On the Sunday evening in May when you first come to look at the house, you’ll tell yourself about what great shape it’s in. It’s got so MUCH potential–small changes could make a big difference in this space!–but nothing is urgent; it’s move-in ready as is.
Come July, after six weeks of daydreaming, it’s finally time to dive in. Not too much, you tell yourself, just those few tweaks that we want done before we move in. A little paint in the kitchen would go a long way! And actually, it wouldn’t be that much work to tear our the vinyl flooring and put down something new.
“It wouldn’t be that much work” becomes your mantra. “It wouldn’t take too long…”
And that’s where scope creep sets in.
And that’s how you find yourself painting the ceiling at 7 am on a Tuesday when you really meant to just install some baseboard trim.
The floor is down, so you have to install new trim. The new trim is black, so the old baseboards should be painted to match (new baseboards would be even better). With the baseboard trim painted, the window and door trim starts to look a little funny–that should really be painted too.
A simple ceiling light fixture swap reveals a lot of ceiling patch-work to be done. With the patching done, of course, there’s painting to be done. And how can you match that slightly-off-white color on the ceiling? You can’t, so the ceiling must be painted. Of course, with the ceiling and the cabinets painted, the walls look a little off–they need paint, too.
And so on, and so on. Scope creep.
We’ve owned this house for less than a month, and I’m so excited about everything we’ve already accomplished. But it’s hard to feel very proud of what’s been done because everything you do reveals new projects ahead.I’m still excited about those projects, but it’d be nice to feel a little sense of accomplishment.
That said, I still haven’t finished painting the kitchen cabinets. Maybe then I’ll feel accomplished. Maybe.
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[…] fluorescent light that was there and discovered yellow paint and lots of holes to patch? (If not, see here.) Well, it turned out there was more to the scope creep than just painting the ceiling. There also […]