Renovations can be stressful. Being a contractor’s daughter, I shouldn’t be surprised by renovation woes — the delays, unavailability of ordered materials, and, of course, the mess.
There’s a difference in being a contractor’s daughter, and being the affected homeowner. Now it’s personal. The problems that crop up, while apparently trivial to the contractors and suppliers, are a bigger deal to me.
Quality of work is paramount, but reliability is important, too. When multiple contractors or technicians are involved, each is dependent on the others to do their tasks in a timely manner. When one is delayed, the effect ricochets down the line. Some delays are unavoidable; some are not. Some are a result of poor planning.
Last month I wrote about the minor kitchen reno we had started. The main contractor has been super, but a couple of the sub-trades have held up the process. The end should have been in sight today, but it’s not, and it’s frustrating. I tend to be impatient when it comes to inefficiency.
I related my other post to the writing/revision process and I now realize my current situation is also applicable, especially when it comes to revising a manuscript. Without effective planning, it can become a frustrating endeavour. If I begin with the wrong things — perhaps tweaking sentence structure and grammar — before dealing with larger issues such as plot holes, location of scenes or character development, I will find myself muddling along, going over previous ground multiple times, and inevitably having to redo earlier edits. That prolongs the task. My hubby likes to say things need to be done “decently and in order”.
Editor Danielle Stoia says, “the editorial work on the road to publishing has three [progressive] stages: taking care of the FORM (Substantive Editing), the LANGUAGE (Editing or Copy Editing) and the final overview (Proofreading). Any and all manuscripts should go through these stages … and the need for this ‘quality control’ does not affect, infringe upon or otherwise criticize the quality of the writing or the author’s competence.”
We still have lots of little things to do in this reno — painting, installing a new range hood and light fixture, window coverings — but even if we went ahead and finished all of them, until this pesky tiled backsplash is done, the room will not function well or look complete. It’s one of the biggies!
(But at long last, today I have a sink, tap and running water again! WooHoo!)
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MUSINGS 
Hooray for your sink! 🙂 “Decently and in order” is a good approach for many things (definitely including revisions).
Home renovations—especially kitchen–are a great test of our fortitude and patience and ability to cope with the unpredictable!
I can relate – both to home renos and manuscript renos! Having gone through both in the last three years, I haven’t quite figured out which one demands more effort and leads to more frustrations. Well done!
I’m glad to have you all commiserating with my minor trials. 🙂 In the overall scheme of things it’s not a big deal, but I’ll be very glad to get the backsplash done so our kitchen stove can be hooked up again. A week without it has been another kind of challenge.
… and a mighty attractive sink and taps, I must add… Happy for you, Carol.