I picked up at a garage sale once, resulting in over $450 of changes to one of my bathrooms. I'd share, but I think you get the general idea...

I have a bunch of stories like these that I plan to use to excuse my construction mouth when it's time to enter the Pearly Gates. They say the path to Hell is paved with good intentions. I say the path is just a really long house of home improvements...