How goes it? It goes and with it, my sanity.
These last few weeks, well, they have been in a word — hectic. The den remodeling is getting done, but also getting on my nerves. I feel trapped in my own house. For example this morning I was up and went to go out into the laundry room to get a head start on the laundry I haven’t been able to do all week, to find the contractor there, working on spackling. It’s like this all the time. Saturday morning and no particular plans, maybe we can lay in bed and “sleep in” just a little, but no, someone has come to work on something. Seems that a house with work being done on it, attracts everyone, they must be able to smell it…..One day I walked in to a room with three men working in it and came back through the door less than ten minutes later to a total of seven men in it, some working, some talking, some just stopped by because I think that men can smell construction like sharks can sense blood. If it wasn’t so funny, I think that I would cry. I can’t complain, the work is getting done, it’s just like I feel like I can’t get a break from it. What I need is a vacation — quite honestly — except that’s a whole other set of issues that I don’t care to discuss.
Maybe I’m just super sensitive. Maybe I’m crazy – there are days when I swear that I am hanging on to my sanity by a thread and I’m dead serious about that.
And just as if everything can’t get bad enough, there’s the whole holiday pressure thing looming like a gigantic monster over our heads. A Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas decorating, Christmas shopping, Christmas cards, Christmas dinner, Christmas gift wrapping —sheesh, makes you sick of Christmas already and it’s not even the middle of November.
Add to all of that the fact that my husband will be gone for the better part of two of the four weeks in December and this girl is just about ready to scream…..
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November 14, 2010 at 4:50 am
ptcakes
Hang in there… Wish we lived closer. I’d have you over for a cup of tea, or a glass of wine… whichever you required.
November 14, 2010 at 9:28 am
tammyheff
I appreciate your kindness and your friendship.
November 14, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Uncle Lou
As a contractor, but a different kind of contractor, I can tell you that your observations are correct. Amongst old time, old fashioned, typical contractors there is a bond of lameness. This means that once one contractor makes it through your door and has settled his butt firmly into your project, he will recruit every woodpile relative, drinking buddy, and loser he owes money to to work on the project. He will need helpers, experts, ect. I have seen it first hand, I bring in a sheetrocker to speed things up, and boom I have a new painter, a guy who wants to put on trim, a couple of helpers that stand around and do nothing. I do not put up with it, as I usually bid a job pretty tight so I don’t have the option of lazy labor. The other thing I don’t tolerate that a lot of contractors do is drag out the job to run up time and fatten the wallet. I was working with a guy who kept telling me I was “killing the Job”, and to slow down and take my time because I was “screwing him out of Christmas money”. I finished the job on time and for the cost estimated.
I often feel the same way when working on a project for a long time, some times I just want to walk away and go on vacation or at least work on another job for a change of pace. I have been working on one job for almost 4 weeks, it is pushing my patience. The money is ok, the work is not too crazy, I have just had enough of the same customer every morning, the same comments, the same everything. Roll with it, it will work out.