epic cart before the horse fail

this post has had more than a few working titles: “life lessons from the kitchen”, “life lessons part 1″, “the contractor, the witch and the kitchen sink”, “uf! that’s smarts!”, and “d’oh: the chronicles of homeownership”.  but i chose this title to appeal to the internet meme audience.  the 1st lesson in this series of 2 lessons is really the only FAIL, the 2nd lesson is just a life lesson about spending money.

Before the floors went in, we scrambled to get 2 rooms of our house fully painted.  Thinking we were doing ourselves a favor by not priming the baseboards and trim.  ”We’re so fast!” we thought as we lied on the floor and sloshed on our semi-gloss ultra white.  Unfortunately, it dried as semi-transparent brush marks and scraped off at the slightest touch.  So instead of “Prime -> Paint”, we’re now now left with a “Paint -> Scrape -> Prime -> Paint” scenario.  Life Lesson #1 : Don’t take shortcuts.  It’s more work in the end.

2 weeks ago we had a neighbor, who is a contractor, and some of his guys come through and work on the house.  Before the contractors showed up, I attempted to follow the previous “amateur” plumber’s lead and added to a Frankenstein plumbing job that was a complete mess, a rat king of pipes and hoses.  Turns out it was leaking. The contractors came in told me my under-sink was pitiful, rearranged it, added new water lines, dropped power lines, and even added in the disposal (pronounced “dispose-all” by our neighbor).  I was extremely impressed by their work.  The underbelly of the sink is now one of my favorite places in the house because it’s so simple, beautiful and “done right”.  Life Lesson #2 : If you want a job done right, bring in the pros.

So those are the lessons so far.  I’ve now got to get back to salvaging a computer.  Wish me luck.