Home improvement and the vertical asymptote
All home improvement projects have a completion curve.
WHere X is the percent of completion, and Y is the difficulty required, in any project you do, there comes a level of diminishing returns. The last few percent of the project require a greater and greater level of difficulty, aproaching the infinite. The trick professionals use, because professionals have the same situation, is to conceal the last 2% under a piece of trim. In lanscaping, you plant a begonia. In auto repair, you cover the run with a pinstripe.
Ya kinda need a z axis – the I’m tired of this shit and don’t give a fuck anymore line. It would start rising more sharply around the fifty percent mark.
LOL! Yep. You got that right.
so it’s not only sensible, it’s scientific as to why i can’t ever finish these jobs i start out so gung ho about. thanks for the clarification, and the back up materials.
Remember to leave an unfinished bit that can be covered wiht a bit of trim, or a potted plant, or bunting.
I think your estimate of 2% is optimistic. I think the coverup starts at … like … 2% completed, not 98%.
But then, maybe I’m just being cynical.
M
Twenty years on, we still haven’t finished the addition we built onto the house. The last 2% covered with trim? Wish I had time to trim that out.
Shit, it took us 13 years to make it livable.
On the other hand, for most of my previous life (prior to software engineering) Dad and I were contractors busy doing other people’s work. Mom nearly despaired of us fixing anything around the house for her…
Of course, it would have helped a lot if we’d built it on a slab instead of over a crawl space. Dad insisted on a crawl space because he didn’t like cold concrete floors. This was one of his very few “brain fart” moments — he disregarded the fact that the water table out here is practically at the surface. So the crawl naturally filled with water and (partly because of the clay subsoil) rarely if ever drained. You can imagine what happened next.
So after the floor rotted out, the unfinished room sat for years until we finally tore out the floor and the rotten joists, filled the crawl space with gravel, and poured a concrete floor. After that, we were at the 98% point within a year…but as noted, that was 20 years ago and Dad left me with a number of chores to finish :)
Maybe this summer.