Cascading

Does it ever happen to you?  Every single time I start a project, either at work or at home, it happens to me.  Are you curious, yet?  Let me explain with an example.  I need to replace a wax ring on the toilet in the basement of the house.  Simple enough, right?  Oh no.  Since I am going to have to pull the toilet I might as well think about what else needs to happen.  Well, honestly, I've wanted to replace the shower with something a big larger.  So I need to hire someone to come in, pull the shower, and tile the area for the bigger shower.  After all of that work is complete, the vanity will look tacky and need to be replaced. The paint on the wall outside the bathroom will be old and discolored since everything in the bathroom is now fresh and new.  Get the picture?  The next thing that I know, I am replacing the doorbell button on the front door as a result of needing a new wax ring for the toilet.  How does this happen?  How do we stop it?

Whether we call it creep, or mushrooming, or cascading, it just happens.  Keeping the scope of a project in check is difficult.  This is the same whether at work or home.  I really believe that it all starts with complete clarification of the project, probably best captured in writing.  The other critical issue is to make sure that you have the right people involved in the decisions.  I know of multiple occasions over the years when I thought that I knew the scope of a project, only to find out that I had been very, very wrong.  In starting to consider the downstairs bathroom project, I discovered that my thoughts had been less than complete.

The good part about cascading is that once you know it is going to happen and you embrace the fact that you can't stop it, you can plan for it.  If you take the time, and put the effort in, you will be able to come up with a very complete list of all of the likely items that will be involved.  In my wax ring project for example, I know that there will be demolition, some rough carpentry, tile setting, and painting.  Then come the items that I always add, because it just seems that they happen.  In this case, there will be electrical work and plumbing work, even if, at the beginning, it doesn't seem as if those are an issue.  So, at the end of the planning process, I can have a pretty complete list of all of the things that will be involved. This does get easier as you do more of it.

I bought my first fixer-upper house in 1989.  I was working at Payless at the time and thought I had all of the bases covered.  I'd been through the house, and determined it needed a new roof. I had gotten estimates and commitments from all of the folks that needed to be involved.  Then I bought the place and told them we were ready to go.  Rick Vertz looked at me and said, "You actually bought it?  Ah crap, I never thought that would happen."  The first morning, right off the bat, Rick went through a soft spot in the roof that we didn't know was there.  Twenty-four hours into it, I thought I was living in a war zone because of the way the place looked and wondered if I had lost my head.  At that point I was just beginning to understand the truth of cascading.  Four months later we completed that first project, but as only a good cascading project will go, I had also replaced a furnace and redone part of the main wiring in the house. I was fully immersed in my understanding of the process.

It seems that the best idea is to get comfortable with the fact that a project will go places you can't imagine and plan as well as possible for it.  In the end, hopefully you will end up with a good outcome and all of the work is worth it.  Most, if not all, of the projects I have taken on over the years have come out well.

Okay, enough of that for the moment.  I actually have a Toybox story to tell you this week.

Apparently I've become a collector of extraneous lumber and wood from the people I know.  In the last few weeks I have received two separate phone calls to tell me that someone has wood product they don't know what to do with and don't want to throw away.  There are those of you who are forever agonizing over animals that need a home.  You read about a rescue animal on Facebook and will do anything possible to reach out and help.  Well, apparently I am the same about wood.  I just can't stand to see it go to a "bad home" or worse yet, be disposed of.  If anyone is looking for a very nice bunkbed built out of red oak, or a 4X8 piece of MDF with laminate on one side, laid up to be used for the front of a cabinet, call me. I have both of these things.  I am the collector of distressed, or extra, wood products. Given time, I will turn these products into something else.  However, if someone can make a good home for them as they are, I would be happy to see that work.  Think about it, maybe you could use a handmade oak bunk bed.