Chugging along

I worked some more on the shower enclosure today. I tested the dummy pieces I cut yesterday and they looked good. I got worked a little more on the window trim, but when I put the piece up, I found it was too warped at one end and would not adhere to the wall. It was a bit disappointing because I thought I'd have a finished window today, but it didn't happen.

Right now, the windows and shower are my main projects other than yard related tasks, which mainly is badgering the contractors to get me contracts. I did knock out a few "mosquito" tasks (you know, small annoying things that are hard to get to and tend to hover forever). I took the protective shipping wrapper off the dishwasher. This took about 30 minutes because a lot of construction dust had accumulated in the adhesive where the wrapper had started to peel. I had to clean it with a special stainless steel cleaner very thoroughly. I hadn't wanted to do this until maybe a month ago when the major dust producing work was done. The other small task was putting vertical clips on the hall closet rack. The closet has vertical rods to which the drawers, shelves and hang bars are attached. When I installed in months ago, I never put the clips on the bottom of the verticals and as a result, the whole rack moved a bit every time you opened a drawer or put something in or out. This took about 40 minutes.

So it may seem odd to be working on these mosquito tasks when the house is in such chaos. I found that it actually helps my state of mind to complete things and knock them off my list. I have literally hundreds (if not thousands) of these tasks, so doing a few now and then helps me to feel like I am making progress and reminds me that the big first push is almost behind us and that we are entering the ongoing renovation stage. These two little tasks also did improve my quality of life in small ways. The dishwasher looks much nicer and the hallway rack doesn't move around when I am getting something our or putting it away. I save myself this small annoyance 6 or more times a day. It's sort of like when you have a squeaky door that annoys you just a little bit every time you go in or out and then one day years later you take 5 minutes, pull out the WD-40 and fix the squeak and you think to yourself "why did I live with that annoyance for so long."

I have found it is also really difficult to perfectly prioritize my to-do lists when they are so large and so complex. There are multiple priorities and dependencies, and I've had several days where I got so overwhelmed trying to figure out what to do that I got nothing done. I've learned that it is better to do a little on the most important tasks (the shower and the windows) and then just to pick something else and do it. The really important things are obvious, and in the long run, it doesn't matter which mosquito tasks get done first only that they get done.