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I know, for you, it's timeless since the posts will be right next to each other on the website, but for me it's been almost a year since the last post, and as we know, a year is simultaneously a short and a long time. Since the last update, I have finished remodeling the project house I mentioned earlier, and got it rented out just this past week (woo!). It's been a long and arduous process, but it's nice to have it essentially squared away, or at the very least now just in maintenance mode rather than construction mode. The process taught me some great lessons though.

In no particular order, first: I had the mantra of "do it right, do it once" in that by reminding myself to move a bit slower, do research, use the right tools, understand why rules are put in place (which ones can or cannot be bent), then I can do things right once, and not have to rip it out and do it again. For example, I performed all the electrical work which primarily entailed moving wall mounted lights to be ceiling mounted, adding receptacles and lights to the kitchen, adding other receptacles around the house, ensuring old wiring was up to code (the house was built in 1904, before the mass introduction of in-home electricity (we discovered that the wall mounted lights were likely there because they were originally gas powered), so much of the wiring was cloth-coated knob-and-tube style and didn't have a grounding wire). Any of the original wiring I had access to, I removed and replaced with modern romex, often this entailed opening further sections of walls and needing to go above and beyond to make things up to the NFPA standards. The logic being, since the walls are already open, you might as well make the improvements, otherwise it's a lot of work to try and do it again later. So, do it once properly so you don't have issues that compound and need to be redone (like poor wiring, water leakage, or structural problems).

Second: have a plan. When I first bought the property, I did a walk through and assessed what state everything was in, what needed the most work, and what I wanted the final place to look like. Some of the largest changes were moving walls to make room for a door, adding a bathroom, redoing the other bathroom, and redoing the kitchen. I took many measurements of the locations of walls and other reference points, then I was able to transfer that information into software (Sweet Home 3D. No affiliation, just what I used), and model how I wanted the final product to look. With the plan in mind, I went about budgeting about how much things would cost on a low and high end, since I was performing most of the work myself, I did not count labor in cost analysis, so most of it was in materials and tools. I searched for low and high estimates for things, and built a spreadsheet that I could gain more insight. From there I bought things and stored them in the garage or out of the way. In cooking, there is the term "Mise en Place" meaning to have everything ready before executing (ingredients are cut, organized and measured for the meal, etc), I used a similar approach for the remodel where I prepped materials and the workspace in order to execute the planned steps in an efficient manner.

Third: even with a plan, being adaptable is important because nothing ever goes according to plan. Houses are complex, things that seem like they may be unrelated may be connected. For example, wiring can be in all sorts of places, and all be on the same circuit, so when moving a light fixture here or there, it can affect the wires leading to another device further down the network, which means a new wire may need to be run somewhere else in the building. Or another example is that right angles don't exist, especially in 120 year old houses! When placing the cabinets in the kitchen, I noticed that the center of the floor was nearly 3 inches lower than the floor by the walls, which meant the cabinets would be out of alignment, cascading to the counter as well. Which I did my best to level the floors, some things were just too far out of alignment to adjust in a timely or effective way without digging further into new tasks. Which is a great segue into the next lesson of...

Fourth: know when to stop (or shoot the engineer). Scope creep is a real thing, and it's vital to not get carried away since the money and time budget aren't infinite. There are many pitfalls in projects that can lead down a rabbit hole that would make actual improvement to a product, but the return on investment may not be worth the time or energy spent to address it. Identifying what problems are worth pursuing and which ones aren't can be difficult to discern, so maintaining a perpetually skeptical mindset helps avoid those traps as it forces one to think about such investments before making them. For example, I decided not to level the floors, as the work to do that would delay the project and not provide significant value, however replacing the power line to the garage which was dissolving and had gotten hit by multiple tree branches but still provided power there was a good investment as it only took a couple hours including prep work, and increased the longevity of the out building. Unfortunately, there's also the issue of death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts where such little projects build quickly, so drawing the line needs to happen at all levels, not just larger projects.

And last but not least: using the right tool for the job. Jobs are significantly smoother and less frustrating when using the right kind of saw or bit or whatnot for what it's meant for. Using an oscillating saw instead of a sawzall for trim, or a miter saw instead of a circular saw for cutting large pieces needing a straight cut, or ensuring the right sized drill bit for the screws being driven. Life is hard enough as it is, there's no sense making it harder.

I believe learning about such a project has really helped me improve my engineering and project management ability, as well as learning more technical skills which will help me in the future.