Have you noticed that when you start a home remodeling / redecorating project you go through these phases? First, you're all excited. You can see it in your mind's eye: how it will look, the way it will improve your life, you'll be better organized, your house will look nicer, it will eliminate clutter, be prettier, more efficient, or whatever the hell you told yourself in order to get the ball rolling. I call that Stage 1, or the Pipe Dream.

Then there's stage 2, or as I like to call it, the Collective Incompetence. So you have your grand scheme, but there's no way you're skilled enough to do all that labor by yourself. Some of it, you couldn't do even if you apprenticed to a master for seven years. What do you do? Find someone to handle it for you. You talk to people, ask questions, and eventually make up your mind who offers the best price / quality ratio. Why you even bother with this, I have no idea. You may as well hurl darts at the phone directory and hire whomever it lands on because you're just as likely to find a competent contractor that way as through your meticulous research.

Once money has changed hands, you have passed the point of no return. I fondly dub this stage 3, Holy Shit, my house exploded or alternately, The Time of the Ass Crack. This means people whose names you do not know or cannot remember will tromp in and out of your house, bringing this and that, leaving rubbish, trampling your shrubs and flowers and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Very little will be accomplished that first day (and perhaps for many days henceforth) except to test your patience and make you wish you had a time machine. You wouldn't do anything selfless with it, like save Abraham Lincoln. No, you'd just go back to the day before you entered stage 1 and write yourself a note that reads: Psst, the house is okay the way it is. Seriously.

Sometimes it looks like progress is being made, but then the contractor faeries come out at night and undo any work that may have been accomplished by accident the day before. Parts will go missing and delivery men will promise to contact "the warehouse" and have replacements sent out right away. This can be anywhere from three days to never. This part of the process is stage 4, also known as Waiting for Godot.

At this point, you get on the phone and start making ridiculous threats that you cannot carry out (unless you do actually have pull with the postal service and can see to it that they never receive another parcel as long as they live) unless they finish on your house. You stop being the cheerful host, offering ice water and free Cokes, and start letting your dog, who has a tendency to lick and hump the most unusual objects, run free on the worksite. This motivates the workers to enter stage 5, which is "This woman is crazy, let's wrap this job up!"

Work will proceed at a prodigious pace and you'll start to remember why you put yourself through this ordeal, back in the rosy glow of stage 1. Until they install everything backwards, in direct opposition to what you initially discussed, and then vanish in their trucks as if into the Bermuda Triangle. They don't return your calls.

Yes. It's time to break out the tequila.

Labels: SBD