I’m currently in the process of moving out of our apartment into our first home. It is exciting but I’m finding myself quite stressed out with all the work I need to do. Initially we had all kinds of plans for things we wanted to do, but at the moment I’m wishing we’d just moved in and left everything exactly the way it was.
The first thing we decided on was new colors; the living room brown color was OK, the kitchen was a green we didn’t like, and all of the bedrooms were ugly colors (black, blue, and purple varieties). The idea of painting the home seemed like a small thing but we quickly noticed that the paint in all of the rooms was easily coming off of the walls; it was actually possible to grab onto it with our fingers and pull it off of the wall as if it were wallpaper. So, we decided to peel it all off so we’d have a fresh wall to paint on. The frustrating thing is that while most of it flakes off fairly easily, some of it is a little stubborn and you end up having to think a lot about whether or not just to leave these spots.
Now I’m almost a week into working on the home and haven’t accomplished anything we’d originally talked about because I’m still scraping the walls. Also, we found out that my wife is pregnant on the day we got the keys to the home, and she is (1) not feeling well enough to help, and (2) shouldn’t be around many of the taratogens associated with plaster/paint/wallpaper/etc..
Oh yes, the cupboards! The kitchen cupboards were also painted the green color we weren’t crazy about, so we’ve been going back and forth on how to solve the dilemma. Option one involves sanding, priming, and painting all of the cabinets and drawers, and likely changing the hardware since the doors are hanging a little crooked; this is the cheapest option but also happens to be the most time consuming. Option two is sanding, priming, and painting the cabinets but purchasing new doors and drawer fronts; this option is likely almost as time consuming as option one, but we end up with a little nicer result in the end. Option three is buying all new cabinets and hiring someone to install them; this is the least practical option, but it also seems to be the way I’m leaning since I’m feeling very overwhelmed with the projects.
I’m suddenly remembering a lecture I attended in college about project management. Our teacher told us of three concepts to be aware of when working on a project: (1) cost, (2) speed, (3) quality. He explained that you will have to sacrifice one of these goals in order to achieve the other two. For example, if I want something done cheap and fast, I’ll have to sacrifice the final product’s quality. Or, if I wanted something done fast and to be well made, I would have to be willing to spend a lot of money on it. I guess I’m in the middle of making these decisions on a daily basis in my home. If only I could remember how you determine which goals to aim for.
