On Avoiding the Tyranny of Self-imposed Deadlines

February 28, 2010
Peoria, AZ

Yes, I wanted to have the house painting done by the end of February. No, I'm not done yet. In days of old, this would have bothered me. Now my reaction is "Oh, well...".

It's not that I don't want to finish up. Oh, I do. It's just that I'm focused on doing as good a job as possible, and not being driven by a deadline.

So, where are we? Well, we finished up the front and sides, except for a few touch-ups that are needed, a while ago. Then I proceeded to the rear of the house, taking down all the patio lights and decorations and handling the dreaded scraping under the eaves. That's when things started to slow down. When I got to the eaves on the roof over the patio, I realized that I really needed to put a soffit in, because the scraping just wasn't getting me clear material to paint. Hmmm, if we're going that far, shouldn't we also box in the beam and posts that hold up the patio roof? The 4x12" beam and 4x8" posts are "rough hewn" lumber, pretty shaggy after years in the desert sun and not exactly a match for anything else on the house.

Off to Home Depot (no good lumber options) and Lowe's (marginally OK lumber options) I go. A few hundred dollars later - no wonder home improvement sales are sluggish, given the prices for simple clear pine boards - and we have a pile of pine and plywood in the back yard. I moved half of the power tools out back and fashioned the soffit from 1/4" plywood (good exterior grade material this time, so maybe it won't delaminate like the cheap particle board stuff the builder used on the roof sheathing), with hand-cut ventilation grates. I picked up a roll of roof vent screen and cut that to fit the openings, held in place on the inside with construction adhesive.

Once the soffit was in place, I started boxing in the posts and beam. With nary a straight or square section, I had a lot of shimming and cut-to-fit work to do. Geri helped me hoist the 1x12" sections covering the beam into place (she's a real trouper, given that she doesn't like ladders). Next steps involve finishing this new wood off with sanding and primer, and then we'll finally be able to paint the back of the house.

So, what else have we been doing? Well, today is another "rainy day" project day, since it's actually raining (some rainy day forecasts are about the "potential for rain"). Rather than spend the day in the study on the computer, today's projects involved putting new shelves in said study and in the laundry room. You can never have enough shelves. I put "desk-to-ceiling" shelves on one side of the study a couple of years ago, so we did the other side to match. The laundry room had one shelf over the washer and dryer, but "stuff" expands to exceed the space available and there was plenty of headroom for another. Next rainy day, we'll add another top shelf to the pantry for good measure.

That's it for now...